Cat In A Flamingo Fedora

Chapter 12

Midnight Munchies

This just missed being my unlucky last chapter, set at a feline funeral parlor, which is to say an anonymous little bonfire at Smoke Rise Farm.

While I am dying to learn what others may say about me once I am dead, I am also willing to leave this terminal bit of feline curiosity unfulfilled for quite some time. Nor am I ready to don the ashen mantle of the late Maurice One and his ilk. Besides, I have never been one to leave a feather or a fur unruffled, so for me Cat Heaven would be Hell, as bad as the state pen for a cop gone bad: a place full of old foes waiting to make my Afterlife as miserable as I made their Fore-life.

But those who hand Midnight Louie a banana peel to slip on usually have to watch me dance my way out of danger and come up singing, with a banana split.

And so it went at Gangster's. While I nearly did the splits avoiding the trip wire Maurice Two laid in my path, I managed to land on all fours (on my proper mark too) and am the cynosure of all eyes. (I am not sure what this cynosure is, but being a long, odd word, it must be hot stuff.) The director has flipped his toupee over my agile escape antics, only he interprets it as a "cat soft-shoe."

The dude whose suit I ruined while using it for a ladder to his shoulder is not complaining, as he will now have a close-up in the A La Cat commercial, for which he will have to give permission and therefore get paid. He is babbling to his fellow hoofers about his "big break" while the costumer is trying to pull snagged threads smooth and whimpering about having to resew from scratch, so to speak.

Meanwhile the Divine Yvette has taken advantage of her freedom and t he resulting flurry to rub back and forth most provocatively against my ruffled suit coat, purring, "You are such a natural performer, Louie. What an improviser! You must teach me that little jazz step you did on the way down; we would look great together and I would get more close-ups. This is my commercial, after all, big boy."

There is a bit of a subdued growl in her last words, but I do not blame her for coveting more camera time. So I turn my skin-saving routine into a simple cha-cha-cha, and she picks it up right away.

"Film that!" the director barks. "We can save a pile on computer animation if these cats keep up the good work."

So I get to do a little victory dance with my honey. Even the stupid flamingo fedora does not seem so bad at the moment.

"Get Louie's face tight," Kyle orders. "He looks like the cat that swallowed the canary, and that is how a consumer of A La Cat should look. What a natural!"

Natural nothing! Although I show my usual savoir faire and aplomb, my stomach is in imminent revolt, not from my shocking plummet down the stairs, but from the lump of A La Cat I was forced to consume on camera. Ugh! It feels like one of those fabric-stuffed mice people are always forcing on undiscriminating house cats, a soggy, cotton-flannel wad in my stomach. I burp and the director goes ballistic.

"He burped! Did you get that? Great. We can put some really macho sound under it--after all, this is the alley cat--and intercut it with a shot of the blonde licking her dainty whiskers. That burp really says 'satisfied customer.' Hey, this is gonna work."

Well, nobody likes a happy director more than a performer, but I suspect that Miss Temple will be the beneficiary of a humongous hair ball on her coverlet around 3 a.m. this morning.

While I am the center of all attention, I cast a glance to the top of the stairs.

Yup. There he sits like some bronze statue out of antiquity, deceptively still. Maurice Two has witnessed his murderous scheme backfire. I have no doubt he is already dreaming up the second installment. I start up the stairs toward him.

By now, though, the director has ordered the cameras to back off and there is a race up the stage stairs. Two sets of high heels pound in tandem as the Divine Yvette's and my respective stage mamas each strive to be first to congratulate her darling.

Miss Temple wins by a nose, and a rather endearing, short nose at that, and sits beside me on the fifteenth step. Maurice lucks out again.

"Louie, are you all right?"

"Of course he is all right," Miss Savannah Ashleigh snaps from below. "He nearly crashed into my adorable Yvette while doing all that fancy footwork. What a showoff."

"A natural gymnast," Miss Temple corrects, not too gently, meanwhile tenderly probing my anatomy for sore spots.

I do not doubt that tomorrow my lean torso will feel the effects of those aerial acrobatics, but for now, all is clover.

The director is still babbling about what a great segment this is, and how he wants to get a bunch more shots on the set when possible. Even the human star of the show has wandered over and is now deigning to notice me.

"Clever fellow," he tells Miss Temple. He bends down so Miss Savannah Ashleigh cannot hear and also tells her, "Do not forget about coming to my Sunday brunch tomorrow."

She nods, paying him much less attention than a star like Mr. Darren Cooke is used to, all the while feeling the flexibility in my limbs, which are the usual wet noodles.

"Darren," Miss Savannah Ashleigh says, following him into the wings, my lovely Yvette trapped in her grasping arms, "was not Yvette wonderful?"

He can only agree, but I see that his heart is not in it, nor is Miss Savannah much in his heart or mind. I am happy to say that I and Miss Temple seem to have replaced her in his regard. I begin to wonder how I could drop in on his brunch on the morrow, for I am sure he would have asked me had he realized that I am willing to attend these little career-building social affairs now and then. Although Miss Temple is touchingly concerned about my welfare, she does not view me as quite the asset I am. She is clearly underestimating the scope of my future performing career, not to mention my many previous contributions to her dabbling efforts in the crime-solving department.

Miss Temple has become so carried away by my athletic exertions that she picks me up and actually attempts to rise. I see that I am to be toted back down to my carrier, and am much touched by her efforts, but fear she has overestimated her toting power. I am no lightweight normally, and with half a pound of A La Cat turning to concrete in my gut I am even more unwieldy than usual.

Miss Temple's dainty shoes kick the almost-fatal trip wire to the bottom of the stairs.

Nothing like stumbling over the evidence. She misses the second-to-the-bottom step on the set and teeters for a moment before she gets her balance back. Then she cranes her head over my swollen stomach to examine the floor.

"Tsk. Someone left a piece of wire onstage. How careless. I'll have to get it once you're back in your carrier."

No, no! I look up. Maurice is slinking down the stairs unnoticed, like any second banana. I am helpless to resist, although I do offer Miss Temple a few delicate pricks of warning.

"Louie! Don't fight. I'll let you out as soon as we're in the car. Union rules require you to have a container."

Of course by the time she has carefully minced down the steps to the stage, dumped me in the carrier and returned to do her good deed and pick up the rogue wire, it is ...

"Gone," she mutters to the empty stage and house. "I could swear I stepped right on it."

By now Maurice has batted it a few dozen yards away into the wings, and if he has any smarts, into the nearest waste receptacle.

I swallow a growl of frustration, but it is a small one. I doubt he left any pad prints on the wire, and besides, no human would think to look for them, anyway.

If one is going to commit murder, an innocent facade is the best disguise, and fur is fail-safe in that regard. However, that works both ways, and if Maurice persists in trying to turn me into cured ham, I may have to fix his bacon.

The expression makes my stomach growl, but first I have to be rid of that A La Cat. I believe I will shock and over joy Miss Temple by gobbling down that awful Free-to-be-Feline when I get home. A few swallows of that ought to make everything come up in a most satisfying way.