Cat In A Leopard Spot

Chapter 16

Hissy Fit

What an exercise in frustration.

Not allowed to testify on our own behalves.

Treated like nonpersons—okay, this is not new.

And kept apart like rabid monkeys.

I do not think much of human justice!

So I decide to take matters into my own mitts.

While Miss Savannah Ashleigh is busy inventing stage business for the camera, huffing and puffing and tapping her tiny toe and pushing her fat hair off her shoulders, she has neglected to fully zip shut the Divine Yvette’s carrier.

I glance at my Miss Temple. She is fussing over her various papers, no doubt looking for the key piece of evidence she forgot to give the judge. She obviously is counting on me to be the little gentleman I have been for the past hour or so.

She should know that an hour is too long for the average cat to remain docile and obedient. As for an above-average dude like myself, I am ready to bust out of this low-rent trial-by-television.

In one graceful leap I am airborne and land on the opposition’s tabletop.

With a swift flourish of my front fang, I hook it into the hole in the carrier zipper tag and rip the teeth apart, a maneuver I have performed before in less public circumstances.

My darling’s adorable face pops into plain view, although nothing about the Divine Yvette could ever be called plain.

“Louie!” she mews with delight. The dames can never resist a swashbuckling kind of guy.

I assist her out of the collapsing pink canvas, ignore shrieks and admonitions from two sides, and urge my little pet into a leap to the floor. A quick flight through the onlookers creates a stir in our wake, but too late to impede our progress.

Then it is out the imposing double wooden doors (mostly painted plywood) and into the great concrete space that houses the technical set.

We speed over welts of black cables snaking across the floor and into the shadows behind the curtains used as room dividers in the massive space.

I can hear human footsteps and voices and consternation all over the place, but we snuggle down next to a cooler and are instantly alone on our own desert isle.

“Oh, Louie.” Yvette sighs. “You are très unpredictable. Such a merry chase we have led them. I was feeling so cramped in my carrier.” She catches her breath with a little gasp. “Oh! I am not used to such a sprightly romp since I first contracted my unfortunate condition.”

“And how are the little stripe-heads?” I ask, feeling it necessary to bow to the maternal instinct.

“Gone to the neighbors, one by one. I cannot say that I cared to be reminded daily of the criminal proceedings that led to their birth.”

I murmur sympathetically. I would not wish to be reminded of Maurice’s ugly mug either, even if that likeness was now adorning the faces of my own offspring.

“I am glad that they have found good homes.”

“Oh, yes. Unlike my mistress, her neighbors find having the offspring of Yvette and Maurice, the cat food mascots, quite a plume in their tails. They do not care about pedigree, as my mistress does.”

“And who are her blue-blooded antecedents, I would like to know?”

“Perhaps that is why she so prizes my own,” the Divine Yvette notes in a flash of perception and loyalty that is especially touching coming from one born and bred to think only of her pedigreed self.

Perhaps I have been a good influence on her.

“Will we ever work together again, I wonder?” I say.

“Will you ever see my sister, Solange, again, you may be wondering too? Do not deny it, Louie! You are as weak as any of your gender when it comes to those brassy blonds.”

“No, my sweet. You know that I prefer platinum blonds.”

That remark permits me to rub cheeks with the Divine Yvette as a purr of satisfaction ripples through the luxurious fur ruffling her shoulders and chest.

“I am sorry, Louie,” she says instantly. “I am in a bad mood because some foreign hussy is muscling in on my Á La Cat deal just as I was recovering from my…incapacitation and getting ready to resume my career. And the scandal had died down until your roommate gave it a kick-start again with this silly suit.”

I grit my teeth. I cannot tolerate my Miss Temple being criticized, but neither can I condone any actions that put the Divine Yvette into a less than flattering spotlight.

“I am sorry also,” I say. “There is no stopping these humans when they get a flea in their bonnet, or a bee in their ear, or whatever.”

She nods sadly, biting her shiny little black lip with one pearly fang tip. “I cannot excuse my mistress. I had no idea how harshly you were handled by her. Kidnapped! Falsely imprisoned! Operated upon without permission. Altered inalterably! I am tempted to leave Pretty Paws litter all over my mistress’s satin sheets the next time she is entertaining a gentleman friend.”

“Ah, your commiseration is welcome, my dear, but I must quibble about one point. I was not ‘altered’ in any crucial way. I am unable to sire kittens, but certainly am able to go through all the motions needed for that end. And then some.”

“Then why do anything?” she asks with touching innocence. “I cannot say that the actual act is anything to write home about. And, on top of the painful unpleasantness, one is labeled a naughty girl for doing what one did not even wish to partake of in the first place.”

There is no explaining to dames that they should like what guys like just because.

“But apparently your reviving good looks and the passage of time had restored you to favor with our sponsor, Allpetco.”

“So I thought, and what is worse, so did my poor mistress. She finds film work scarce these days, and depends upon my income a good deal, so you can imagine how upsetting it would be if I lost my position. I would even accept my sister’s replacing me if it would assist my mistress’s finances.”

“You are both beautiful and noble,” I say, “but what makes you think this foreign interloper stands a chance of replacing you? I will refuse to work with her if they try anything!”

“Now you are being noble, but you may not have an opportunity to put your sit-down strike into action. I hear that this upstart’s trainer favors Maurice as a partner. Not you.”

“No! Obviously I miss a lot by not being near the scuttlebutt along Rodeo Drive. So we both are to be put out to pasture.”

“They only put horses out to pasture, Louie. We will be put out to sleeping on sofas watching the Home Shopping Network.”

“No!” Personally, I prefer QVC.

“It is true. I have seen it happen in my mistress’s career. And now, with this hussy on the horizon—”

“You mean the foreign feline the Allpetco people are supposedly considering for the spokescat slot?”

“Precisely.”

“Pardon me for being obtuse, but what does any alien female have that you do not have?”

The Divine Yvette shrugs wearily. “New face, new hair. Younger.” She pauses to tidy her whiskers. “I have heard this upstart has some martial arts abilities. Apparently, underage females who can kick-box are the target media consumers these days. And she is the ‘right’ ethnic group.”

My blood is beginning to thicken in my veins.

“This candidate is Asian, by some chance?”

The Divine Yvette’s almost undetectable sneer draws her luxurious vibrissae, aka whiskers, into a dismissive arch of truly noble proportions.

“Siamese,” she hisses in disdain. “One of the new breed that is so narrow it looks as if it has been run over and then peeled off the street.”

I nod, I know the look, and I am afraid I may even know the dame in question.

“She is apparently appearing in some cheesy cable sci-fi series.”

I gulp.

“Something about Khatlords,” the Divine One continues, “although, despite their promising name, they are people, not felines.”

“This Siamese is not called Hyacinth?”

“I do not know her name and do not wish to. All I know is that this kung fu feline is being pushed for the next set of Á La Cat commercials. My mistress is worried white. So white that she has purchased a plain white-cotton martial arts gi for me…for me, who has only worn satin and velvet before. I fear that the fashion in feline fatales has changed from sweet and fluffy to sour and stringy.”

I am so horrified by what I have learned that I have neglected to soothe the Divine Yvette’s injured ego promptly enough.

“Louie! Have you nothing to say of this interloper of inferior breed who threatens our livelihood, and that of our nearest and dearest?”

I shake myself free of unhappy thoughts.

“Only that the Allpetco people would be insane to replace you with an Oriental shorthair like a Siamese. Your aquamarine eyes are infinitely superior to their blue eyes, which are often crossed, I hear. As for coat color, your fiendishly subtle hues of white, silver, and black have a classic art deco sophistication that no other breed can match.”

The Divine Yvette is not only purring by now, she is rubbing back and forth against me like I am a magic lamp with a genie inside. Ah, bliss. I sense a close encounter in the air. Then I have to go and talk a little bit too long….

“Compared to your sublime tones, that common Siamese camel coat accented with the mouse-turd brown trim breeders elevate by the name of lilac points is something from the Goodwill….”

“Louie!” The Divine Yvette has pulled away, something like lightning from Mount Olympus in her heavenly aquavit orbs. “How did you know that this usurper was a lilac-point Siamese?”

“Just a lucky guess?” I begin.

Before I can insert more of my feet into my mouth, and I have several—feet, that is, not mouths—the curtain behind which we shelter is jerked open, spilling a blast of light and noise into our hideaway.

“Yvette! Louie!” our significant others cry in tandem, united in the search for our missing selves. Their long-nailed hands reach for us.

We are between a concrete wall and a wail of people in full cry.

There is nothing to do but crouch down and allow ourselves to be plucked up from the floor and into our so-called owners’ arms.

Miss Temple has a much harder time of it than Miss Savannah, who huffs off immediately with the Divine Yvette, muttering of genetic contamination.

“Louie, you bad boy!” Miss Temple pants. “I’m just glad the judge is still in chambers and didn’t see you running away like a guilty party. You are the sinned against, not the perp. Act like it.”

She stomps back to the set with me clasped to her bosom. It is not the triumph in court I had envisioned, but I know enough to act docile and maintain radio silence.