Cat in a Leopard Spot

Chapter 37

Human Error

Although I am the first to assert that my Miss Temple is a pretty sharp cookie you wouldn’t want to try snacking on without a lip guard, I must admit that she does have her unguarded moments. Usually when Mr. Max or Mr. Matt is around.

These moments also occur when she is in the act of entering or exiting a motor vehicle, which I find a most convenient failing. Especially if Mr. Max or Mr. Matt is also in the car.

In this case, it has been a real lifesaver for me and my partners in crime solving.

Thus it is that we three—me and the Terrierable Twos, Groucho and Golda—are safely sheltering under the oleander bushes bordering the Circle Ritz parking lot by the time she accosts Mr. Matt shortly after Mr. Max has driven off.

I say “accost” because Mr. Matt Devine is behaving as I have never seen him do before. Instead of suffering from an inability to take his eyes off Miss Temple, he is darting them around the parking lot as if aware that I and the Dustball Twins are under the oleanders. He is, in fact, looking like a minor character in a bad detective novel. Were I in such a production, I would be forced to describe him as looking shifty.

Fortunately, I am not and can instead say that he is moving his gaze around the parking lot perimeter as if worrying that even the bushes have eyes and ears.

Which they do at this time, thanks to my stage-managing a discreet exit from the backseat floor while Miss Temple has the passenger door open and one dainty foot brushing the pavement while she is arranging an exchange of diamonds and emerald with Mr. Max Kinsella.

Handing off fifty thou or so in vintage jewels is sufficiently novel that they keep their eyes firmly on the ring and each other, and not on any side issues escaping out the ajar door.

The G-forces have been admirably obedient during our escape from Rancho Exotica via the Animal Oasis.

Thanks to their keeping their yaps glued tighter than a showgirl’s false eyelashes, we have all been as silent and surreptitious as ninjas.

Wrrowwww-wrrowww-wow-wow-wow, goes Golda, ruining my self-congratulatory soliloquy.

Wrrowwww-wrrowww-wow-wow-wow, goes Groucho, doubling the odds of our attracting unwanted attention.

I need not have worried, Miss Temple has sped into the building, and Mr. Matt, with one last shifty glance around, has hastened to follow her. Would that the Yorkies were as consistent with me.

I sigh deeply as their Wrrowwww-wrrowww-wow-wow-wow duet falls on the slam of the Circle Ritz door.

Safe at home.

Then I see what they have been Wrrowwwww-wrrowwwing at.

Not so safe at home.

Miss Midnight Louise is sitting not two feet away, tapping the tip of her tail into the dry soil and raising, not Cain, but desert dust.

I sneeze, but get not so much as a “Bast bless you.”

“You drove off without me,” she finally says.

She is so mad that the sound comes out the side of her mouth, like spit.

“I could not help it. I could not get the interior latch open in time.”

“You? The city’s primo cat burglar, to hear you tell it? I think you could. I think you just decided to ditch me when the action got interesting.”

“Ditch you! If I had wanted to do that, I could have done it long before then. You know how heavy-duty those meat-locker latches are.”

“Yeah. They got to keep the meat from running away.” She is being sarcastic.

I nod sagely. “Sometimes, depending on the quality of the establishment for which the shipment is destined.”

She shakes out her ruff in disbelief and begins sweeping her rear member from side to side, raising a small dust devil.

“That leopard is mine,” she says.

I am staggered. I have never seen Miss Midnight Louise so incensed, and, believe me, I have seen her incensed. With my deep understanding of psychology, human or feline, I suddenly realize that by feeding the starving leopard, Miss Louise has developed a maternal attachment to it. There is nothing so fierce in the females of my species as the maternal instinct. Unfortunately. True, Miss Louise was made politically correct at an early age. So call her a single mom, an adoptive mom. Obviously, her assignment with the leopard has tapped deep inner needs.

“Osiris is fine, and being fed plenty at the Animal Oasis. We just saw for ourselves.”

Beside me, the thankfully mum Yorkie duo nod until the tiny bows on their heads seem to be seen through a strobe light. They remind me of those old-time kewpie dolls with springs for necks. Only these things also stick their tongues out from time to time. Dogs! Yuck.

However, Miss Midnight Louise is not being repulsed by Golda and Groucho at the moment. She is being repulsed by me.

“I am sorry,” I say humbly. “The very next time it is necessary to take a long, uncertain arduous trek out to the desert, I will make sure that you and no one else accompanies me.”

“I bet,” she jeers. She shifts her weight from one slim black foreleg to the other, and deigns to curl her train around her toes. “So what did you learn?”

I sit down and fold my mitts into each other.

“The Yorkshire constabulary were actually useful. When we arrived at the ranch, we discovered Osiris had been moved.”

“Moved?”

“But luckily, I had a pair of noses along that can cling to the desert floor like twin Hoovers. And where they led me was most interesting.”