Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

Carole Nelson Douglas

Professes Innocence, or

Maybe Just Ignorance

I didn’t know they were going to do it, Louie. Honest.

Oh, I knew they were capable of almost anything, including laughing at my attempts to produce some logical behavior on their parts. The problem is, this is fiction. And even in Real Life, people are lamentably unpredictable. Not cats. Never cats. That’s why I surround myself with them.

That’s why you and I have had a monogamous relationship for thirty-three years, Louie. Thirty-three years. Not bad for my species, and downright metaphysical for yours.

Well, what can we do? We have invested a lot of time, love, and hope in these people. We will just have to have faith.

We will have to have faith that they have learned something from us (and particularly you) and will come around to surprising us with their good sense, good intentions, and ultimately ideal solutions to all the messy druthers that lives of crime and punishment create.

You want to run them in on a moving violation, Louie?

Be my guest.

You are the driving force here and I don’t expect you to take this level of turmoil lying down. You’ve got your paw on what’s going to happen next and will get all these humans herded back into their proper places. Right, Big Boy?

Speak to me!

P.S. Charity auctions at mystery conventions often allow bidders to win the prize of having their or a loved one’s name in a particular author’s book. Midnight Louie (of course) draws hot and high bidding wars. The pair of Yorkshire terriers in Cat in a Leopard Spot resulted from a United Way drawing in Minnesota. The real-life Beth Marble’s husband won her a role in Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit. And in this book, Squeaker’s owner won her participation. Squeaker is the shy, gorgeous shelter cat, as portrayed, and her shelter “name,” was—yes indeed—Fontana. Truth is always stranger than fiction.