Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

Three Cat Night

My worst nightmare has come true.

I am trapped in a strange place by a gang of three.

I have no escape route, no allies, no alternatives.

I have been hounded upstairs, where I had hoped to take a restoring snooze in the establishment’s linen closet while I let my little gray cells get cooking on a subconscious level.

Unfortunately, a closet is a cul-de-sac.

My back is to the wall.

My front is to a trio of female relatives on the warpath who have tracked me down and used their carnivore claws to pull the door to my sanctuary wide and now stand shoulder to shoulder like linebackers to ensure that I am going nowhere except where they say.

Now I know how the Fontana brothers have been feeling all evening.

Only my pursuing Furies are all feline and all claws and teeth.

“There he is!” they howl as one.

“Sonny,” cries a voice. (That one is okay. It was the moniker of a mob guy in The Godfather.)

“Daddy,” cries another voice in syrupy, sarcastic tones. (That one is not okay. I am not a family guy unless it is spelled with a capital F as in fierce, fearless, feline, footloose, and fancy-free.)

Alas, I am not footloose and fancy-free now, for a third yowl comes: “Lover boy.”

What is a guy to do, held hostage in a house of pleasure along with a lot of other dudes?

Rolling over and playing dead is not an option.

I fan my shivs and snick them back into their sheaths. “Ladies, please. There is enough of me to go around.”

“In your dreams,” jeers Midnight Louise.

“You could use a street diet and some sparring time,” Ma Barker says.

“You are a one-queen kind of guy, I know it,” Miss Satin says, all moony-eyed.

Oh, Cheese Whiz! Here I am, trapped, caught between three generations of clinging females. At least I am outdoing the Fontana boys all by my lonesome self. At least only one of these dames has any serious designs on me.

One is bad enough.

I had better get some designs of my own on them. Quick!

First I spring to my four furry feet, claws unsheathed.

Then I growl, “What took you so long?”

“Us?” Midnight Louise spits in disbelief. “You are the one who was napping on the job.”

“Tut-tut.” I strut forward and brush past them, brush past Satin, that is, and into the hall. “I was not napping. I was planning the best dispersal of our agents.”

“And what have you planned, oh, sage snoozer?” Louise asks.

“We need reliable reports from all fronts on my Miss Temple’s interrogations. She is usually pretty sharp, but your eyes and ears are better equipped to spot telling signs among such a bevy of potential baddies. Satin, you will join your sister residents in the parlor. Midnight Louise will hang with the bridesmaids in the kitchen.

“Ma Barker, your alley cat instincts have not been blunted by the decadent comforts of domestic life. You still live by your eyes and ears and nose. I want you to give the murder room the going-over of your life.”

“And where will you be,” Miss Midnight Louise asks, “while I have been confined to the kitchen with the women?”

“I will be in the bar with the men. I can break their macho codes and tell when they are lying, and when they are just bragging to save face.”

“It is true that they will swagger more in your presence,” she concedes. “And bragging men often give away far more than they mean to. Your assignment roster makes a certain kind of accidental sense.”

What? Miss Midnight Louise agreeing with me?

“Good. We clear on our assignments?”

Docile head nods all around. By gummy bears, executive authority agrees with me!

I watch two sets of fluffy tails, unnervingly upright, salute as Louise and Satin turn and head downstairs, looking more like lit-termates than mother and daughter.

“That cathouse girl has some moxie,” Ma Barker growls to me under her breath, which is rank. Regular hard kibble should help that. “You do not worry about my pad prints being all over the death scene?”

“The authorities know we are notorious carnivores. They may rag on my Miss Temple and Mr. Matt and the Fontanas for not securing the crime scene better, but who can stop an alley cat from checking out dead meat?”

“Your lady friend, Satin, may know better what’s what in a bordello bedroom.”

“Yes, but I want a virgin nose on this scent.”

Ma Barker emits a curt cough. Now I know where she gets her oddly canine name. “You are dreaming, boy, but I will give it my best once-over.”