Cat In A Topaz Tango

Hotfooting It

If there is anyone in this entire place who is fully qualified to smell a rat, it is I.

I mean this quite literally.

A lot of scents assail my highly developed sniffer during these recent, critical moments since I pushed my way past a phalanx of human legs to the side of the little doll who was most cruelly afflicted.

First, human foot odor. Arghh!

This alone is enough to knock a sensitive dude—a short, sensitive dude—off his four pins. Why will they insist on confining and cooking the unhappy aroma of their pathetically unclawed feet inside these thick leather and canvas boxes?

Air, my fellow Americans! Please! We four-footed citizens only ask that you aerate your tootsies as fully and often as we do ours. You will notice that we are not subject to such ills as bunions, corns, hammertoes, and athlete’s foot, although we are better natural-born athletes than the whole kit and caboodle of you put together.

Having fought my way through this chemical hazard of foot odor, I am able to insinuate myself next to the maternal unit, which is swamped in a chemical cosmetic haze of other, supposedly pleasant odors.

A word to the wise: cover-ups never work.

In the confusion, and under the cover of this one large, hysterical lady who goes by the appellation “Mama,” I am able to thrust myself into the heart of the problem: the tiny dancer’s still twitching feet.

Whew! I will give credit to the heat of the dance. This little doll’s feet are sniffing up a storm. It is not the unnatural natural odor I am accustomed to.

It is rank, but artificial. In fact, it makes me draw back and box my snout to stifle a sneeze. Itching powder? I have heard of such an item being used for practical jokes, but this is no joke.

The first solo dance in the junior division has turned into a debacle. Although Miss Sou-Sou is something of a snot deserving of a comeuppance, I cannot endorse dirty tricks among the young teen set.

As the fascinating feet in my purview are lifted aloft by the awesome CC, I resolve to do what my human associates cannot do in their present guises. I will accompany the victim until I learn what is going on, and who and what might be behind it.

Ouch! Of course some careless foot has kicked me in the puss.

Dodging these ticky-tacky boxes of milling footwear, I manage to maintain a low profile by stifling any indignant meows.

At last I insinuate myself into the junior girls’ dressing room, although I am by no means either a junior or a girl, and join the privileged circle surrounding the now crying child, who alone of her group is still in the set area. For a thirteen-year-old human kit in pain is just that, no matter how many slinky costumes she wears.

In a moment or two, it is as if I am back in my checkered past, fence-sitting at midnight and yowling some selected riffs guaranteed to attract any nubile females in the vicinity. Only I do not attract nubile females of any species, just the usual hurled footwear reeking of abysmal pedal swamps . . .

These are a pair of petite mary jane-style shoes ripped off the feet of the suffering little doll. I dodge the Cuban heels, which could make a nasty dent in my cranium, and put my nose to work. You may notice I understand the fine points of female footwear, thanks to my roomie’s formidable shoe collection.

The whines of the victim and coos of the comforters vanish from my consciousness as my nose for trouble inhales a big gulp of the hot and bothered linings of the shoes in question.

Yeow!!! I leap back, forced to swallow my natural vocalizations. My pea-green peepers beloved of females of all species tear over and cry crocodile tears onto my jet-black bib. My sensitive, exposed nose skin burns like the very devil was exhaling the breath of Hell itself on it.

I know what has happened, if not why yet.

What a despicable plan, a dirty trick of the first water, and I do mean watering eyes! I backpedal out of the room as fast as I can, my mitts eager to box the obnoxious, polluting fumes from brutalized nostrils.

No wonder the poor girl was screeching.

Who would commit such a nefarious act?

It is clever and underhanded and mean, and thus totally and utterly human in its conception and execution from first to last. I cannot wait for my humans to find out what has gone wrong.