Cat In A Topaz Tango

Carole Nelson Douglas

Plays the Dance Card

How splendid to see you getting out of your couch potato rut, Louie, to cut a few crooks on the dance floor.

The reality TV dance show craze might look like it inspired Louie’s latest adventure, and, in fact, I’m a fan of two of them, although dancing doesn’t come naturally to me. My creative right brain isn’t geared to the left-brain elements of complicated steps and music.

I’d taken a little modern dance in college but missed getting early childhood lessons, and was never very good at it. So I started taking tap dance lessons as an adult because I think it’s always good to grapple with something that doesn’t come naturally.

It’s shocking to realize I’ve been dancing, and finally getting better, for more than twenty years now. I started by studying tap dancing, moved to clogging when I lost the instructor, and finally added the most difficult dance form of all, flamenco, which involves complex and simultaneous foot, arm, and skirt movements, and mastering the castanets too.

Here are some dance sites on the Web, for those who have access. If some sites are no longer available, you can do your own “tango” search.

For a funky montage of images illustrating the lyrics of Barry Manilow’s huge hit, “Copacabana,” see http://noolmusic.com/videos/copacabana_-_barry_manilow.php.

Watch the Muppets assist Liza Minnelli in a charming take on the classic number at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eek-XeZvHno.

To play voyeur with Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez in a sizzling tango clip from Shall We Dance, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bibtqDxXv1o.

A playful tango featuring a guy in gangster suit and fedora plays at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E4mBoGX6Dw&feature/.

The Topaz Tango chapter couldn’t have been written without the cooperation of two of my adopted cats, Midnight Louie, Jr., and the young and beautiful calico feral, Audrey.

I “met” what would become my first black cat at Lubbock, Texas, Animal Services during the first Midnight Louie Adopt-a-Cat book-signing tour sponsored by my publisher in 1996. My husband, Sam, and I drove more than six hundred miles to fetch the petite, year-old black cat that had “picked” me during a flying tour of Texas.

We took “Midnight Louise’s” shaved stomach as a sign of spaying. Once home, we were soon shown the truth. “Louise” was a neutered male. There is only one Midnight Louie, so he became “Junior.” At eight, Midnight Louie, Jr., began going blind from retinal degeneration. I’d never had a cat lose a faculty before and was in despair, but he adapted beautifully and goes everywhere, jumping up wherever he desires.

He was thirteen when we brought a trapped feral calico female we’d been feeding for months into the house. Audrey was named after the carnivorous plant that pleads “Feed me,” in that cult black-and-white Roger Corman black-comedy film, The Little Shop of Horrors, which we loved even before it became a color remake and an off-Broadway and then Broadway musical.

Audrey would come six times a day to eat a full can of wet cat food when she had a litter to nurse. Although we had Audrey fixed at once, we didn’t realize her raging hormones would take time to dissipate. She fixated on the only male cat in the house: neutered, blind Midnight Louie, Jr. For the first time we witnessed the feline courting dance. She entices him. Poor Audrey used all her considerable wiles, but Louie, although a handsome glossy jet-black lad, is not interested in that way. Alas, it’s a doomed dance of love, but now I know that cats do dance and so should we all.

The writer’s brain needs to “dance” too, trying left-brain recreational pursuits that involve hand-eye coordination. That can be dancing, playing the piano, or doing crossword puzzles. Some writers play computer solitaire when needing a recess. Even with a mouse, you are moving cards and making logical decisions.

And then there’s the most pleasurable hand-eye coordination of all: petting a beautiful cat (and they all are) and watching it curl up and purr with satisfaction.