Cat In A White Tie And Tails

Chapter 5

Second City Kitty

Well, I made it here, but I am not sure I would want to make it anywhere other than Vegas after that clumsy snatch attempt in the Chicago airport.

What can you expect of a city where the airport is named after a wildlife creature whose vaunted speed cannot obscure that it is prey?

“O’Hare.” O lunch.

Of course I do not need to play the predator game anymore since I have reformed and converted to canned food and tracking human subjects, namely moved up to crooks.

Meanwhile, I am reclining on a cushy silk shantung fabric on a down-feathered sofa in the living room of a fancy hotel suite.

My Miss Temple and Mr. Matt are discussing our busy social schedule in between waxing anxious over my close call as a kidnap victim.

“That security guard was right,” Mr. Matt is saying. “This jet-set treatment is making me … and now us … into targets. If this is a taste of what’s coming if I accept a talk show role, I will call it all off right now.”

He stands poised at one of the four telephones in the suite, which includes one I most appreciate: the one in the large marble-paved bathroom, because of the litter box installed there. I also like to be accessible at all times.

I am very much aware that the network vice presidents are eager to show Mr. Matt that they can offer him plenty of deal sweeteners and they realize that my druthers are an important element in his personal life, along with my Miss Temple. One never knows when À La Cat may call. Reviving my commercial career as a spokescat would extend Mr. Matt’s “platform.”

“No, Matt.” Miss Temple is wisely talking him out of dumping the career opportunity, but his regard for my safety speaks well of him. “Do not do anything rash. It is my fault for buying Louie a high-end, high-profile carrier.”

What? I should be carted into the heart of the world-famous Chicago Loop in a burlap bag? Besides, I had the situation well in hand. Actually, well in fang. I had already worked a front canine (the tooth variety) into the handy hole at the top of the zipper pull-tag. I have unzipped myself from feeble human attempts to confine my breed in cheesy carriers so often in my career that I am the Houdini of my kind. That napper would have soon found himself holding the empty bag … and me affixed to his face with all sixteen shivs operating in plastic surgeon mode.

And, baby, as gravity pulled my solid twenty pounds down, I would make quite a lasting impression on the crook’s epidermis.

“Maybe you should have left Louie at home,” Mr. Matt suggests. “Vegas is pretty sleepy once off the Strip, but Chicago is a massive urban jungle where unaccompanied domestic pets have to scavenge.”

“Of course I am not letting Louie loose on the town,” she answers. “It would not be ready to cope with him. And now that we have had this close call at the airport, I am keeping tabs on him twenty-four seven.”

This does not sound promising, but we are thirty-seven stories up and I have no immediate plans to leave my Miss Temple’s side. From what I have overheard, Mr. Matt’s circle of Polish relatives are old-fashioned and extremely religious.

Normally I understand the shock and awe that keeps one of any religion treading lightly when it comes to a godhead. If you have seen a statue of Bast, worshipped the world over for around five thousand years by those of the feline persuasion, you have seen a stern and demanding deity frozen in time and eternity, possessor of untold lives.

We nine-lifers of today are pipsqueaks.

However, I cannot understand supposedly modern folks who would frown on my Miss Temple as a suitable partner for any dude. Mr. Matt withdrew from the priesthood with all the right papers signed and sealed, from what I have heard. It might be iffier because he was the offspring of an unsanctioned match. His mama was one of these unwed individuals you read about, especially in Hollywood.

So is mine and no one would dare hold that fact up to my old lady, Ma Barker, leader of the pack. Unwed mothers, and fathers, go back into the nth generation all the way to Bast, a female deity. I can assure you that the ring in her one ear is not a wedding band.

I must admit that I will approach Mr. Matt’s Chicago clan with my ears down and shivs sharpened. Any attempt to make my Miss Temple feel bad will be swiftly punished.

So, no. I am not leaving her side, as much as she thinks that she is not leaving mine. We have shared a bed for a long time and I dare anyone who would call ours an unsanctioned relationship to stand up on their hind feet and fight.

So there.