Cat In An Alphabet Soup (Catnap)

16

The Ultimate Sacrifice

It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done. It is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

I quote, of course, from the immortal Who the Dickins. To which I say, baloney! There is one thing for certain that “it” indeed is... the biggest gamble of my career.

No, let me be utterly honest. It is the biggest gamble of my life. Perhaps I should say lives, though I cannot be sure how many of these I still possess, having never been one to keep count.

I can count days and hours, however. Where I am now, the sun does not shine, but the people provide a convenient reckoning of the passing hours by coming and going in eight-hour shifts around the clock, just as they do in the hotels and casinos and jails.

This is no hotel or casino, but that does not mean a guy cannot gamble his life away here in a very few hours.

It is dark now, which would be comforting were it not for the insistent whines of those loudmouth losers in the adjoining cell block. What a bunch of lily-livered squealers. I have never had much time for dogs.

Yes, you have apprehended correctly. Midnight Louie is in stir. Not only that, my cage is located on Death Row. Oh, it is not so labeled, but I am not born yesterday.

I have much time now to meditate on my past life, or lives, and my many sins of commission and omission. I am outside the Sirocco Inn when Gino Scarletti buys it—not the inn, the farm, otherwise known as six feet of dirt, downward. But the cops never hear a peep from me;

I am still light on my tootsies even if I acquired some pinchworthy inches lately, and I rabbit that one.

Did I ever mention how I single-handedly saved the Crystal Phoenix from utter destruction at the hands of a mob of crazed killers? No? Good.

I am also the silent type—it does not pay to know too much in this town, as I say before and will again. Mostly I mull how my last life now hangs by the fragile thread of a certain little doll's ardent regard. I am not the first dude whose well-being depended on some dame, and, frankly, the record is not good.

Some may wonder how a savvy sort like myself has landed in such a pickle. It is—like the foregoing Dickins's Tail of Two Kitties—a long, sad story, and no consolation to know that Baker and Taylor lounge not five ceils away, together still, but not for long.

How it all comes down is like this.

After I find that know-it-all Ingram and learn that the able Sassasfras believes a pair of Scottish type to be languishing in the city pound, I decide to check it out for myself. Sassafras is one sharp old doll, having been put in the pound—and been bailed out by her delinquent owners—more times than she has had kittens or conniption fits, which is to say a lot. If she says they are having scotch with their soda water at the pound these days, those fancy cats are there.

The first snag is when Miss Temple Barr, whose education on a gentleman-about-town’s needs is still in the formative' stages, locks me in her apartment for the night.

Now this is a swell place with many amenities, but a dude has gotta do what a dude has gotta do. As soon as she exits for what is obviously a hot date, probably with the snake-eyed Svengali on the bedroom closet poster, I hone my neglected housebreaking skills. Ingram tells me that many people nowadays are interested in what they call "polite procedure," so I will describe the method of my egress, since I am nothing if not polite.

First I study the terrain for any discreet exit available. The air-conditioning vents, besides being mostly in the ceiling, are also covered with screwed-on grilles. I am not particularly adept with screws.

Next I practice jumping up to the thermostat and moving the dial with my right mitt. I have not been required to exert myself to this extent of late and am soon huffing and puffing. Once I manage to move the mechanism, I am ready to tackle the Big Outdoors. Miss Temple Barr's apartment features French doors to the patio that open with a lever rather than a knob.

It will take some superfeline leap to tilt the balance on one of these lever devices from the floor, but, to my recent good fortune, Miss Temple Barr's dietary regimen has done nothing to reduce my fighting weight—normally about eighteen pounds.

Since the French latches are lower than the thermostat, I am now in fine shape to bound up and put my mitt to the metal on the way down. After five of these love taps, the latch clicks. Then it is but a matter of hooking my nails under the door and pulling until it cracks open. After which, I nose through, inspect the patio for any pausing tidbits, leap up to the edge—accidentally overturning a pot containing a rank-smelling plant—then down to the top of the umbrella table on the patio below, where I rip some canvas to break my fall, then bound to the chair and so on down to the street. Those patios and French doors could not keep out a tumbleweed.

My journey to the target structure is unremarkable.

Suffice it to say that I know my way around every over-baked square foot of this tortilla-flat town. Even at night the asphalt warms my toes.

I take a sudden chill, however, when I glimpse the animal pound silhouetted against the moon-silvered clouds. Too many of my kind have been snuffed there, for no greater reason than they were considered homeless.

I would not wish such a fate even upon a dog. There are also rumors that certain of my kind are singled out for shipment to laboratories, where scientists see no harm in experimenting on any species on earth so long as it is not their own.

Yet there is no help for it. I creep closer, keeping to the shadows, my ears flat so the delicate pink lining does not pick up a stray streetlight, and my mouth shut so my teeth do not betray my approach. (I have been told that I sport quite a dazzling set of incisors.)

At a rear window I hear the heart-rending cries of my captive kind, plus a lot of yammering from the idiotic dogs, who will raise about the same ruckus for a simple rabies shot as they would for the end of the world.

I hoist myself up, but all I can see is a slice of the main cell block. The mewling of the infants is the hardest to take. I must admit that I have not spent much time around the young of my kind, but they produce a united wail that comes close to the outcry of a human newborn of my (fortunately) temporary acquaintance.

In this unsung cacophony I detect a foreign element and pick out the unmistakable brogue of the Highland twosome. I am brought abruptly back to earth, mainly because the grip of my claws has given out.

What to do? It dawns on me rather swiftly that the missing Baker and Taylor have likely been deposited in this Auschwitz-on-the-Mojave since sometime Friday. They have less than twenty-four hours of survival left, unless someone does something about it.

I pace the ground outside their prison. I sit and muse upon the moon when it coasts free of passing clouds. I weigh options. I clean my ruff and box my ears, hoping for some stroke of genius to strike.

Nothing occurs. Only one course remains. This will have to be an inside job. I do not kid myself; even a dude of my weight, finesse and manual dexterity has never broken into—or out of—an animal pound cage.

I will have to go undercover, allow myself to be captured and do what I can as an inside man. If all else fails, I have one card up my sleeve. Maybe, just maybe, the little doll I left lonely at the Circle Ritz will tumble to my possible whereabouts and ride to my rescue. Hell, she can even walk. If she is fast enough, we might even spring Baker and Taylor.

If she is not, give my regards to Broadway.