Cat In An Aqua Storm

20

The Sweet Smell of Success

My dear mama, now departed, although perhaps not dead, always used to say that I took after my father. In truth, I believe that she herself wished to take after my father, but he was nowhere to be found.

Suffice it to say that somewhere there is a handsome, black-coated dude who knows how to live the good life of fish, females and serenade. I often picture the old guy basking upon some yacht, preferably a salmon or a tuna trawler, the sun glinting off his distinguished graying muzzle, seeing the world and wondering once in a while about how his spitting image is faring in landlocked Las Vegas.

He would have a dog to know that his long-ago offspring is slinking about the shadows of the Goliath Hotel trying to catch a whiff of a dead woman disguised as a pussycat.

There is method to my madness, if not much redeeming social value. For the fact is the late, lamented lady by now is a stiff and about to be given the bum’s rush in a giant-size plastic baggie.

My olfactory mission is not based on mere morbidity, although my kind has been known to show a certain attachment to the aromas of dead fish, birds and mice.

No, it is not the scent of death that draws me, but a memory that teases at the edge of my awareness. It began when I examined the first victim of what has become a habit rather than an isolated tragedy.

I smelled something then that was so elusive, yet familiar, that I must satisfy my curiosity. Does this second dead little doll bear the same scent? It is not that I have never inhaled the fragrance of a human before, dead or alive. I will never forget the musty odor of the deceased ABA dude, which I took for bookish mildew.

Likewise, the scent of these done-for little dolls suits their circumstances: it is light, sweet and feminine, and I have encountered it before. Perfume it is not. This is more subtle. How maddening to possess a first-class sniffer and not be able to determine the exact bouquet that tickles my nostrils, if not my memory!

This is why, despite a half-dozen flunkies of officialdom bustling around the body, I lurk literally under their busy, oblivious feet, awaiting my opportunity. Some accuse my kind of sneakiness, but it is survival instincts that direct me to be discreet The moment will arrive when a morgue attendant will turn aside, or a comment will distract their joint attention. Then I will dash in for the kill—or the diagnosis in this case.

Yet they are many, and no one leaves the body for a moment.

The fatal bag is produced, and I quiver in my boots. My sniffer is a world-class apparatus, but polyvinylchloride is one substance it cannot penetrate with any degree of accuracy.

At that moment, I hear the tread of large flat feet. A voice directs the assembled crew's attention to the body's former position, and the unearthly glow upon the noxious carpet that outlines the area.

For a few precious moments, little Miss Kitty is as unattended as a wallflower at the high school prom.

I seize the opportunity and run with it—run, in fact, toward her immobile body. My whiskers twitch with recognition. An insinuating scent wends its way to my flared nostrils. Miss Kitty has been branded with the same odor as her predecessor in death.

I pussyfoot out of sight, and hunker down under a banquet table swathed in white, floor-length linen. Beyond me, a crew of men bags the lady, and lifts her onto a cold metal gurney. She feels nothing, but my whiskers twitch in indignation.

I will not rest until I have traced this fatal scent to its origin. The killer.

Somewhere, on some forgotten swell of sea and salmon, the old dude would lift his venerable snout to the wind, and be proud of me.