Purrfect Cut

Chapter 12

When I say that cats, as a rule, don’t like it when things get too hot or too cold, I like to include myself in that description. The sun had gradually risen, and had kept on rising, and had now reached the point where it had hoisted itself over the roof of the monstrosity that Leonidas Flake had built. And showcasing its customary playfulness, it now tickled my nose, and soon I was hotting up to such an extent that, even though the grass was still cool, I was getting increasingly uncomfortable. Dooley must have reached the same conclusion, for he opened his eyes at the same time I did, and said plaintively, “This darned sun keeps following us wherever we go, Max. It’s persecution.”

I could have told him that the sun in actual fact did no such thing. That the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around, but I was too lazy from my nice nap to bother. So all I said was, “Let’s find another spot.”

But as soon as we got up we both experienced a little hunger, so instead of relocating we decided instead to follow in our ancestors’ paw steps and go in search of a bite to eat instead. Even though Samson the chicken might have enjoyed the food he’d been given, I have to admit it left much to be desired.

So we set paw for the house, the only place we hadn’t examined, since we were still on strike.

“We can sneak into the house and not break our strike, can’t we, Max?” asked Dooley as we approached that ominous block of black concrete.

“Of course,” I said. “The only thing we can’t do is perform acts of detection. So no talking to any suspects or witnesses or whatever.”

“I can do that,” said Dooley cheerfully.

As we moved away from the petting zoo, a deep voice rang out behind us. “Hey, cats!” the voice spoke.

We both turned, and discovered the voice belonged to the donkey.

“Yes, donkey?” I said politely, for Odelia has always taught us to be polite.

“Is it true that you’re some kind of detectives?”

“No, we’re not,” I said. “Well, technically we are,” I admitted when Dooley gave me a curious look, “but right now we’re on strike so we’re not allowed by our union to perform any detective-related activities.”

The donkey was silent while he absorbed this important information, then said, “Is it true that the boss is dead?”

“Yes,” I said, not seeing how confirming the man’s death broke the union decree. “Yes, he is. At least that’s what a usually reliable source told us.”

“How did he die?”

“Stabbed in the chest. By his live-in lover, a man called…”

“Gabriel Crier,” said the donkey somberly. “I know Gabe. We all do.”

More animals had gathered around. I saw a horse, a cow, a goat, two rabbits, two sheep… Quite the collection.

“I liked Leonidas,” said one of the rabbits. “He always gave me fresh grass and hay. Who’s going to give me fresh grass and hay now?”

“I’m sure someone else will come along to take care of you all,” I said. “By all accounts Mr. Flake was a very wealthy man and I’m sure he’ll have made provisions for you in his last will and testament.”

“I’ll bet he didn’t,” bleated the goat, who seemed like a somber sort of fellow. “I’ll bet he forgot all about us.”

“I’m sure he didn’t,” countered the donkey. “I actually asked Gabe about it last week.”

“And what did he say?”

“Well, always considering the fact that Gabe doesn’t actually speak donkey, the impression I got was that he cares for us a great deal and would never leave us to fend for ourselves.”

“What does that even mean?!” cried the cow.

“It means that he will have made sure we’d be taken care of.”

“But he’s in jail, isn’t he? For murder!” said the sheep. “So if he’s gone, and the old man’s gone, who’s going to need me? Who’s going to feed me?”

Somehow this reminded me of a song, though I couldn’t quite place my finger on it.

All the animals now started talking across one another, and things were getting a little heated. So Dooley and I decided to withdraw. We were still on strike, so there was very little we could do for these poor creatures. And as we walked in the direction of the house, Dooley said, “So sad, right, Max?”

“Yes, very sad,” I said.

“Poor animals. They’ll probably end up being sold to the highest bidder.”

“Or end up like Bubbles.”

“Bubbles?” he asked.

“Michael Jackson’s chimpanzee. He was a global celebrity back in the eighties and nineties, until he got too big and unruly, and he was transferred to a sanctuary for chimps and orangutans.”

“Is that’s what’s going to happen to us, Max?”

“I’m sure provisions will have been made…” I began, then realized what I was saying. We shared a glance. “Whatever happens,” I said, “we can always turn to the streets, and go and live with Clarice.”

“Clarice scares me, Max.”

“I know. She scares me, too. But she won’t let us die of hunger or thirst. She’ll take care of us if need be.”

“By feeding us rats! Like she did with Brutus, remember?”

“She meant well,” I said.

Once when Brutus was in the dumps, he’d adopted the street life, and Clarice had come through for him, by leaving him the best and juiciest rat she could find behind the dumpsters she considered her personal feeding bowl.

I shivered, and thought of the delicious kibble Odelia always provided us with, and the wet food from those aluminum pouches she liked to buy.

“Too bad humans are so untrustworthy,” said Dooley.

“I hear you, buddy.”

We’d arrived at the deck that had been constructed at the back of the house, and looked for a way in. We finally found one when we discovered someone had left a window open. A burly guard stood sentry—probably part of a collective of burly guards protecting the place against burglars or sensation seekers. He didn’t take any notice of us so we entered the house.

The place was huge, albeit a little sparsely furnished. The floors were all concrete, as were the walls and the ceilings.

“Very modern,” said Dooley appreciatively.

“I guess,” I said as I studied a very large portrait of Leonidas Flake that adorned one wall. It was a black-and-white painting of the famous designer only dressed in a leopard-print G-string and his trademark large sunglasses.

“Huh,” was Dooley’s only comment as he took in the arresting image.

Like the painting, the rest of what I assumed to be the living room was also dominated by the same color scheme: black and white. Very… soothing.

“We need to find the kitchen,” I said. “Or Pussy.”

So we both stuck our noses in the air and sniffed for a hint of either food or Pussy or both. Soon I’d picked up the scent of the Instafamous cat, and we trotted in the direction my powerful sense of smell told me to go. We passed through another sparsely furnished room, this one looking like a study or a library, with plenty of books (all black and white spines) and another room that only held two pianos: one black and one white. Frankly my eyes were starting to hurt.

We finally entered a room at the end of a long corridor that was filled with the kind of paraphernalia only cats would enjoy: plush animals, scratching posts, climbing trees, balls and tunnels… An overpowering smell of catnip filled the air but, like the other rooms, everything was in black and white.

“Where’s the color, Max?!” asked Dooley, on whom the lack of hue was starting to weigh, too. “Is it my eyes? Is everything black and white, or is it just me?”

“It’s not just you. I don’t see any color, either.”

“We’re color-blind!”

I held up my paw in front of his face. “What color is this?”

“Um… orange?”

“Blorange,” I corrected him, and was gratified to see a smile light up his face.

“I can still see color! I’m not color-blind.”

“No, you’re not. It’s this house. Someone has removed all the colors.”

Just then, Pussy came shuffling into the room, looking distinctly depressed. She halted in her tracks when she saw us. “Hey, you guys,” she said, perking up. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, we just thought you’d appreciate some company,” I said.

“Food,” said Dooley, who’s not the diplomat I am. “We’re hungry.”

Pussy nodded mournfully, as if the topic of food disgusted her, but she could still understand where we were coming from. “Follow me,” she said.

“Has this house always been like this?” I asked, gesturing to the endless piles of black-and-white plush animals.

“Like what?” she asked.

“Devoid of color?”

She nodded sadly. “Leo only liked black and white and shades of gray. He hated color.”

“Must be a terrible way to live.”

“It is—or was. Once Gabe gave me an orange Garfield and Leo bust a nut when he saw it. He made Gabe send it back to the store and have it replaced with a gray Garfield. It’s not the same thing.”

“No, it’s not,” I agreed.

“I can’t imagine a gray Garfield,” said Dooley. “Garfield should be orange.”

“Yeah, he should,” said Pussy. She was dragging her heels as if the weight of the world rested on her slender shoulders. Finally we passed the stairwell: concrete stairs set in a concrete wall, and then finally into the kitchen—all concrete floors and walls and plenty of gleaming steel. “In here,” she said.

We now found ourselves in a side kitchen, completely devoted to Pussy and her needs. There were large plastic bins hooked to the far wall, with some kind of receptacles below.

“Just follow my lead,” she said, and pushed her snout against what looked like a lever. A few pieces of kibble came dropping down into the receptacle and she gave us a sad look as if saying: Well, there you go. “All the different types of kibble are here,” she said with as much zip and zest as a funeral home director. “You’ve got your chicken, your turkey, your rabbit… And if you want brands, you’ll find them all there—every label under the sun.”

What fascinated me, though, was that all the kibble consisted of different shades of gray.

“Don’t tell me Leo got the kibble painted gray,” I said, amazed.

“Yeah, he got the stuff specially made by the manufacturers. They cooked up batches of the stuff just for him—or me, I guess.”

“Jeez,” I said, but still eagerly thumped my snout against one of the levers of what looked like prime gourmet kibble, and out tumbled several nuggets. I eagerly gobbled them up, then spewed them out again. “Yuck!” I said. “What is this flavor?”

“Ash, I guess,” said Pussy. “Leo didn’t believe in flavor. Or smell. He said we needed to get rid of our unnatural attachment to taste. He liked a clean palate, so his imagination could run rampant. He didn’t like color, or taste, or beautiful music or anything that could interfere with his ability to create.”

“Oh, my Lord,” I said, eyeing the poor cat with unadulterated pity. “What a sad, sad life you must have lived.”

“Hey, at least I’m one of the richest cats in the world,” she said without enthusiasm.

“Well, your days of living life without taste or color or sound or smell will be over now, right?” I said.

“Wanna bet?” she said. “With my luck I’ll probably end up living with someone even worse than Leo.”

We ate in silence, and even though the stuff was utterly tasteless and odorless, I still ate my fill. The stomach wants what it wants, right?

And here I thought I knew how the other half lived, I thought as I watched Pussy drink from what looked like a silver salver filled to the brim with crystal-clear water—probably sterilized, if the rest was any indication.

“You should stick around,” said Pussy finally. “There’s going to be a big meeting tonight. All the important people are going to be there.”

“What important people?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. Lawyers and board members and shareholders and executives and such. I’ll bet they’ll decide my fate at the meeting, so I probably shouldn’t miss it for the world, but…” She hesitated and gave me a forlorn look. “Could you do me a great, big, gigantic favor?”

“Anything,” I said.

“Could you attend the meeting for me? And then tell me what they decided?”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s too much for me,” she said. “I’m sure these are pretty horrible people. As lifeless and colorless and soulless as the rest of this place. And I simply can’t bear to listen to them while they discuss my future. I need you to tell me about the parts that are important for me to know. Only the facts.”

“Sure, no problem,” I said. “But aren’t they going to notice us and kick us out?”

“No, they won’t,” she said with a wan smile. “You’ll see.”

And with these mysterious words she left us.

“How very sad,” said Dooley.

“Yeah,” I said. “And to think that I actually used to envy her. When we watched her Instagram pictures I always thought she had it made.”

“Me too,” said Dooley. “The richest, most spoiled cat in the world. Poor, poor Pussy.”

“Poor Pussy,” I agreed, and then gobbled up some more kibble. It was utterly tasteless and odorless, but it still hit the spot, especially since I hadn’t eaten anything since that morning.

“So we’ll stick around and listen in on this meeting?” Dooley asked.

“I think we owe it to Pussy, don’t you?”

“Isn’t this against union rules?”

“I don’t think so. It’s got nothing to do with the case, right? We’re only doing this as a personal favor to Pussy.”

So we ambled out of the kitchen, and then went for a ramble around the house. Pussy, who’d returned from a short interlude in the bathroom to act as our tour guide, showed us all the best spots where she liked to lay her weary head, and invited us to enjoy them. It was the nicest thing any cat had ever done for us. Usually cats hate it when other cats invade their space, or even dare to come near their favorite spots, but Pussy had no qualms. What struck me, after we passed through several of the bedrooms and a couple of the bathrooms, was that life at Chateau Leonidas must have been pretty lonely for her, and quite dull. Maybe Leo and Gabe had loved her, and spoiled her rotten, but she still seemed unhappy. And suddenly I felt a little homesick, and started to long to be home again, snuggling up to Odelia on the couch while watching some silly show. Dooley must have felt the same way, for he gave me a sad glance that offered a glimpse into his soul. That glimpse was like a mirror: once Odelia was married, our lives would never be the same again.

But then I steeled myself. I was not going to allow myself to become prey to my emotions. It was the house, I suddenly realized, and Pussy’s mood, infecting me with their sadness and melancholy.

So I decided to perk up, and enjoy these rare Instagramable moments.