Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit

This conclusion comes home to me when I escort the ingratiating Chatter on an outing to the local zoo and garden, both happily uninhabited yet by humans, save for the staff.

Chatter, it seems, would like to hold my hand. Apparently, the chimp is used to being treated like a child and likes to cling to his escort of the moment. It cannot have escaped anyone's observation by now that I do not have a hand.

Oh, I have useful forelimbs, aka arms, and clever pads and shivs. But hands they are not, and they must double as walking extremities. When I am afoot, they belong to no one but me.

So Chatter, being an inventive, clever chimp, settles for tightening his long fingers around my tail.

Oh, the indignity! Fortunately, this is a clandestine outing.

We have made our surreptitious way from the dressing room area, keeping to shadowed halls, handy walls, and hiding behind the lush landscaping once we enter the Kingdome itself.

Our situation is made even worse by the fact that I did not care to take Chatter out undiapered, so he is wearing his jeweled jumpsuit, which he was only too happy to don at my request. I do not know how humans with offspring keep their sanity during these terrible Wonder Years. Perhaps they are called that because parents are always wondering why they became parents in the first place.

But Chatter is happy to have a stroll, and keeps the chit-chat down, also at my request.

I breathe a big doggy sigh of relief when we reach the Animal Elvis exhibit unremarked upon. This has been one of my toughest undercover assignments yet.

“Now, Louie, now? Chatter sing. Chatter swing. Now?"

“Not yet," I tell him, trying to release my rear member from his tight grasp. "First we need to talk to Trojan on redirect."

“Huh, Louie, huh? How we talk Trojan? I no talk Trojan. What redirect?"

“Lawyer talk. I do not have an Esquire after my name for nothing."

“S-cried? Who S?"

“Never mind.”

I manage to ease Chatter around Rising Sun and Domino. He is all hot to crawl up on their backs and hang onto their "hair.”

I have never seen a critter so interested in hanging onto the appendages of other creatures. What he made of Trojan, who has no appendages, I cannot imagine.

When we get to the snake pit, I let Chatter open the lunch slot and bounce in first.

If Trojan is in the mood for food, I am sure monkeymeat is much more nourishing than a few scrawny feline limbs.

But the big snake is pretty much where I left him yesterday, doing the usual drowsing and digesting routine. In fact, he may still be hypnotized by my soothing feline wiles.

Chatter jumps on his back and begins playing ride 'em, Cowboy. It would take only two lazy coils of that svelte muscular body to turn Chatter from a three-dimensional being to a two-dimensional one, and I am tempted to let nature take its course and preserve my tail.

But my Miss Temple has mysteries to solve, so I sacrifice poetic justice and the law of the jungle to serve the greater good.

“Off the furniture!" I tell Chatter.

He yips like a dog and bounds to the cage floor.

Trojan's narrow jet-black eyes blink. I have never seen eyes so black. They are like pools of tar, and I know that if I were not hypnotizing Trojan, Trojan would be mesmerizing me into a menu item.

I begin purring, causing an irritated ripple to pulse down Trojan's long, long scaled and mottled back.

But this is the only way I can communicate with the big fella. That reptilian tongue that doubles as a sniffer does not have a huge range of vocabulary.

“You remember Chatter?" I ask first.

The huge body shifts as if it rests on a nasty tack or something.

“I thought so. Did the monkey release you from the cage?"

“Yesssss." Trojan turns his massive, spade-shaped head the chimp's way.

“Why did you take the opportunity to leave the safety of your, er, artificially accurate environment?"

“To ssssee Vegassss.”

Is everybody a pushover for a good promotional campaign, or what? "How about getting into the pool?" "Pusssshed.”

Now this is interesting. "Who pushed Trojan?" "Men. Men alwayssss pussssh Trojan around."

“Well, there's a lot of you to push. I imagine they think they mean well.”

'Thesssse men not mean well."

“How do you know?"

“They put Trojan in water with carrion. I like fressssh prey."

“So you're saying that the dude was dead before you took a dip in the pool with him?"

“Dude?"

“Man."

“Man dead. Trojan try to play, but man dead." "How long?"

“In jungle river, piranhassss would eat all.”

I love the tropics: giant reptile stranglers, little bitty flesh-eating fish. Before you can take a bite out of them, there will be nothing left but your false teeth chattering like a demented chimpanzee before sinking to the bottom of the Amazon River. Remind me to stay north of the Grand Canyon.

Speaking of the devil you know, Chatter is getting restless and wrestling with the twisted length of jungle vine.