Cat In A Leopard Spot

“That’s right, Louie, groom that foot, but not too much. You have to look abused for the camera.”

He eyed her dubiously, whether in distaste at the redundancy of urging him to groom himself, or the impossibility of twenty well-fed pounds of glossy black fur looking abused.

“Helpless would be a huge help too,” she added hopefully.

His yawn showed a maw of white fangs that would have done a rattlesnake about to be milked of its venom proud.

Temple shivered a little. Louie was big, but she’d hate to meet one of the real big cats face-to-fang. Unless they were the tamed variety provided to weekend warrior-hunters eager to bag a proud head for their office or home theater wall.

This sort of cowardly lion hunter was so common that Van Burkleo had called his pride of former pets and zoo residents MGM lions.

Mascots, in other words, ready to be pierced with bullets or arrows, hounded wounded against a wall and nibbled until dead with nonlethal hindquarter shots, all to preserve the handsome head for some creep’s wall.

Temple was not surprised to find her fingernails dimpling her palms in pent-up fury.

Good. Fury was useful. All she had to do was think of Savannah Ashleigh as one of these canned-hunt impresarios, kidnapping a favorite pet, confining it to a cage, doing what she would with it.

From Louie’s carrier came a low growl that climbed and descended a scale or two in a minor key before it was done. Was he trying to tell her something?

The Judge Geraldine Jones show was videotaped at a local sound studio. Temple and Louie saw not so much as an extension cord for the first two hours they spent there.

The green room, lovely term that smacked of theatrical tradition, although it was seldom green anymore, was a cavernous studio filled with folding chairs and people filling out forms on clipboards balanced on their knees.

Temple sat down, put Louie’s carrier beside her on the cold concrete, and began doing likewise.

The forms, which released the producers from responsibility for every eventuality from act of God to hangnail, were duly signed and delivered to the perky teenage assistants who made the rounds of the plaintiffs and defendants, handing out paper cups of bad coffee and unbottled water when not collecting the signed sheets.

“Oh, who have we got in here?” one ponytailed assistant asked, crouching beside Louie’s carrier and peering inside with little luck. “Oh. This must be the mutilated cat.”

Temple was pleased that her spin on events had made its way into the backstage language, but she wasn’t pleased to have Louie labeled so publicly. Not that the actual show wouldn’t be a lot more public, but at least they got paid for the indignity. If they won the case.

“Yes,” Temple said, sighing heavily. “Careful. He’s a little people-shy now. As you can imagine.”

“Oooh, the poor little boy,” she cooed into the grille that was all she could see of the shadowy contents.

“Well, he’s not a little boy in any sense now,” Temple added direly.

“His name is”—the assistant frowned at the clipboard she had confiscated from Temple, along with the mostly nonfunctioning ball-point pen attached with a metal chain—“Louis.”

“Louie,” Temple corrected. “He’s a very informal, friendly cat. Or was, before he was cruelly kidnapped.”

“I don’t want to get your hopes down,” Miss Perkiness confided, her tender face softening with sadness, “but animal cases don’t do too well here. They’re only worth what the animal is, and that’s not much.”

“Maybe not in this case. Louie has made several national TV commercials for Á La Cat.”

“Reelly!” She peeked and perked at the same time. “Oh, what a fam-ous little boy. Mr. Louis.”

Temple held her tongue, also her tote bag close in her hands. That would keep her from strangling Ms. Perkiness.

A hustle and rustle across the cavern drew everyone’s attention.

The clatter like hail on a tin roof announced the arrival of Savannah Ashleigh on stiletto Frederick’s of Hollywood heels, a pink canvas bag bouncing against her lean hip: one word emblazoned in white embroidery on its side: Yvette.

Temple eyed her opponent with satisfaction. Savannah Ashleigh was wearing the usual overshrunk clingy top and the latest designer pants cut high on the calf and low on the torso, the better to show her belly button pierced by a tiny tinkling temple bell.

Egad, temple bell sounded almost like her own name.

Unlike Ms. Ashleigh, Temple’s belly button’s condition was kept secret behind an aqua linen suit whose skirt brushed her kneecaps and whose collar closed decorously at her throat.

Looking like the original Hollywood Barbie Tart certainly wouldn’t help Ms. Ashleigh in Judge Geraldine Jones’s court.

Savannah observed the stir her entrance had caused with satisfaction of her own and settled onto a folding chair. Yvette’s carrier rested by her hyperarched insteps.