Cat In A Topaz Tango

I was even present when I saw the striped Molina house cats adopted at the church animal blessing ceremony. That rite must have worked because I have been a blessing to crime-solving ever since.

So I have insinuated myself into the assembly, first outside Miss Mariah Molina’s bedroom window, under which I scent enough smells to confuse a bloodhound. Secondly, I slink through the front door when Detective Alch had returned from getting something from his parked car. Nobody much bothers to look from faces to footwear, especially when all and sundry are under stress, so I am usually able to toe-dance inside unnoticed alongside trouser legs and Mr. Morrie is an aficionado of dark suits despite the climate. It helps that there are already cats in the house.

You would think a big, handsome guy like myself would not be so easy to overlook, but everyone’s emotions are ratcheted tighter than a tourniquet and we poor domestic slaves are too low on the literal household totem pole to be much noticed at such times.

That is how I am able to pin the tiger-stripe females, Tabitha and Catarina, behind the sofa and wring them out like furry sponges of all the info they have.

It is a good thing I can speak to the animal kingdom. Homo sapiens habitually knows not much to speak of in these cases involving their headstrong young.

With a few well-chosen chirps, hisses, and paw signs, the tiger girls fill me in. This, of course, takes sharp questions on my part to prod a picture of recent events out of them, but I will not bore you with every little chit and chat and physical pantomime.

Here is their story, and I find it as fascinating as Mr. Scott finds a misbehaving Enterprise warp drive:

Mama Molina has been laid out with a midnight scrap injury, but this is being kept secret for some reason. Mr. Morrie Alch, one of the visiting toms, has been tending her. The sole surviving kit, Miss Mariah Molina, has been acting strange lately. She has ignored her delightful feline companions to hole up in her hideaway and smear strange-smelling potions on her face. She is also hypnotized by the one-eyed monster screen in her bedroom and spends most of her time in front of the litter-making shiny silver wall on her bedroom closet door . . .

It takes me a while to realize the tiger girls have never heard the word mirror and do not understand that their double reflection in same is not a glimpse of lost littermates living in the walls.

These domestic slaves are kept frightfully ignorant of things the lowliest alley cat has figured out by the age of three months. You learn fast to avoid being startled by your own reflection and save the panic and paranoia for encountering a real threat.

The resident Miss has also been cuddling up to her smooth shiny tiny kitten that she coos to and tickles endlessly on the tummy, instead of doing same to her loyal and loving resident felines.

Okay. The tiger girls have never tumbled to the names of such modern inventions and curses as the iPod and cell phone. I enlighten them.

Further, they say, there have been strange comings and goings in the house for several weeks when the occupants are away. They wonder if the lady of the house has hired a cleaning service and know to stay curled up, noses in tails, when these individuals come in.

I do not like this one tiny bit, but what can I do when the resident cats are so naïve and keep their eyes and ears to themselves? There is something to be said for the School of Hard Knocks, of which I am a magna cum laude graduate.

Osama bin Laden could hide out at Chez Molina and go unheralded and unmolested if it were up to these striped feline couch spuds.

Twinkle, Twinkle,

Little Star

“Welcome to my little corner of MTV hell,” Molina said as Temple stepped into the bedroom. “Is it possible you’re still young enough to understand these teenagers nowadays?”

“Not really. I just look like I am. It’s one of my greatest crosses to bear.”

“‘Crosses to bear’? You get that talk from our favorite radio talk-show host?”

“Guilty.”

“Aren’t we all? I want you to sit down and look at this Web site I found bookmarked on Mariah’s computer.”

Temple did as instructed, noting Molina’s waxen, taut features under the atypical makeup. That didn’t get there in one night of panic about her missing daughter. She had been sick, very sick. And then this. Temple was ambushed by a pang of sympathy.

A click revealed Crawford’s smirking face. His dark hair with the silver froth at the neck had been pompadoured for the photo, giving him a shocking resemblance to Dick Clark, prestroke.

“Euw,” Temple couldn’t help muttering.

Molina literally hung over her, a hand on the back of her chair and another on the desktop. “My reaction exactly. Tell me he’s a harmless little worm.”

“Mostly. He’s a hustler when it comes to drumming up buzz for his PR business, and an old-style sexist, of course.”

“What do you mean by ‘old style’?”