Cat In A White Tie And Tails

I may not be able to read the tortured text, but my eyes and nose tell me two suspicious facts: I do not pick up the odor of ink on pulpwood paper, a scent I have been known to shower with my ill will on the few occasions I have been incarcerated. Newsprint is a favorite litter box filler for the group homes that shelter many of my kind at a time.

There is no such fulsome scent on these missives, only the faintest whisper of toner power, which means they were computer generated. Now, what kind of degenerate stalker is computer literate?

I recognize key words from my long list of oldie movies viewed on cable TV when my Miss Temple is out gallivanting, or at home gallivanting in a manner that ejects me from my own bed.

You will recognize such cherished turns of phrase as: “We know you know.” “We mean business.” “Or else.” “Comply or die.” And I read the same ugly words I saw in tiny print in a tiny news story on Miss Temple’s coffee table copy of the Las Vegas Review-Journal: Clifford Effinger. Along with the also corny phrase of “mysteriously found dead.”

A fancy computer font combined with corny vintage clichés? Who do these bozos think they are intimidating? Obviously, they think they are scaring Miss Matt Mama and Mr. Matt, by means of the ghost of her crummy husband and his stupid-mean stepfather.

At this moment of deep cogitation, which must be accompanied by a trancelike state often mistaken for a nap, I hear a door creak in the living room.

Doors do not creak except in scary movies, folks.

Has someone in the Sunday dinner party forgotten a crucial something … such as breath mints or Tums or gas pills? From what I have been hearing about the joys of Polish cooking and beer drinking I am sure that they would be the least required.

So I scramble to push the threatening missives into a pile, prong them back into the drawer, and reverse my physical exertions of the past ten minutes in two, trying not to make any noise. I will not bore you with the details except to say I am fairly twisted into a knot when I leave the dresser closed and shimmy under the bed.

Footsteps—large careless stepping-on-tail footsteps—clomp onto the bedroom carpeting.

“I heard something in here,” a deep male voice says.

“Yeah,” mocks another. “The wimpy curtain hitting the window glass in the draft of the ceiling fan. We saw them drive out of here in the rented sedan, all four, all dressed up like for a funeral. They ain’t coming back soon.”