Cat In A White Tie And Tails

Beer tops pop again. Cigars reek. I peer squinty-eyed out the black mesh at the end of my carrier. The cigar smoke is rising up from the beer cans upon which the stogies are perched while my captors chow down.

I must say that Chicago sausage is some of the most highly spiced and aromatic I have ever sniffed, no doubt because so many Poles, Germans, Czechs, and other Eastern European folks settled here.

“What was that?” Shifty stirs and lowers a foot from the crate to the filthy floor. “Is that damn cat growling?”

“Let it growl. We can always cut off its tongue.”

Actually, it is my ungovernable stomach growling and if the boys get in a position to do my innards violence, it will already all be over for Midnight Louie.

I have had enough of this nonsense.

I know what I came to find out. Effinger died in Vegas with a certain valuable something or piece of knowledge in his possession and a year later it is still missing, yet so desired that the Vegas outfit, whoever they are, are digging into his past to locate its hiding place.

Luckily, these boys have very little muscle tone and dumped my carrier with the zippered opening facing away from their cozy little campground. My paws punch the side where the zipper closes, forcing it open an inch or two. Then I lift my whiskered lips in “silent snarl” position and tilt my head so my right fang is bared and ready for action.

It takes a few “casts,” as in fishing, but I am a master koi-snagger. I finally push the fang tip through that nice little hole on every zipper tag. No doubt it is for the ladies to put a gizmo through if they are seeking to do or undo a back zipper solo. Handy dudes are not always handy, you know.

Now I jerk my head up in stages, easing the zipper open bit by bit. Yes, it is tedious work, but the cause of freedom can never be taken for granted.

As my nose lifts higher and higher, the odors of sausage and cigar smoke engage in an almost unendurable duel in my olfactory senses. I crave the one and abhor the other and must also resist a strange urge to sneeze.…

The carrier end finally falls away like a … sausage casing. After a last glance at my captors snoozing off after their stomach-stuffing feats, I spurt into the cavernous space filled with abandoned hulks of factory equipment casting massive shadows.

Your ordinary hostage might be intimidated by the iron bars on the high windows and the small broken-down entrance on the far side of my captors.