Cat In A White Tie And Tails

Miss Louise takes this moment to admonish a possibly verminous intruder on her back forty. Or she could be allergic to something, like me.

“Well?” I demand, gently tapping her shoulder.

She responds to my friendly overture by swatting my mitt to the pavement. “First tell me what went down in Chicago.”

“The usual. We prepare to fly. I am the VIP of airport security in Miss Temple’s admittedly sissy poodle portage bag.”

“‘Portahge’?”

“That is French for ‘transportation,’” I respond airily, waving my posterior plume de ma tante for emphasis. It always distracts Miss Midnight Louise when I talk à la the Divine Yvette, my Persian petite.

“I am the object of a kidnapping attempt at the moment of our arrival in O’Hare,” I say vehemently, nipping at the vermin that left her for higher-end pastures.

At this she hoots. Well, she rolls over on the ground exposing her soft underbelly with no fear, as if I were a bunny rabbit instead of Chicago muscle.

“They were obviously after your carrier,” she manages to mew between rude snorts.

“Actually, that is too true,” I admit. “Airport security suspected I was acting as a mule for smuggled celebrity fine jewelry. Unfortunately, the only fine jewelry my Miss Temple owns is the engagement ring on her finger and an MIA opal ring in her notorious scarf drawer. No, Louise,” I add. “They were after me as a means to information hidden by Mr. Matt’s louse of a late stepfather, Mr. Cliff Effinger, in goods held by his widow, Miss Matt Mama in Chicago.”

By now she is again upright and skeptical. “So these Chicago hoods believed someone would give up valuable info to save your hide?”

“Not ‘someone.’ My Miss Temple.”

“That I can believe. You have become a kept cat on her account, so I do not doubt some schmaltzy unnatural link holds you two together.”

I am not about to defend my personal life to one who scorns the human–feline bond while maintaining quite a crush, if you ask me, on Mr. Max Kinsella.

Meanwhile, Miss Midnight Louise is chewing on my revelations, suiting word to act by gnawing on a loose nail sheath, reminding me of my brilliant ruse with the rusted carpenter nails and the crooks.