Cat In An Alien X-Ray

“Now, Ma,” I say. “I have told you before that no alien force is coming to take you away, except the SPCA, and you all are in a TNR zone these days.”

“Twilight Zone, I told you so.”

“I am not referring to the spooky TV show. ‘TNR’ stands for Trap, Neuter, Return. The human do-gooders seek to prevent unwanted littering by whisking our street people away to low-cost neutering facilities. It is a good program for those who, unlike myself, are not able to avail themselves of such voluntary choices as vasectomy.”

“Hmph,” says Ma. “The way I hear it, you were captured and whisked away just like the rest of us, only you got dumped on a plastic surgeon rather than a vet. I tell you, what is going on now in town is a vast alien conspiracy.”

Ma sits down to groom her mustache. (This does happen to older females, you know.) Sadly, her coat is terminally raggedy and she just manages to swirl the split ends around in a different pattern.

“It is just Planned Pethood, Ma,” I suggest.

“Do not be an ignorant pup,” she growls.

Now my back hairs are getting themselves in a twist. You do not call Midnight Louie canine, no matter who you are.

“Settle down, Louie.” Her crooked paw pats my side whiskers. “We can have our own opinions about the alien conspiracy to whisk our population away to some hidden and forbidden planet, but you will not be able to deny what the Cat Pack has seen over on Paradise.”

I am somewhat mollified, if not momified. “All right. Show me the way. But first I have to reverse engineer the claw marks you have put into the back of Miss Temple’s sofa.”

“From what I hear of her romantic life, she does not see much of the back of the couch.”

By then I am using a single delicate shiv to restore the disturbed upholstery threads and too busy to take offense. It is true my Miss Temple has been distressingly involved in the mating game of late, and she does not have the handy on and off switch known as “heat” to moderate things.

But I would not be here if it were not for such urges, so who am I to complain?

“Ma!” I have now reached the breached French door. The lock is visibly sprung, and long track marks scar the exterior wood. “You are as bad as that renegade human known, not fondly, as Kitty the Cutter.”

Ma shrugs and emits the short, almost gacking sounds that pass for amusement with her. “Kitty the Cutter—cute nickname. You can call me Cutter for short,” she says with a sharp cuff to my shoulder.