Cat In An Alien X-Ray

I do an instant size-up. They are of the same age. She is wearing some dainty little dress and is barefoot, with her left arm dangling her high-heeled sandals over her shoulder. Not good. She is in no shape to pussyfoot over the building site ground.

He is about her age, early twenties, and wears the usual Las Vegas male tourist outfit: tennis shoes, baggy long shorts, T-shirt. He has now-useless sunglasses pushed atop his head.

He is putting one foot a bit too close to the other and they progress slowly, murmuring and laughing at their own condition.

Aha. They are a couple, not just a couple of strangers in the night who met at the Cabana Club. So far, so good. I need a Princess and a Galahad to make this con play.

They are too self-involved and too happily smashed to notice when they come abreast of me.

I move to brush the woman’s ankles with a tantalizing swish of my glossy fur coat and supple rear member.

“Ooooh, honey. What was that, like a breeze on my legs?”

“No sidewalk grates in Vegas, baby.”

They stop. Look down with great care.

I paw some stones against each other like castanets.

“Oh, look, honey. It is a cat.”

“A black cat. Those things are unlucky.”

I lurch toward them, then fall back, picking up my right mitt.

“Oh, no. It is hurt.”

“Leave it. It will be all right.”

I make a feeble objection to that idea.

“It mewed at me. It needs help.” She leans down and holds out a hand with the shivs covered in neon pictographs.

I whimper again and stumble once in her direction.

“I can get it,” she says. “We can take it to the shelter.”

You can try, lady.

“That ground is awful rough,” he says. “You can’t go there barefoot.”

“Then I’ll put my shoes back on.” She grabs hold of his shoulder and stands on one foot to don the spike-heel sandals one by one.

The dude has to hold her up or she would fall on her face, but he is not looking very happy about my interrupting their canoodling time. Tough. Tonight is your turn to play the good citizen.

“This is crazy,” he tells her. “You will never catch it.”

Right on, brother.

“It is just an old alley cat,” he goes on, sealing his doom.

I sit up and pant laboriously. “Just an old alley cat” indeed, and a lot smarter than a six-mai-tais-to-the-wind young dude. Those rum cocktails will stir-fry your brain.

“Oh, honey.” She teeters onto the sandy soil. “He really needs help.”

I let her get close enough to bend down with hand outstretched; then I hop away on three legs, with a pitiful look over my shoulder.