Cat In An Alphabet Soup (Catnap)

I figure on perusing a booth or two, since I always was a bookish sort, having nodded off over many great tomes—including the collected works of Dickens. I like nothing better than curling up on a good book. And I personally know a literary figure or two, the most famous of which—besides Boss Banana, whose memoirs sold quite a few guys upriver—is my hard-shelled pal, archy the cockroach, whose nightly tap dance on the typewriter keys (he is an old-fashioned kind of guy) brought much fun and profit.

So I decide to broaden my horizons, no easy thing to do in Vegas, which is all horizon, and hotfoot over to the convention center.

I plan to scout the rear service areas, normally deserted at my namesake hour, except for the presence of a few local cats in search of tidbits among the refuse. Even Vegas has its homeless these days, in addition to the usual shirtless.

There are a thousand ways to get into a locked building, especially if you are a stealthy but wiry little guy, and Midnight Louie knows every one. Soon I am ambling through a maze of booths, gazing at piles of books, posters and plastic bags bannered with pictures of every description.

I am vaguely in search of the Baker & Taylor concession, where I am given to understand that a pair of famous felines are on display. Apparently any live acts at a book convention are newsworthy. This duo made all the papers, being official library cats at a little town in the West.

From their mug shots, Baker is a white, gray and what-have-you feline of no distinguished ancestry, and Taylor is likewise. Neither has much to speak of in the way of ears, which gives them a constantly frowning expression. As for tail, I cannot say as I am always the gentleman. Still, a celebrity cat—much less two—is something to see, there being few around since Rhubarb, the long-gone marmalade tom of motion-picture fame. Of course someone has scrammed with both Baker and Taylor for the night; the booth offers nothing but vacant director’s chairs and slick catalogs. I sniff out the area and am in the process of withdrawing—perhaps the sole individual in history to leave the ABA without a free book—when my nose for news fastens on the dreadful truth that the stale atmosphere is not the only thing dead about this place.