Cat In An Aqua Storm

I expect a tranquil day. Miss Temple Barr, my doting roommate and a freelance public relations specialist, is between assignments. While I dream of vistas of wild game, my civilized heart awaits the grrrr of the can opener. This happy sound precedes the dollop of some rich aquatic concoction into the banana spilt dish that my little doll has deemed fitting for, and large enough, to accommodate my healthy appetite.

It is not a bad life I lead of late, during this age of Aquarius. Much is to be said for domestic bliss, especially by one who not four weeks ago languished on Death Row in the local animal pound. It is true that my presence there was by design: I went undercover as a common homeless dude, a transient as the sociologists put it, in order to solve a murder at a booksellers convention. Yet this environment in which I now bask—a ray of not-yet-searing sun, a dry desert breeze and Miss Temple Barr hovering with the can opener—appeals far more nowadays than the edge-treading loner’s life-style I have been wont to lead.

So I slip into the languid snooze my kind is famous for, a happy laid-back dude expecting no more at the moment than the attentions and comforts I have earned over the course of several of my lives.

My personal sun-spot has shifted into shade when I next come to, awakened by the click-click of two dainty high heels arriving at my side. Gastric juices begin doing a tap dance on my rib cage as I lazily cock open one green peeper. I do not wish my famous, devastating stare to bedazzle my little doll before she is completely awake.

But Miss Temple Barr is more awake than I think, or than she should be at this early hour.

“No breakfast for you, Louie,” she announces with puzzling cheerfulness.

My still-drowsing senses are then jolted by yet another out-of-custom shock. Something thumps down beside me. Before I can open my other eye to study the phenomenon, Miss Temple Barr's long-nailed hand (she has irresistible attractions for a fellow of my sort) scoops under my midsection.

"Come on, big boy. Whew, what a handful.”

While I enjoy the personal contact, and before I am fully awake, I am prodded into an ambience I know all too well: four bland-blond walls that reek of plastic.