Cat In An Aqua Storm

“I really advise you to at least fix him," Dr. Ruth suggests with a cheerful leer. “If he goes out, he might need his claws, but he certainly does not need his procreative powers with four out of five kittens born doomed to die within a year.”

"No...” Miss Temple is waffling.

I huddle, preparing to hurtle atop the cabinet. When the two shout for help in retrieving me, I will bound down atop the rescuer's head, and be out the door before you can say "sold downriver.”

“At his age he could get pretty badly beaten up in a fight with another tom,” Dr. Demento says.

Name one! Or even a Dick or Harry who could cream my corn!

Miss Temple regards me in sad perplexity, even her perky red curls drooping.

“I have never seen him injured,” she says. “Maybe he is too big to get hurt.”

“Now that you have brought him indoors, he could spray the furniture. Males are messy, you know.”

Here I cannot restrain a snarl. I do not deny that I am a gentleman of the road, but my indoor manners are impeccable. Even outdoors I am a model of civic responsibility, and go out of my way to make my deposits beside, rather than on top of, the flora.

“Spraying...? He has not done that yet,” Miss Temple murmurs in my defense, but her tone is troublingly indecisive.

Clearly, some unmistakable action is required, and I take it. I yowl plaintively and rake my front fingernails across the gray Formica.

This protest shakes my little doll out of her funk. “Just the shots, please,” she says. “I will see about getting some special food on the way out.”

My triumphal self-congratulations prove premature when this Dr. Doolittle doll instructs Miss Temple Barr to “hold him.”

While I squirm, a series of indignities are performed on my posterior with a hypodermic that, while I cannot see it, seems about the size of the previously mentioned knitting needle.

“Does he bite?” this latter-day Madame DeFarge inquires a trifle tardily, removing her needle to pick up another.

Not the hand that feeds him, I think as I restrain my fury. Although, if Miss Temple Barr is planning on switching her current brand to the aforementioned scientific sludge for seniors, I may reconsider that resolve.

1

Electraglide in Black

Temple pulledthe aqua Storm into the shade of a spreading oleander bush and paused, her hands clinging to the steering wheel. The Circle Ritz’s condominium and apartment building’s white marble facade looked cool and calm in the blazing July heat.

She eyed the flat Timex watch that almost covered her wrist. Punctuality was essential to Temple’s work. She had no time for fancy, deceiving little watch faces that she couldn’t read accurately at a glance. Good. Only twelve-twenty.