Cat In An Aqua Storm

The Divine Yvette accepts my admonition gracefully. She is, she tells me with a tender purr, happy to see me again so soon. Miss Savannah Ashleigh has been most trying of late, as nervous, in fact as a cat in a Doberman kennel.

"Speaking of which,” I tell her, “it is high time for me to attempt what I came to accomplish.”

What, she inquires sweetly, is that?

I explain that I am here to bust her out of this sissy cell.

At first the black-tipped hair lifts along her spine, sending shivers down mine. The Divine Yvette protests that she must not leave the carrier, that she is not "safe" outside of it

“Bullfinch feathers!” I answer. I tell her that she has been sold a bill of goods. Besides, with me here, she could not be safer.

She lowers her head to lick nervously at her ruff, a soft silver collar that shimmers with an unearthly glimmer. Then she bats her silver eyelashes and agrees with me.

I lift up to examine the carrier's fastening—a long pink-painted metal zipper that takes two right turns before it stops. This is Miss Savannah Ashleigh's fatal mistake. Had she purchased a trap with a paw-proof closure—say. one of those blasted doorknobs—my goose liver would have been cooked. (Not that I mind a little warm food from time to time.) But a zipper is kitten’s play. Since I encountered the Divine Yvette’s pink-canvas house, I have been practicing, in fact, on a few of Miss Temple Barr's dresses in the privacy of her closet

I lean over the pink metal tab on the operative end, hook an incisor in the convenient hole, and pull with all my nineteen-point-eight pounds so thoughtfully revealed to me at the House of Dr. Death. The sweet metallic squeal of zipper teeth parting is my reward. Despite some trouble at the corners, between my tooth and its teeth, we make tracks together to the end of the line.

Yvette, who has been straining to watch me achieve this feat, pokes her adorable little face up through the pink canvas flap. I cannot restrain myself from a long nose-to-nose encounter, followed by billing and cooing of a feline nature. It does not behoove a gentleman to go into specifics, but let us say that I am no slouch with what you could call hot licks.

The Divine Yvette confesses that she has never been so transported.

"You see, this is better than a cat carrier any day,” I point out. When I look into this flimsy cage while preparing to assist Miss Yvette out, I notice a pile like a pink angora mouse in one corner.