Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

So my Miss Temple just sits there on our living-room sofa, as if lost in a dream, turning the plastic baggie and Mr. Max’s opal ring around and around in her hand.

She does not even move when we hear her front door open and close.

Ooooh, that Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina has been a mean girl. Humans! They claim not to use tooth and claw as we four-feet do, but even a so-called “nice” gesture can come with a fierce bite, a “kick” like the firing of a gun.

I can see that my Miss Temple has no idea where she should put this ring. It would look tacky on her third finger, right hand, although the jewelry biz is busy marketing a “right hand” diamond ring as every woman’s necessity, to up sales.

Even I know that two major pieces of bling on the same person’s petite ten fingers is tasteless. I know my Miss Temple’s scarf drawer is not lucky for ring storage, not after Mr. Matt found Kitty the Cutter’s worm Ouroboros ring inside, and no one can figure out how it got there. The evil K the C had stolen the tail-sucking snake back from Mr. Matt after forcing him to wear it as a sign of her murderous power over everyone he knew.

“Wait a minute!” Miss Temple shouts.

I jump slightly at the racket, but at last my roommate has leaped into action. She has stood to yell after the long-gone Molina.

“You must be off duty if you’re drinking, even if you can get a driver home. Giving this ring back is not an official act.”

Nice point, but the door is shut and Molina is out of hearing range. Only I am here to get the message.

Miss Temple sits again to squirm on her uncomfortable side chair, and so I come out of hiding to loft onto the empty sofa she is leaving vacant for me.

I can read her mind like it was pile of tea leaves.

She eyes the anemic pink liquid and melted ice cubes in her glass, obviously wondering if maybe she had imbibed more hard liquor than she realized. She looks puzzled and a little sad.

At last she looks up and spots me. Now is the time for some distracting action on my part!

But which part?

I leap onto the sofa arm so I have an artistic pedestal and begin sucking my rear-toe hairs. This is quite the athletic feat. I know I look a little silly and that therefore Miss Temple will find me talented and endearing and forget her woes. As they sing: “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag.”

I am certainly an old kit.

“Oh, Louie,” she says, totally won over by my native charm and cute little nibbling acts. “You must have been hiding in the spare bedroom until the fuzz was gone, or until your toe fuzz needed a grooming. Now, do not fall off the sofa and hurt yourself.”

As if I couldn’t do a double axel on the way down and land with all four sets of shivs stapled to the wood parquet floor!

Of course I do nothing of the kind to damage the décor, but I give my Miss Temple one of my best world-weary, totally superior glances. She had never heard me come in, has no idea that I have seen and heard the entire scene. I can go barefoot around this place too, so she will never hear me sneaking up on her.

She smiles gratefully at my presence.

“Louie,” she says, “you are the only male in my life I have no worries or doubts about whatsoever. Unless you fall off the sofa arm.”

Oh, please. The one to worry about is she herself.

After all, I had returned to my center of operations and paused to check in on my Miss Temple, only to find her entertaining the enemy. Cordially. With powdered drink mix and hard liquor.

I suppose my antipathy to Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina is nothing personal.

She has her job to do, and I have mine. We both nail crooks, and her way is a lot less personal than mine usually, because she has underlings.

Yes, yes, you could argue that because I am a prominent member of the Feline Nation, the entire population of humans become my automatic underlings.

But there is a communication disconnect, so I am forced to exert precious time and energy in leading these self-involved and inarticulate creatures down the most logical garden path. Certainly they chatter a great deal, but much of it is meaningless.

At any rate, Molina, as my roommate and her intimates so abruptly call her, has not been on any personal crime-solving trail, nose to the groundstone, until she recently got too nosy about where Mr. Max Kinsella kept a safe house in Vegas and she broke the law by breaking and entering.

Miss Midnight Louise witnessed the whole episode, so we had plenteous blackmail material to hold over Molina the next time she came around bullying my Miss Temple about the whereabouts of Mr. Max Kinsella. Of course, it would be troublesome to manipulate what we know into public awareness, and now here is the dreaded Molina sharing alcohol content with my Miss Temple.