The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell

Press and pulpit lauded the Purple Point couple for their generosity in the past and their concern for the future quality of life in Moose County, specifically: the museum of art and antiques, a facility for the study and enjoyment of music, and a wildlife museum of interest.

Dissenters on the grapevine complained indignantly that the billion-dollar bequest should have stayed in Moose County to promote growth, build a new downtown, and improve recreation facilities.

What would Cool Koko say?

"When your dish is full of cream, don't expect more."

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

Imagine my surprise, recently, when I received a phone call from James Mackintosh Qwilleran . . .

How nice to hear from you, I said. How's Koko? How's Yum Yum?

He said, They're fine! Koko just put an idea in my head, staring at my forehead, the way he does, until something clicks. This time he suggested I should interview you for the "Qwill Pen" column, Lilian. Do you mind if I call you Lilian?

Not as long as you spell it right.

The following dialogue took place:

First, I think my readers would like to know how long you've been writing.

My mother taught me to write at the age of three, but I was two years old when I composed my first poem: "Mother Goose is up in the sky and these are her feathers coming down in my eye."

Not bad for a beginner. When did you start writing fiction?

Nothing much until I was thirteen. I spent my summer vacation writing a French historical novel. All my favorite characters went to the guillotine and I cried a lot. My mother said I should write something that made me smile - and since mothers knew best in those days, I experimented with humourous verse. (Are you sure you want to hear all this, Qwill?) I invented the "spoem!"

Should I know what that is, Lilian?

They were verses about sports in what I called galloping iambic. One of my favorites was about a big-league player called McGee. Do you want to hear it? I know it by heart.

By all means! Wait until I turn on my recorder.

I think that I shall never see another gaffer in his prime who's stuck to baseball like McGee, untrammeled by the wear of time. Although McGee is getting gray, he never fails to fill the bill and slaps the horsehide twice a day, besides a frequent double kill, but when it comes to private tricks, McGee deserves the laurel bough; of all the superstitious hicks, it takes McGee to show them how! He never has his turn at bat unless he walks around the ump and following an orange cat, he says, will cure a batting slump. His slumps indeed are very few; he says these tricks improve his skill, and if the fellow thinks they do it's 99 to 1 they will.

Bear in mind, Qwill, that I was seventeen when I wrote that. My interests changed. I wrote short stories, magazine features, advertising copy - and spoems. Then I started writing a newspaper column.

Apart from McGee's orange cats, Lilian, you haven't mentioned cats at all.

No, it was long after that when cats entered my life. I had always liked them, and they liked me. They followed me down streets in Paris, howled under my balcony in Rome, and sat on my lap, drooling, when I went visiting. It was not until I was living in a tenth-floor apartment that I was given a kitten. A Siamese. I called him Koko. But . . . It's difficult to describe what happened. Briefly: he was killed in a fall from the tenth floor. In a building full of cat lovers he was . . . murdered . . . by a cat hater. I was shattered! The only way I could get the tragedy off my mind was to write a short story about it. My story of murder and retribution was published in a magazine, and that is what led to the Cat Who . . . series.