The private life of the cat who...: tales of Koko and Yum Yum from the journal of James Mackintosh Qwilleran

The photo he blistered with his saliva was a shot of a breakfront that had been in the Tait family for generations. The detail was excellent; the grain of the wood, the lead mullions of the glass doors, and even the hairline shadows where the wood was joined. I could only hope that Tait wouldn’t notice the blistered photo.

I apologized to Koko, buckled him into his harness, and attached the length of rope that would have to serve as a leash until I could buy one. Then I hailed a taxi. At the Tait house I told the driver to wait.

He said, “You with the Flux? I recognized the mustache.” Cabdrivers feel a camaraderie with newsmen.

To make a long story short, Tait was overjoyed. As soon as he left to get the kitten, I set Koko down on the floor—and played out the rope as he walked directly to the heirloom breakfront and sniffed the hairline crack that had shown up in the photo. It was in the side of the large cabinet. I touched the crack, and the section opened.

Before I could identify the contents of the secret compartment, Tait was coming at me with a jade harpoon. Next thing I knew, he was on the floor unable to move. The cat had flown around and around trussing the man’s legs in the rope leash, and he continued to guard him with bared fangs and menacing snarls until the police came.

The little female was on top of the breakfront, gazing down and wondering, perhaps, what kind of family she was joining.

When I inherited the Klingenschoen fortune and moved to Pickax with my two suitcases and two Siamese cats, police chief Andrew Brodie gave me some astute advice in his slightly Scottish brogue: “Look sharp, laddie! All the women in town will be after you and your money.”

His daughter, Fran Brodie, was among the first. She was an interior designer—with strawberry blond hair, a model’s figure, gorgeous legs, and she always wore those high-heeled flimsy sandals, in and out of season.

My plan was to donate the sumptuous Klingenschoen mansion to the historical society and live in the servants’ quarters in the carriage house. I commissioned Fran to furnish the rooms in Comfortable Contemporary. The project called for numerous consultations, sitting side by side on the old Depression-era sofa with furniture catalogues and large books of fabric swatches spread out on our knees.

“No, I don’t want a four-poster bed,” I told her. “No, I don’t want pleated fabric on the walls. No, I don’t want a mirrored ceiling.”

These appointments were always made in late afternoon, after which I was obliged to offer her a cocktail, after which I was more or less obliged to take her to dinner. She suggested a cozy trip to Chicago to visit furniture showrooms.

All I wanted was a comfortable environment in which to live and work. To tell the truth, I had never liked sexually aggressive females, no matter how classy their legs. I preferred to do my own chasing. As for the Siamese, they seemed to sense that Fran was lukewarm about cats. In fact, Yum Yum was patently possessive of me, hovering close and staring with a go-home look in her eyes. That’s a “look” that Siamese do very well.

“Why is that cat following me around?” Fran demanded while measuring wall spaces.

“She’s responding to your magnetic personality,” I said. “Have you thought of a way to display my antique Mackintosh crest?” It was currently leaning against the wall of the foyer—a round ornament of wrought iron a yard in diameter.

“It’s somewhat out of scale, you know. But . . . it might be possible to use it as camouflage for that big ugly radiator.”

A few days later I came home in late afternoon and saw Fran’s car in the parking lot. She had a key to the apartment and sometimes dropped in to take measurements or work on floor plans.

Walking up the narrow stairs I noticed that the Mackintosh crest was no longer leaning against the wall. Good! That meant she had found a way to display it.

“Hello!” I shouted, but there was no reply.

In the living room, the crest was lying in the middle of the floor, and two cats were huddled over it in attitudes of troubled concern.

“What happened! Where is she?” I demanded.

Then I noticed a red light on the answering machine. “This is Fran. Call me at home.”

“Oh, Qwill! You’ll never guess what happened! I had an idea for the Mackintosh crest and was taking it over to the radiator to see how it looked . . .”

“You didn’t try to lift that thing!” I interrupted.

“No, I was rolling it like a hoop, and I stepped on a cat’s tail! There was such a hair-raising screech that I rolled the crest over my foot.”

“I hope you weren’t hurt!”

“Hurt? I broke three toes! A police car took me to the hospital . . . so we’ll have to call off the Chicago trip.”

I was much relieved. I had no desire to traipse through furniture showrooms in Chicago. I said, “Which one of you rascals caused the accident?”

Koko looked noncommittal. Yum Yum was licking her paw and washing her face.