So Louie has now undergone an unconventional "fixing" that makes him politically correct in the necessary areas both physical and fictional, without diluting his macho personality one drop. But don't try this on your cats at home, folks. Vasectomy is purely a fictional solution.
The Midnight Louie Adopt-a-Cat tour was launched in 1996 in Texas and the southeast. My publisher donated free autographed copies of the Cat in a Crimson Haze paperback to animal shelters and humane societies for those who adopted cats while I was making local personal appearances. We held book signings at shelters, and brought adoptable cats to bookstore signings. Many cats were adopted. A huge number were not.
For an animal-lover like me, visiting a series of shelters, even in a good cause, is an ordeal.
Despite meeting the overworking, dedicated staffs who fight the tide of unwanted pets with every means available to them, I saw so many animals in need of homes. I saw attractive adult cats with labels: Owned: I year; Age: I year. These are kittens whose families lost interest when they became cats. These are family pets in cages, facing death.
Kittens are engaging and fearless and always adoptable, but there are always so many more than can possibly be taken. Adult cats whose owners have died or abandoned them hunch in their alien cages, needing homes and often not appearing as outgoing and affectionate as they can be. I watched a woman reach into a cage for a sleeping white cat. Startled, it hissed. She moved on. One hiss and you could be history in an animal shelter.
If Midnight Louie, quintessential survivor in life and literature, can do any good in the real world, I hope his popularity will help convince more people to (yes) neuter their cats and keep them indoors for their own safety; to consider adopting adult cats as well as kittens; to learn about feline behavior so that everybody in the household--human, dog, cat or whatever--can live happily together (and they can).
My husband and I had six cats before the tour began, and a young dog I had found dumped on a street corner only a couple months earlier. I saw so many cats I would have loved to take home. Finally, in Lubbock, Texas, a small black one with a scratchy mew and a broken tail became irresistible. We drove over six hundred miles to fetch Midnight Louie Jr. a few days later, and bring him home.
No one needs seven cats. But they need us.
Cat in a Flamingo Fedora Page 36