“Thank your lucky whiskers! Young kits today have no respect.”
“They did not in your day either,” says she with a sidelong glance. “This will be good for the colony,” she adds. “To leave the safety of their turf, to venture into the Dead Place. They were getting too complacent with the Fixers leaving them food.”
I can see that my mama is a leader of cats.
“The days of free-range cats are ending,” I say. “It is too dangerous out here and there are plenty of humans to be educated into giving us posh retirement homes off the street.”
“And you would be content to sit inside twenty-four/seven and watch the world through a window?”
“Sure.” Again I get the green sideways stare. “If I were retired. But I am a professional. There are not many PIs of my persuasion — although sometimes I think there is one too many trying to muscle into my territory — but for the average cat, which is everybody else but me, the domestic life is the best bet. Even dear old Dad has left the seafaring life for a sweet berth with some old guys who run a restaurant on Lake Mead. Heck, they even named it after him. What more could you want?”
“So Three O’Clock is nothing but a house cat. I am glad he left me for that calico floozy from the pawn shop.”
I am not about to touch parental history, particularly when it is mine, so I keep trotting and keep it shut.
The pale stucco walls of Los Muertos gleam in the moonlit distance like the white cliffs of Dover. I expect bluebirds any moment, though I have never seen such a mythical beast.
I could use a few helpful Disneyesque birds. They could scout the upper stories and peek in windows and then coming peeping back about what is going on to me.
When we get to the gate I turn to address the mob.
“Okay. Listen up. There are Rottweilers in there and they have a hair-trigger temper…mostly triggered by our kind of hair. We want to get in, and then up on whatever we can climb.
“Also, you will find that a couple of major players also occupy the grounds. They are our kind of folks, but they are not used to seeing us types close up and personal. They might mistake us for an appetizer in the heat of the moment. I know these dudes, but they do not know you. So keep your distance if you want to retain your whiskers and any other vital bodily parts.”
“These are the Big Cats?” asks poor Gimpy, who has managed to keep up with our march despite his desperately disabled leg. “We will see Big Cats?”
“Yes, but do not let them see you first. I need to explain our mission to them. I am hoping that they will keep the Rottweilers…entertained while we approach the house.”
“We will see Rottweilers?” Gimpy asks like a kit who thinks dragons are cool.
“The important thing is that they do not see us, kit,” I tell him. I cast a significant glance at Snow Off-white, who ankles to my side with a minor hiss.
None of this gang is eager to bow to my leadership, but since I know the way, and the Big Cats, they have to.
“Keep an eye on Gimpy when we get in,” I growl sotto voce to her.
“I am not a kit-sitter! You keep an eye on him.”
“You ferals need to look out for each other. Cooperate, or kiss your whiskers good-bye. When we get Midnight Louise out of that house of horrors, I will have the Big Cats tell you a little story about what intraspecies cooperation can do.”
“They are not so big.”
“You have not seen them yet.” I cuff her lightly to get her on the right track and turn back to Ma Barker.
“You want to take on the Rottweilers, Ma?”
“You bet.”
“Remember. Lead them to the arrangement of rocks and fountains in the middle of the grounds.”
“They should have park privileges? I would like to lead them off a cliff.”
“There is not much here in the way of cliffs, but if you get them to that place, they will wish they had a cliff to jump off of.”
“And the colony?”
“I would like to deploy them at high points around the house and grounds.”
“And you?”
“I will go in, solo. I am counting on backup when Louise and I escape that place.”
“You expect pursuit.”
“Yup.”
“Worse than Rottweilers?”
“Worse than dogs.”
“Hmmm. You are sure that you do not want me to lead the Rottweilers out into major traffic?”
“I do not want them hurt. They are only ignorant indentured servants of a corrupt administration. I just want them out of the way.”
“Mercy to dogs? You have been off the streets too long, Grasshopper.”
But I think that the old dame will do as I say, instead of as she wishes.
In ten minutes I am past the snoozing snakes, up Sleeping Beauty’s hedge of thorns, and doing the Twist to make Chubby Checker plaid with envy as I slither my way down the aluminum vent pipe.
I hit bottom…and a unexpected impediment.
The way is blocked!
I do not like the feel of this. It is something solid like…wood.
Yuck! It is the head of the dead dummy guy.
Well, I am not Woody Woodpecker so I am momentarily stymied.
Then I tumble. (I am after all, on the ghostly site of a once-proud dryer.)
Aluminum is no different from what they make some food containers out of, and I was busting into garbage cans and aluminum foil and food containers since I was a punk kit.
I manage to get my business end — my powerful hind legs — into position and began rabbiting away at the edges of aluminum surrounding the wooden noggin in my path.
I cannot say that it does not require time, energy, and rhythmic persistence, but in a bit I have managed to kick out a flange of aluminum, a most malleable metal, all around the blockhead.
Then it is merely a matter of drop-kicking the old oaken noggin to Kingdome come. Let us play a little ghostly touch football, Elvis!
The head pops out of my way like a ripe melon meeting a sledgehammer.
I am back in the closet.
But not for long.
The fact that the entry hole has been plugged leads me to believe that Miss Midnight Louise has been forced to admit her route of entry.
This gives me a chill. I do not like to think what it would take to force Miss Midnight Louise to do anything.
On the other hand, her presence here, if discovered, could have led to a search party.
I sniff the closet perimeter, detecting again the odd, musky, decidedly alien feline odor I sensed elsewhere in the house.
Just what does Miss Hyacinth use for henchmen these days?
The thought gives me another chill.
There is a lot about this place that gives me serial chills.
Then again, it could be the air conditioning.
Well, there is nothing like brisk activity to get the blood moving.
I try the door.
It is now locked, of course.
They are beginning to get me mad.
I sniff the perimeter again, hoping this joint is old enough to have an established mouse and rat population. Great chewers, they are.
However, I turn out to be depressingly alone in my incarceration. And I do so like it when the rodent population has done the preliminary excavating for a job.
I do discover, behind some musty satin and velvet capes, a heating register.
This is as good as a twenty-four-karat golden gate.
In no time flat, I have managed to dislodge two loose screws and have the grate askew in its frame. One last loose screw and it is hanging by one corner.
I gyrate through and find myself once again in the upper hallway, deserted by all except the ghosts from Omen movies.
This time I do not waste any (time, that is) exploring the ambiance.
I move, fleet and sure, through the cavernous rooms, past the guardian suits of armor, unabashedly sniffing like the lowest dog.
This time I do
not turn and head toward the upper regions when I reach the crossroads to the kitchen but continue on the trail of roast beef, the occasional enterprising rodent, the strange feline scents, and a vague whiff of canna lily that can only betoken my darling…cohort.
As I suspected before, the kitchen is a large, old-fashioned affair with a door leading to a…butler’s pantry. And a door leading to…the outside garden. And a door leading to…a dining room the size and solemnity of a private medieval chapel. And a door leading to the…cellar.
Oh, joy.
Last time I went up and found magicians, Big Cats, and Hyacinth.
I will now descend and hopefully find…Midnight Louise.
Of course I must first open the door.
Breaking into a mansion has its drawbacks. Give me a one-room apartment any day.
There is a mitt-wide space under the door.
I stick my mitt into the dark.
When it is not cut off, I use it to nudge and wiggle the door. Sometimes these old doors are as loose as change.
In a couple minutes I hear a welcome click. A loose metal tongue has just given up the ghost.
Or, in this place, a ghost may have just given me entry.
You never know.
I edge through, pull the door shut behind me, thrilled to hear no click of true closure, and descend a flight of stone stairs in the pitch dark.
I am not sure why dark is considered pitch. It does not sing. It does not normally tilt, like stair risers. Anyway, pitch dark is considered blacker than my best formal coat, and so this pathway is.
I move down for so long that I feel the cool dank air rising to meet me.
So does the scent of the alien weasels I scented in the closet, and the faintest sniff of calla lily.
I recall that the lily is the chosen human symbol of death.
Poor Louise. Snatched in her prime, preprime, really, and interred here in this forgotten cellar, with only weasels for pall-bearers. If they bothered to bury her.
I am smitten by remorse. Or is that smited? Smoted?
Anyway, I realize with a pang that had I not been distracted by human concerns and my Miss Temple’s safety, I would have been here sooner and perhaps could have prevented this tragedy.
While the feral folk wait without, I tunnel deeper within, afraid that our quest will have only one certain and sad ending. Ma Barker will not meet her only maybe grandkit. I will be partnerless again. Hmmm. The Crystal Phoenix will once again need a new house detective. Chef Song will lose a toadie!
I am nearly choking with loss (and dust) when I touch the cold stone of bottom.
I tiptoe around the rough-hewn stones. The scents have boiled down into an unappetizing stew.
Death leers from unseen corners.
I stumble over a sudden depression in the floor, wrestle with a metal tray until it is dislodged, fall a rib-bruising distance, and find the stingers of a dozen scorpions puncturing my poor hide.
I am done for! Dropped like Indiana Jones into a pit of vipers and vermin, with no way out.
“Get off me, you big oxymoron!”
Only one person — pardon me, individual — would berate me so subtly.
“Louise! You are alive!”
“Not by much, after you landed on me. How did you manage to remove the grating?”
“What grating?”
“As I thought. Dumb luck. Quick, I can climb to the top on you and then…well, I do not know if I can pull you out, so I will go to deal with the muscle upstairs and come back for you later.”
“Wait a minute. I can climb out on you, and then pull you out.”
“You would crush me, Popsicle. It is better I crush you.”
“Maybe we can both make it out,” I suggest, hurling upward until my front shivs catch on a stone rim.
Oooh! That stings.
So do Midnight Louise’s shivs as she ratchets up my spine to the cellar floor in a twinkle, just like old St. Nick up the chimney. Nick is right! Ow.
“You are not going to leave your old man just hanging here by his nails?”
Something comes hurtling down.
“There is a board. I will scout the stair to make sure your lumbering down here did not awaken all the dogs of war in the house.”
Dogs? I thought they were outside.
I manage to scramble up the board, failing to avoid every rusty nail in the dark. If I do not die of tetanus it will be a miracle.
I run and limp my way back up the stairs, running into a furry wall at the top.
“You were a prisoner?” I whisper.
“It suited me to let them think so.”
Un-huh. Likely story. “Who are ‘they’?”
“Your lady friend Hyacinth and her cronies.”
“She is not…a lady. Or a friend. Besides, our main goal is to leave here safely.”
“My main goal is to eat Siamese tonight.”
“Louise, there is more going on than your petty attempts at revenge. I have a whole cat colony waiting outside to back us up, not to mention the Big Cats.”
Louise is unmoved. I can feel that by the punishing twitch of her unconvinced tail.
“And your grandmother is waiting to meet you.”
“My granddam?”
The family tree will get them every time.
“That is right. I, uh, ran across her again tonight during my investigation.”
“You mean you ran and she found you. So where did you dig up the ferals?”
“Your grandmama is their head honcho.”
“No kitting!”
“I swear.”
“Well, I guess I could wait to make mincemeat of Hyacinth until another day. Revenge is a dish best eaten cold, and there is nothing colder than dead.”
“I will hear about your adventures later. Meanwhile, I have restored our old route into the place, which someone had carefully closed.”
“Then let us blow this Bastille.”
Bastille? For a moment I think Midnight Louise is referring to the dread Bastet, but the moment passes. One does not wish to invoke Bastet, even inadvertently, unless one wishes to deal with the goddess of cats since the days of ancient Egypt. My tip is: one does not want to deal with Bastet. Ever.
Once I have convinced Midnight Louise that family ties are more important than suicide missions, we rocket up the stairs.
As we pass through the broken-into door, though, my super-sleuth senses go into red-alert. I crush my curled shivs into Louise’s shoulder.
She would squeal protest, but I slap a spare mitt over her face. “Shhh! We are not alone.”
The kitchen is less dark than the cellar, but not by much.
It takes a few moments for our cellar-dampened senses to reassert themselves, but I can tell by the way Midnight Louise stiffens next to me that she too is taking the measure of the several unseen foes surrounding us.
Among the alien scents, I detect the ineffable perfume of the lady known as Hyacinth.
Midnight Louise turns her head to me, though her eyes remained focused on the smothering dark.
“If we close our eyes for an instant, and run, they will lose track of us,” she breathes into my ear.
It is a good stratagem. I nod so she can feel my vibrissae give assent, then shut my eyes and call the fury of Bastet down upon all our enemies.
Then I run.
I hear the soft pound of pads beside me…and behind me…and ahead of me on an angle.
The thump of meeting bodies erupts into an Etna of scalding hot fury and tufts of soft underfur floating like ash against my nose and pads.
Then I am galloping through the house, following a path of sheer memory and the glint of night lights on the suits of armor.
Something pounds along beside me up the hall stairs.
I head-butt the wall in the dark, eager to find the heat register exit.
Finally my muzzle pushes out and finds air instead of plaster and wallpaper.
I wiggle through, Louise on my tail.
Behind us the dislodged grating scrapes, and scrapes again and again, as a torrent of pursuers pours through the aperture.
I hear claws scrabbling on aluminum pipe.
Either Louise has surged ahead of me, or the rats are deserting the house to avoid the panting, slavering tide of unknown creatures that is on our trail.
It is too dark and confusing to worry about whether Louise is ahead or behind. I must boost myself into the confining vent pipe, then wriggle through it as if my life depended on it. Which it does.
Popping out into the night air gives me no rest. I hurtle down the thorny hedge to the grounds below, my own ingrown thorns out and snagging wherever they can to break what is more of a free-fall than a downward climb. Uh…never mind.
Something plunges earthward beside me. In the artificial night light of Las Vegas, I am happy to see that Miss Louise has managed to keep up with me. Or down, depending on how you look at it.
Once we hit terra firma, we leap up. A long sweep of lawn stretches between us and our hidden allies.
The whimpering and growling coming from the rock-park midway between the house and the gate tells me that the Rottweilers (whimpering) have been cowed by the Big Cats (growling).
However, even the best-laid plans of the trained operative can go awry, and my current awry comes plummeting down behind us: a ninja brigade of Havana browns as fresh from Cuba as a fine cigar.
Anyone who has not tangled with the breed known as Havana brown is unaware of the Bruce Lees of catdom. They are all muscle and silent, stalking pads. They wear their hair in a battle-ready buzz-cut and do not waste time on hollow boasts or warning howls.
So they are on us like tobacco-spit shadows, dark and almost liquid of motion.
I box one away, and then another. Beside me, Midnight Louise is similarly occupied.
We manage to work our way a few feet toward where our compadres await, but the Havana browns keep on coming, and those we knock down roll over and leap up again.
I do not know about Louise, but I am trying to head for a sheltered garden construction with vine-twined pillars and a latticed roof dripping hibiscus.
We will have more of an advantage against these numbers there than on open ground.
It is slow progress when you have to pause to repel another onrushing Havana brown every time you take one down for the count.
Midnight Louie 14 - Cat in a Midnight Choir Page 32