I am removed from my carrier while the fedora is tilted over my right eye and held on with a black elastic. Out of the corner of my left eye, which is the only functional one at the moment, I see Maurice sitting on the sidelines snickering. He is footloose and fancy-free and could have arranged all sorts of booby traps for me during the perilous descent ahead.
For the script is simplicity itself. I look far below to see the Divine Yvette being primped by her personal stylist as well as Miss Savannah Ashleigh. Someone has wrapped an ostrich-feather boa dyed in this same flamingo-pink color around her fluffy little ruff and diamond dog collar.
(You would think the truth-in-advertising laws would prevent using ostrich feathers in flamingo guise, but I suppose no one besides me cares about the fine points anymore.) Besides aggravating the cast by clothing them in interspecies articles, the producers of this little epic are calling for me to speed down the thirty-nine steps, half-blind, right toward the Divine Yvette.
They have imported a number of barbarian devices with the supposed purpose of encouraging me to follow stage directions whether I will or no. Little do they know that I do not need to be a Method actor to zero right in on the Divine One as fast as my four lightning limbs will permit me.
Perhaps you have heard of a "cold bolt" of lightning. I understand that this is a rare phenomenon: a gray-black lightning ball that streaks through a room. Well, put the Divine Yvette wherever you wish, give me a glimpse and Cold Bolt Louie will be there in a flash. They do not need their ostrich-feather whips, their bell-laden bouncing balls, their clickers, their crouching trainers and assistants huddling along the camera route to herd me back onto the right path. I can take direction without being hit over the head with it, especially if it is something I would want to do anyway.
I see that they have mounted a track device on which the camera can coast alongside me, capturing every graceful, cheetah-like leap as I run down the thirty-nine steps.
I also see that it would have been easy for Maurice to plan some dirty work. The steps are painted black, and smudged with the tracks of many human hoofer feet. A bit of spilled oil in the right place would do wonders. My sharp eye (remember the foolish fedora!) does not spy any slick places, but Maurice Two managed to leave no trace at the site of his last job, or rather, Maurice One's last job. If it were not for the feline seance that took place during my previous case, I would not even suspect that Maurice Two is not the original Maurice, but the successor who moved up through caticide.
To be forewarned is to be forearmed, as by taking arms against a sea of troubles we end them. My sea of troubles is the rank of human faces in the chorus, who will all be doing their tap-dancing thing on the sidelines as I and the camera hurtle past.
I watch like a hawk when the director cues the animal trainer to send Maurice down the steeply inclined gantlet. I feel a little like an Aztec priest high on my step pyramid watching the feline sacrifice plummet to the deadly ground below.
A plastic ball is set bouncing down the stairs, then the trainer at the bottom whistles and rattles a plastic container of Yummy Tum-tum-tummy. You notice that the operative word here is "plastic." Such is the falseness of show biz. Then a clicker sounds.
Maurice takes out after that pathetic plaything like Pavlov's pussycat. I watch his rump bump and grind down all thirty-nine steps while the camera keeps pace on its elevator glide mechanism. Now that is how I would like to make my entrance! This running one's gaiters and mittens off is for the birds, preferably flamingos. I am not much fond of flamingos at this point.
But, no, I am expected to risk life and limb on those damned steps. The camera is hauled up to the top again. Maurice, panting, is carried back up and placed beside me. As if there were anything that I could learn from this bozo besides murder methods.
"Piece of cake," Maurice says between huffs.
"Yeah? Frosted with arsenic or strychnine?"
"You are a suspicious sort, Louie. How would I be able to hurt you with so many witnesses looking on, including a camera crew?"
"You managed to do in Maurice One in equally public circumstances. I will warn you now; if anything happens to me, my little doll will be all over this stage with a laser-light. She will examine every centimeter of film and find the means and the culprit. She is my insurance."
"Your little doll is an amateur who got lucky a time or two. Besides, she will not be suspecting feline felony."
"Maybe not, but if you should by some odious chance be successful, I will come back to haunt you, and so will Maurice One."
"I do not believe you! Who saw this ghost besides you? Only some bats in the haunted-house attraction, which is a pretty good assessment of your mental state . . . batty! Okay, sucker. Time to play your part. Break a leg, buddy!"
By now we are snarling and the crew is hushing us and acting as if I am somehow responsible for it all.
'That," the A La Cat honcho harrumphs loudly, "is what we get for working with a tomcat."
I cannot tell you in what degree of loathing the word "tomcat" is spoken. Hey, were it not for tomcats, there would be no cats, although there are a few million too many, I grant you. I tell you, we middle-aged, unfixed, free-roaming dudes are a downtrodden minority these days. It is almost enough to make one go off and join a survivalist clan out in the boonies.
But social criticism is not my main problem at the moment. How to save my skin is. When the director yells, "Quiet!" everybody shuts up except the chorus, who clatter around like nervous horses. They are supposed to lip-sync their number, the A La Cat jingle, which will be recorded in the studio later.
"Action!" cries the director.
The trainer at my rear swats my posterior with what feels like a baseball catcher's mitt embedded with thorns.
I rocket down the aisle of empty stairs, chorus costumes a nauseating blur of melted sherbet as I pass, the camera dolly cranking and creaking away alongside me. Then I see it. On about the twenty-seventh step down, a little figure eight of steel wire like they wrap newspaper bundles in.
Momentum is not allowing me to pick my step placements. I am bound to get tangled up in that treacherous loop like a calf in a roping contest. The Divine Yvette's little face is growing large, a look of horror widening her dark pupils. What can I do but improvise?
I carom off to the side, into the chorus line on my blindside, and snick out my shivs. In a split second I am climbing a mandarin-orange suit (ick!) until I am perched upon a mandarin-orange shoulder.
I tilt my head against the warbling chorus boy's face, although no sound is emitting from his lips and his eyes are rounder than the Divine Yvette's. I am no lightweight, and remain on his shoulder only because of my superb balance and my fully extended shivs curving into his shoulder pads and the underpinnings below, which may be epidermis. I do so hate to get human skin under my nails!
Before he can react enough to give a howl that would ruin the take, I bound down to the stairs again, weaving in and out of the tapping choristers' rainbow-colored legs. I might even look like I am dancing, were I not running for my life.
When I think the treacherous spot is well behind me, I bound into the center space and continue my insouciant descent, straight for my baby's feather-dusted arms.