'There is no need to get religious about it."
I am too excited to stick around for any spare fish heads that may come our way. I thank Ingram for his precious time and skedaddle.
My feet barely touch the ground. I am running before I know it. The air smells crisp and alive with the scents of prey, rivals and nubile females who will never be out of action on maternity row if they stick with Midnight Louie.
I now know what a vasectomy is and am proud to be one of the first dudes of my type to have such a rare procedure. I know what it means.
I have just been given a license to thrill.
About two weeks later I am lounging contentedly at home beside my devoted roommate, who is reading some supermarket rag. (She does have a few lapses in reading taste, but I try not to tell.)
Suddenly, she holds the paper at arm's length from her face. Then she rips off her glasses and brings it right up to her nose.
"Well, I never--!" she says in great indignation.
She turns to me. "What do those look like to you, Louie?"
She is jabbing her forefinger at a photograph on the page, and since it features several of my species, I deign to look at it.
My heart flutters when I see the Divine Yvette looking as sweet and delectable as always.
But Miss Temple Barr's forefinger is not aimed at the Divine Yvette. It is not even pointed toward the odious facial image of Miss Savannah Ashleigh, who is also in the picture. (And it seems that Miss Savannah Ashleigh has been stung in the kisser by a mighty big bee, so swollen are her lips. Ugh!)
What Miss Temple Barr is shaking her finger at are some blurry little dust bunnies who--
now that I look closely--are striped kittens. Tiger-striped kittens, three of them, all the color yellow.
Looks like you were falsely accused and assaulted, Louie. Me-thinks Maurice has been doing more stunt work than he was contracted for. Well, wait 'til I call the director. That'll get you out of the doghouse and put Maurice, his trainer and Savannah Ashleigh in there pronto. My poor baby. Innocently railroaded with no trial. Forcibly sterilized. At least I do not have to take you in for a neutering. And it was free. The worst is over, Louie. From now on, it is all gravy, I promise you."
I know, Miss Temple, I know.
"What a big purrer you have become since your ordeal, Louie! Such a loving boy."
I know, I know.
Tailpiece
Midnight Louie: Short, Sweet and His Same Old Self
What can I say?
It was a far, far better thing I did than I meant to do, which is often the case in happy endings. And my end is very happy, I assure you.
Although I did not have much time to assist Miss Temple Barr in her conundrums, I did manage to save my own skin, save the commercials and the Divine Yvette and save my...
precious orbs. All while becoming even more politically correct than I had been before.
Obviously, in future I will have to deal with the murderous and deceptive Maurice, and reconcile with my sorely injured lady friend. In hindsight, I see the symptoms of her unsuspected delicate condition in a few bouts of uncharacteristic temperament. I also remember the poor darling's dislike of Maurice, who no doubt forced himself upon her, thereby soiling her reputation.
I, however, have the smarts to exercise restraint and a civil tongue. I am also now socially responsible beyond the ken of my kind.
I must say that doing the right thing feels absolutely terrific. I cannot wait until circumstance brings me into contact with Midnight Louise a gain.
In fact, I arrange to sashay over to the Crystal Phoenix with not one, but two lady friends in attendance. Midnight Louise, of course, huffs herself up into a wad of static-ridden hair and prepares to hiss and spit.
I cock my tail-tip in her direction.
'Tut, tut, my good girl," I say. "Do not distress yourself. This is an engagement party."
"With two fiancees?" she spits.
'The party is to celebrate my engagement with the world at large, now that I am the accidental beneficiary of a cutting-edge medical technique. I will have you know that I am vasectomized. No female is safe from my amorous attentions, and I must say that they seem happy about that," I add, as my shills (I mean my lovely companions) brush against me to and fro. "But no female will suffer consequences of a parental nature from my advances. You are therefore one of the last of your kind (which is my kind). I hope you appreciate it.
"As for me, I am a new dude, but I expect to be up to all the same old things. No doubt you wish to congratulate me."
She does not.
But the shills sure do.
Very best fishes,
Midnight Louie, Esq.
P.S. You can reach Midnight Louie on the Internet at:
http: //www. ca twriter/cdouglas
To subscribe to Midnight Louie's Scratching Post-Intelligencer newsletter, write: P.O. Box 331555, Fort Worth, TX 76163
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--CND
Carole Nelson Douglas
Employs the Kindest Cut of All
Midnight Louie came into my life a tomcat, as a corporeal motel cat in California. He was a hippie in 1973, no doubt about it. Footloose, all for free love, a true gentleman of the road.
The Minnesota cat-lover who saved him from sure euthanasia as a stray found he couldn't adapt to apartment life. She wanted him to have a country home where he could roam --intact, a tomcat still.
In 1973, people were less aware of the horrible price pet overpopulation exacts on strays.
Midnight Louie survived well, but he was (yes) unusually strong, smart and unscarred Louie's and my association in 1973 was brief and professional. When I first translated Midnight Louie into print for a newspaper, his tough, street-smart voice came through loud, clear--and irrevocably male.
As Louie later made the leap to fiction, I felt obligated to remain true to the original personality. In the same way, when I made Irene Adler, the only woman to outwit Sherlock Holmes, the protagonist of her own adventures, I felt obliged to work with the details of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's story about her, "A Scandal in Bohemia." This meant working around his error of making an operatic prima donna a contralto instead of the mandated soprano.
Although Midnight Louie's naturally high testosterone quotient satirizes the rogue male model that populates human hard-boiled mystery and other fiction--and sometimes even human society (imagine that!)--I knew that, in real life, unneutered tomcats sire thousands of abandoned, hungry, abused and euthanized kittens, and short-lived, feral stray cats. Yet to conventionally "fix" this fictional tomcat, I would destroy the anthropomorphic blend of human and feline that makes the character his own inimitable self.
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.