“Cold shower?” she asks me.
She hurls the cell phone to the sofa. Why is she mad? She is like, really angry.
She retrieves the phone and hits the redial button again.
People are so predictable with their toys. I suppose it is somewhat entertaining to watch them cavort with technology.
Then she stares at me again and bends down to swoop me up in her arms.
First of all, I do not “swoop.”
Second of all, I weight almost twenty pounds so I am quite a bundle of bones for her to hoist.
Third of all, she is wearing this dress with only a halter top, so I have nothing but warm bare flesh to wrap my legs around. Ick! It takes all my considerable self-control to keep from latching on to her with my shiv tips.
Perhaps that is why she has goose bumps on her arms.
She carries me to the French doors leading to her petite balcony, opens one, and walks out into the finally cooling night.
Below us lies the serene blue rectangle of the pool and, on the other side, the parking lot.
She gazes out, idly stroking my chin and throat.
All right. This is better. I think about rewarding her diligence with a slight purr.
Suddenly, she stiffens. All over. Her hand on my throat almost throttles me.
I look down to see that Mr. Matt has strolled out tc the pool. He is far more clothed than usual in that area. and he too begins pacing!
My Miss Temple’s grip tightens.
Mr. Matt sits on one of the lounge chairs and proceeds to remove his shoes and stockings! Well, I have always felt that humans were way overdressed. He looks like Tom Sawyer by the riverbank, I think, having lounged on a lot of library books in my time. (One does pick up things.) Miss Temple edges, barefoot too, to the edge of the balcony.
I, of course, am carried along with her, unwilling. I have definitely revoked the purr.
He stands up, lays his jacket on the lounge chair, and starts unbuttoning his shirt.
My Miss Temple is as still as a stalking cat. I did not know she had such skills in her. She watches. I can practically feel her whiskers twitching, her pupils slitting. (These are figures of speech. She is not so elegantly accoutered as me and my kind, alas.) But she is as alert as any alley cat, which is high praise from me.
Mr. Matt’s instincts are nothing to spit at tonight either. He suddenly looks up.
They see each other.
My Miss Temple does not move a muscle, except that her heart revs up.
He looks at her. She looks at him.
He keeps undoing buttons on his shirt. Then it is on the lounge chair.
He begins on the trousers—silly convention! He stops at the underwear, which is dark and understated, at least.
My Miss Temple’s fingernails are starting to seriously impinge on my musculature, which is almost in as admirable a state as Mr. Matt’s.
What is the big deal? She has seen him in his swim trunks before.
All I can say is the night is strangely charged until hedives into the deep end of the lit aquamarine pool and begins swimming laps back and forth.
Some spell is broken. Miss Temple mutters under her breath, and incidentally into my ear, “Well, I suppose it’s the equivalent of a cold shower. For him.”
She sounds terminally angry with our esteemed neighbor and I chance a small merow in her ear.
“Poor Louie!” she says, back to normal and paying attention to me again. “Are you hungry? Was bad mommy away too long? Bad, bad mommy.”
Well, I loathe the “mommy” stuff, which my MissTemple has never resorted to before, but I cannot complain about the tins of sardines, shrimp, and oysters she piles over the ugly green, dry foundation of Free-to-beFeline in my bowl.
I settle on my haunches to dispense with it bite by delicious bite.
Thank goodness things are back to normal around here and I can lie back, digest everything, and relax for a while_
Tailpiece
Midnight Louie ,
Paterfamilias
People! They are forever fixating on fatherhood. I suppose that is because of capitalistic materialism. They not only have territory to defend but property to inherit along with genetic traits.
Me, I find fatherhood incontinent, irrelevant, and immaterial.
I am like that Greek goddess who gave Zeus such a headache that she was born from his brain. She never had a mother and therefore gave Orestes his walking papers when he was up for Murder One for offing his mother. Mother offing is a big no-no even in the natural world but this Athena chick did not see it as any big deal, as she never had a mother, only a very powerful father with a headache.
Anyway, we street cats only know our mothers and they are pretty darn good to us until the hormones wear off and we are on our own. So fathers are no bigdeal. Even if we did run into one we would probably have to fight him anyway.
So I am mystified by all this brouhaha about Mr. Matt finding his father and little Miss Mariah’s father finding out he is one. Miss Midnight Louise appears to have been infected by this human obsession also. She should understand that the way of our kind is serial fatherhood. It is not that lady cats are what humans would call promiscuous. They are just designed to enter the sublime state of heat, unable to say no. Naturally, there are all sorts of dudes out there with the same problem. So a single litter may have four different fathers. And who knows which kit is due to which father?
So why sweat it? In my case, Ma Barker made it clear to me that Three O’Clock Louie was my sire. And that is fine with both of us. We do not need to tread on each other’s toenails but neither do we need to hang out and sing sentimental songs together once upon a midnight clear, or drear.
Humans are also ridiculous about the mating game. Here they have the option to have all the fun and pretty much ensure that no unforeseen consequences come along later causing them to look up innocent dudes as if they were criminals. Yet they keep subjecting their most basic instincts to intense negotiation, not to mention recrimination. Why bother!
I muse on these matters because it is clear to me that my MissTemple is contemplating wandering in the congenial feline direction when it comes to matters of the heart and other organs.
I cannot say I am surprised. Mr. Matt was bound to outgrow his artificially extended adolescence one of these days and become a young tom with a lot of wasted time to make up for.
I cannot agree with those who do not much like Mr.Max Kinsella. He is one cool cat in the street or between the sheets, from my observation, with obligations to protect the world at large that few can understand. Rather like myself. But he has other territory to guard at the moment and when the cat’s away … the mice will play. And someone will pay. This is Las Vegas. Bet on it.
Very best fishes,
Midnight Louie, Esq
P.S. For information about getting Midnight Louie’s free newsletter and/or buying his T-shirt, contact him at Midnight Louie’s Scratching Post-Intelligencer, PO Box 331555, Fort Worth, TX 76163-1555, or by e-mail at cdouglas@catwriter.com. Or visit Midnight Louie’s Web pages at www.carolenelsondouglas.com or www.cat writer.com.
Tailpiece Carole Nelson Douglas Makes Room for Daddy You’re a tine one to philosophize about fatherhood, Louie.
You’ve only just now barely acknowledged the delightful Midnight Louise as your daughter.
But you’re right that the feline kingdom is a matriarchy when it comes to family life. A lot of human households are becoming more like that, since some human fathers are also likely to slip away from the confines of a domestic life.
Still, humans are hooked on relationships. They have a sense of history about where their forebears have been and where they and the whole human family might be going.
So when blood relations are missing, they find unrelated people to fill in for the absent father, or mother, or brother or sister, or child. Sometimes even your kind do the job, Louie.