“Mon Capitan,” I correct her sharply.
I claw my way up a small dune to survey the terrain ahead of us. More sand, sweat, and tears. Luckily, neither of our breeds sweats or cries, although we certainly can suffer.
“I see civilization ahead,” I announce, farsighted leader that I am.
The Yorkies pitter-patter up the dune, pocking sand with birdlike tracks as they go. I am not sure that they are not really a species of kangaroo rats, so well have they adapted to desert warfare.
Their desiccated noses scent the arid air, still effective despite the lack of lubrication.
“The prey awaits ahead, mon Capitan,” Groucho announces in a sandpapered voice.
“Good,” croak I. “And water?”
“Nothing near,” Golda says with a forlorn headshake. “I could use a bath and an air-dry and a comb-out in the worst way.”
“Be of good cheer,” I counsel the troops. “Once we return to civilization you can return to all the comforts of home.”
I am lying through my dehydrated teeth, of course. It is called keeping up morale.
We resume our course, the Yorkies in the lead, noses to ground unless an impoliticly placed cactus has caused a deviation.
The morning shadows have shortened like clock hands before we are within sight of the distant buildings.
We pause to pant again, aware that water must await in the oasis before us.
I so tell the troops. “Water must await in the oasis before us.”
“It is an oasis, all right,” Golda agrees, sitting on her tiny haunches with her forelegs in the air, sniffing. “An animal oasis.”
“What gives you that idea? Your overeducated nose?”
She shakes her bow in a southeasterly direction. “The sign says so.”
I blink and look.
Indeed.
The little bowhead still has sharp eyesight as well as nostril power. A huge sign sits near a gravel road, and it reads “Animal Oasis.”
“Another hunt club?” I wonder aloud.
Groucho sniffs the wind. “I smell lions and tigers and bears. And antelope, deer, and rams.”
I shake the sand out of my claws for the umpteenth time, and point to the sign. “Furward!”
In no time flat, or flat-footed, we are slinking around the smells and signs of civilization again.
The diminutive dogs are sniffing circles, confused by the profusion of animal life, and the overwhelming scent of fresh water.
I give up and let them lead us to the water bowls first.
In minutes our three lips and tongues are plunged nostril-deep in an ample pond of fresh water.
In only another minute, we sense a large engulfing cloud that has shadowed our private pond. I look up.
Amazing how clouds will take on the shape of earthly beings. I could swear the Lion King himself is looming over us.
Oh.
“Hello, Mon Majesté.” I salute. “We are weary travelers from afar and athirst, seeking succor at your royal claws. Er, paws.”
Leo lays himself down, almost crushing the Yorkshire constabulary. They yip and dance away, their whiskers dripping purloined water.
Leo yawns, displaying a feline Himalayas of dental peaks. “Are these sand fleas?” he asks me.
“Compared to Your Royalness, yes.”
“And you are—?”
“The name is Louie. Midnight Louie. I am an investigator out of Vegas.”
Leo laps lazily at the pond that has been our salvation, almost licking up the Yorkies in the backwash.
“What can I do for you?” the lion asks politely.
Well. The Yorkies flutter to my side while I sit down, wring my whiskers free of excess water and make my presentation.
“We are on the trail of a dude who has something to do with the murder at the hunt club over yonder.”
“Hunt club?” Leo looks cross-eyed at a fly on his majestic nose, frowns, and swats it to Kingdome come. His flyswatter is the size of a pizza pan.
I decide right then and there not to tell him too many of the nefarious goings-on next door, so to speak. Might agitate the local wildlife.
“Murder?” Leo repeats again, yawning while the dislodged fly darts into his maw by mistake. “What is murder?”
I forget that these big guys, however domesticated, are serious predators without my fine-tuned and human-oriented sense of right and wrong. Leo would probably consider a dead big-game hunter a case of anything but murder.
“A human was killed and no one can tell who or what did it.”
Leo nods sagaciously. How could one not look sagacious with a head that big, wearing a wig reminiscent of an English judge with a blond dye job?
“You hunt the hunter,” he says.
We nod agreement for once.
“You are a little small for the job,” Leo notes.
I shrug. I refrain from pointing out that I am big enough to get by without needing an “Animal Oasis.”
Groucho is emboldened to squeak. “We are looking for a feline party, name of Osiris.”
“Oh, the little guy.” Leo nods again. With his head of flowing blond hair, he reminds me of a somber Fabio, the romance-novel cover dude. “I wondered why he was set apart. He does not look like a man-eater, but then it does not always show, does it?”
We nod. Truer words were never growled.
“I have never seen a man-eater,” Leo goes on, grooming a foreleg the size and shape of Florida. “I begin to think it is a mythical beast. I do not like stringy limbs and haunches myself, and I have not had to fend for myself, so cannot say much about this type.”
“Well,” I say, glancing at the pond, “thanks for the drink. We will mosey on down the line and have a chat with Osiris in person.”
“Be my guest.” Leo yawns and rolls over on his back, all four paws in the air.
The Yorkies have had to move briskly to avoid becoming mini-bath mats. Talk about a matting problem!
“That was a waste of time,” Groucho growls as we mush on through the sand like the Three Musketeers.
“Not at all,” I say. “We have checked in with the head honcho. That never hurts. That smell still doing it for you, Golda?”
“Oh, yes, mon Capitan!” She responds to authority as well as any individual of this feisty breed can. “In fact, I see a leopard pattern dead ahead, and the scent trail leads directly to his compound.”
Osiris is lounging in the shade of some sort of imported plant, digging his claws into a huge felt toy of some kind.
We sneak around to the rear of his area, where more imported greenery shades us as well.
When he spots me, his long, lean, measle-spotted body leaps up and bounds to the fence.
We shrink back, but it seems that Osiris is as happy as a hound dog to see us. Or rather, me.
His huge pink tongue laves the airy fence wires, missing my puss by only about three inches as I jump back as fast as he leaped forward. Nobody washes Midnight Louie’s face since I left my mama’s supervision.
“Thank you!” Osiris purrs, rubbing his decorator-approved side back and forth on the wires separating me and the tiny duo from his hyperactive four hundred pounds.
“For what?” I naturally ask.
“Lunch!” He pauses to regard the Yorkshire constabulary.
They rush in where pit bulls would fear to tread, hurling themselves yapping against the fence and incidentally a good portion of the pacing Osiris.
“Idiot feline!” they screech. “We are highly trained tracking animals here to clear you of a murder one charge.” They bounce off the wires and lunge forward again, rather like attacking Ping-Pong balls with very long fungus.
Osiris backs off, blinking, and sits on his lean haunches. He still looks like he could use some lunch, but I see that his idea of edibles is not the Yorkies.
“I meant,” he says, lying down to wash his face and much resembling a faux leopardskin rug. “Thanks for lunch the other day, at the other place. The two-legs had given me nothing for several dark-times and I was almost ready to eat the mats between my toes, which you two in some ways resemble, no offense.”