They make a lot of stops, their doors are always open, the drivers are always filling out papers and thus able to be slipped past, and they are loaded with nice bulky items to hide behind.
Of course, the drivers’ routes are limited and the savvy hitchhiker must know when to forsake one chauffeur for another working nearer her goal.
In less than three “transfers,” I am on the Las Vegas Strip, a mere mile or so from my destination. Yet one mile of hoofing it in the hot sun, to a four-footed individual with a three-inch stride like me, is like going for a six-mile hike were I a two-footed person with a fifteen-inch stride.
I am also not about to lose time zigzag-stitching my way through air-conditioned hotels. Taking a rest in the shade of a Stripside bush at the Paris Hotel, I plot the next leg of my journey. I rarely show myself on the Strip. It causes unwanted comment and I also am in danger of being captured and possibly killed for my “own good.” It is, as the cliché makes clear, a jungle out here.
Like my old man says, “Kits, do not try solo roaming if you live safe at home and consider a stroll to the litter box a taxing trek. We at Midnight Investigations, Inc., are Vegas veterans and professionals at eluding traffic and tourists and sunstroke.”
Right now I am goggle-eyed at passing the parade of portable three-card monte games of chance; mimes; rap artists and tap, break, and ballet dancers; street musicians and magicians; men on stilts; women on Rollerblades and cops on patrol.
You would think the acts from Circus Circus Hotel and Casino up the Strip had gone on strike and taken their skills to the street. I must keep my tender toes dodging the emphatic stomps of tap shoes and toe shoes and clown shoes and sports shoes.
An endless drone of song and spiel drifts down to my level. My ears are unfortunately geared to pick up every sound, not drown them out. What is going on here? Then I realize this streetside show is not a special event, but a new curse brought on by today’s Las Vegas, which suffers the lowest house values and highest job losses in the nation.
These bustling and hustling theatrical folk are all fancy panhandlers. Begging is against the law on most city streets, so they “perform” for their supper while the beat cops in their beige Bermuda shorts try to please the big venues and avoid irritating the tourists by moving the impromptu show folks along.
I have been known to cadge a meal, or three, a day. Then I won my slot as the Crystal Phoenix house detective, not to mention the services of the hotel’s devoted Asian chef, who has an award-winning hand with what is called the “fruits of the sea” on the best menus in town.
This keeps me far away from the giant fish tank in the lobby of the Mirage, and most of those fish are really too big to consider prey instead of predator. The Mirage is not about to spotlight sardines and anchovies, except on menus or at sushi bars. However, when you are talking about the latest 3-D movie spectacular, that is where you will find me rapt and gazing at the big screen.
For now, though, I stare at the endless passing parade of street performers, which stops frequently to bilk the tourists of a buck or two. This is a job even my senior partner’s Miss Temple could not manage. The hotels wish these colorful pests to be gone so all the dollars will flow into their own expensively housed coffers. Yet, to be seen hustling away folks likely hurt by the international wave of economic woes … is bad for business. So, for once, the powers-that-be in Las Vegas face a lose–lose situation, when it is always win–win in their casinos.
However, I am on a mission to foil a possibly international gang of robbers, killers, and bad actors far beyond what these sidewalk performers can manage. How will I make my smooth and swift way through such a milling crowd without losing toes to the crush?
Then I notice a new sight on ye olde Boulevard. Human heads skating along a full foot above the rest. The motion is too steady, and too slow, to come from any sort of skateboard.
I use my claws to ratchet up the nearest palm tree trunk, a tough, rough climb.
At that height, I spot a group of people who are rolling along together on a bicycle built for one, meaning it is not a bicycle. They are instead sailing forward while standing still on two fat wheels at either side of their lazy feet. Their hands curl pawlike around a very short handlebar.
The sight is enough to make a cat laugh. They all look so straight and solemn that boulevard strollers stop and turn, and make way for them. That is what I need! A royal escort service.
I immediately recognize a fad at work, the so-called Segway. Sadly, the rolling platform is only big enough for two admittedly flat feet. Once again we four-foots have been blatantly discriminated against.
While I fret at the injustice of it all, the leader of the Segway easy riders announces passing landmarks on the tour.
My goal is only three massive properties farther along the Strip. I twitch my whiskers in indecision, rejecting hitching a ride on the wheels’ skimpy metal fenders that offer no purchase for claws.
I am lithe and supple compared to my middle-aging deadbeat dad, but even a slip of a thing like me recognizes when there is no room at the inn.
The wheeled group sweeps on by, my opportunity gliding away with them.
Then I see what brings up the end of the Segway parade … a three-wheeled version for oldsters, wisely including a metal basket attached to the rear. With a leap and a bound I am in the last basket passing. I cannot claim this is a discreet or comfy mode of travel, but it is easy on the footpads.
My driver is a white-tufted snowbird in Bermuda shorts the better to showcase stilt-thin yet hairy legs. Ugh. Not an enticing sight, all that naked pink skin turning lobster red between the occasional whiskerette.
Speaking of whiskers, I cannot keep my long and delicate vibrissae from tickling the codger in the calves.
That sounds like a new nursery rhyme, “The codger in the calves.”
This sight must have struck the milling pedestrians as amusing as well. Perhaps my hitching a ride has entertained the masses too. They begin twittering and pointing. When I say “twittering,” I mean it in the old-fashioned sense, but the raised cell phone cameras mean they are also “tweeting” photos of my impressive forward motion, as they say in covering football games on TV.
I am thankful my old man uses antique investigation methods that will keep him from swiping, and then “swiping” Miss Temple’s cell phone. It is possible I may end up on YouTube, the first in the family to go viral.
That would really frost the old dude’s white whiskers. He is the sort who aims at being the only viral feline entity in Las Vegas.
Meanwhile, my Ride of Fame continues. My unintended chauffeur beams and doffs his plaid fishing cap with one hand, taking a bow. He simultaneously rubs his tickled calves on the basket grid while I offer pointed warnings by boxing his ankles with my famous Front Four defense, to continue the football analogy.
Whole lines of people on foot are stopping to stare and laugh. Dollar bills are showering over me and into my basket. I am about to turn to take a bow when my oblivious chauffeur, his head so turned by the attention, loses all concentration. His three-wheeled chariot runs straight into a palm tree trunk.