“And painful!” he cried. “Owowowow!”
“Didn’t you take the same pills, Max?” asked Dooley.
“I did.”
“Yours is tiny,” Harriet said with distaste. “Miniscule. Almost non-existent.”
Max sighed, the sigh of a long-suffering cat. “Why me?” he said.
“Are they all right?” asked Chase, turning in his seat to look back.
“They’re fine,” she assured him. At least she hoped they were.
Chapter 19
That night, we were all sufficiently recovered to attend cat choir, which is just about the biggest social event for cats in Hampton Cove. Cat choir is all about letting our inner cat out and sing to its heart’s content. The only drawback is that the neighbors of Hampton Cove Park are cultural barbarians who don’t appreciate the finer points of cat-produced art.
We don’t care, though, and carry on regardless of the catcalls and shoes thrown.
That night the meeting was a sad affair, though. All members were wearing their flea collars—perhaps the rest of the world had abandoned the terrible practice of outfitting cats with collars when the first flea reared its ugly head, but here in Hampton Cove the collar still reigned supreme, or so it seemed. There’s nothing to put a good cat down like the collar does, and we were all suffering the indignation. Even Shanille, our conductor, was downcast.
Brutus, recovered from his vitamin poisoning, for that was what he had apparently suffered, Dooley, the consumption of Odelia’s pill having had as its worst effect a slight case of diarrhea, and Harriet, vowing never to ingest flea-repellent ever again, were all present and accounted for. On me, those vitamin pills Vena had prescribed for Brutus merely had the effect of boosting my energy levels to such an extent that I was feeling fit as a fiddle.
So when suddenly Princess, the Most Compelling Cat in the World, showed up, along with a troupe of other cats I’d never seen, I felt oddly complacent. In fact I would have told the black cat to ‘bring it on!’ had it not been for my innate sense of self-preservation. Also, that scratch across the left butt cheek still hurt, and I wasn’t looking to turn the other cheek.
“Who are those cats?” asked Harriet as she stared in abject fascination.
And I had to admit that the small troupe of cats looked absolutely amazing.
For one thing, none of them were wearing flea collars, which made them stand out. And for another, they entered the scene with a marked swagger, as if they owned the place. You cannot own a park, of course, but it was obvious nobody had told them.
“Isn’t that…” Dooley said, his voice dying away. “Max, it’s Princess!”
Princess raised her paw. “We come in peace!” she declared, loud enough for the entire gathering to hear. “And we come bearing gifts!” she added, gesturing to her friends.
One by one, the cats stepped to the fore, tapping their chests and introducing themselves. “My name is Princess,” said Princess. “The Most Compelling Cat in the World.”
“My name is Beca, and I’m the Most Attractive Cat in the World,” a fit red cat said.
“I’m Chloe,” said a pretty striped cat. “And I’m the Most Intriguing Cat in the World.”
“I’m Aubrey and I’m the Most Iconic Cat in the World,” said a strapping white cat.
“And I’m Fat Amy, and I’m the Sexiest Cat Alive,” a well-rounded cat said.
“And together we’re the Most Interesting Cats in the World!” Princess yelled.
And suddenly, before our very eyes, the cats started performing the kind of routine one habitually sees on the stage of some Broadway musical. Or in those funny Pitch Perfect movies. They launched into a song-and-dance routine that had us all staring in abject awe.
They started off with a bit of Taylor Swift’s Shake it Off, shaking their tails provocatively, flawlessly segued into Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love, synchronized dancing to the beat, then it was on to Gwen Stefani’s Hollaback Girl before finishing off with a rousing rendition of Pink’s Get The Party Started, really blowing up the scene, dancing up a storm.
When the show was over, we all blew out a collective gasp of appreciation, then the entire cat choir burst into a loud and raucous applause.
The interesting cat collective stood panting for a moment, basking in the admiration, then took a slight bow, with Princess declaring, “Now it’s time for you guys to blow us away!”
I gulped, and so did some of the other members of cat choir. Truth be told, our repertoire is a little limited. Cat choir isn’t so much about putting on a compelling show but more about giving local cats a chance to shoot the breeze and sniff each other’s butts. And that’s what some of the members now did, approaching the Most Interesting Cats in the World and sniffing their butts. I could have told them this was not a good idea, but some cats can’t be told and need to be shown. A few harsh words and well-aimed lashes of razor-sharp claws later, five cats were racing away into the tree line with their tails between their legs.
“Let’s do what we do best, fellas,” said Kingman. “Let’s sing our anthem!”
We all gave him a bewildered look. Anthem? Did we have an anthem?
But Shanille seemed to have picked up on his cue, for she cried over the hubbub that followed Kingman’s words, “From the top—one and two and three and four!” And proceeded to belt out, “Midnight. Not a sound from the pavement. Has the moon lost her—”
“Has she lost her mind?” asked Harriet next to me. “I can’t sing that.”
Shanille was doing little movements with her paws, dancing in a circle, head and tail held high, just the way they did it in the musical Cats. I’d only seen it once. On YouTube. And it had failed to impress. Though I had to admit I enjoyed Barbra’s version of the hit song.
Other cats soon fell in, caterwauling with absolute abandon, the yowls and ear-splitting screeches lighting up windows all along the streets that lined the park. Soon voices could be heard from neighbors, and next thing we knew the shoes were raining down.
As Dooley dodged one particularly well-aimed shoe, he said, “Don’t these people ever run out of footwear?”
Apparently not. Meanwhile, Shanille was undeterred, and kept giving her moving rendition of Memory, swaying to the music like a cat under the influence of a powerful narcotic, possibly marijuana or some other hallucinatory substance. Other cats mimicked her movements, turning the performance into something akin to a first-grade school play.
The Most Interesting Cats in the World where mostly unimpressed. Shaking their heads, they decided not to stick around and left the scene before the grand finale, chuckling at the sad show. Looked like the visitors had won this particular competition.
Shanille hadn’t even noticed her audience had dispersed, for she kept belting out those hard-to-reach high notes. The moment her final shriek died away, she took a bow and a size-fifteen combat boot in the small of her back and was out for the count.
Things kind of petered out after that. The neighbor who’d thrown the boot must have known that if you want to defeat an army you take out its leader. With Shanille down, there was no sense sticking around, and we decided to set a course for the good old homestead.
“Shanille did well,” Dooley said. “She has a really good voice.”
“I thought she sucked,” Harriet commented, harsh theater critic that she was.
“But what about those Most Interesting Cats, huh?” said Brutus hoarsely. It was obvious those five cats had left an indelible impression on his impressionable soul.
Harriet snapped her head up. “If you like them so much, why don’t you join them!”
And with this crack, she stalked off, tail in the air.