Cat In An Alien X-Ray

I cannot rejoice overmuch at the moment, though, because when the pair left the hotel room, I had flung myself down under the railing to cling to a thick but thorny length of exotic flowering vine and am now desperately fighting two fatal impulses: To sneeze or to fall, that is the question. Or do both.

Hopefully, neither of the above.

Unfortunately, Miss Kitty the Cutter is alone now and wringing the brass top rail with her razorless hands and cussing out Mr. Matt, Mr. Max, and Miss Temple something awful.

I dare not climb up to resume tailing Mr. Matt because the awkward positions required to achieve solid ground again would leave me at the mercy of Miss Kitty and either a swift kick to the gut and the curb twenty stories below or a lusty neck-wringing.

Inquiring members of feather nation gather around me, chirping and calling and clicking their beaks in admonition, drawing unwelcome attention to my secret presence and generally twittering it all over the atrium.

Fortunately, I am recognized.

“Oh, not a predator,” comes the sweet tweet of a gray parrot I recognize from my last assignment here.

“Begone, begone, begone,” tweet a flock of cockatiels, and I would be obliged if Miss Kitty would depart.

“I need a diversion,” I tell the gray parrot, who is amazingly verbal and intelligent for a featherhead.

“Troops,” the gray orders, “Disneyize that woman at the railing.”

Well, you have never seen a more colorful array of sweet little feathered nothings twining in and around Miss Kathleen O’Connor’s form, swooping into her black locks and lifting edges of her filmy clothing in their little yellow beaks and chirping oh-so-sunnily.

It is as if one of the Ugly Stepsisters became the object of a Cinderella makeover. Miss Kitty is soon batting and turning and making like Miss Tippi Hedren in an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

I undulate up the sinuous branch, never looking down to twenty stories below, and scramble over the edge onto the balcony.

The last I see of Miss Kitty the Cutter, she is batting off birds and much resembling the Wicked Witch of the West surrounded by her flying monkeys.

I race to the elevators, heading for the main floor and the parking lot, determined to get to Mr. Matt’s silver Jaguar before the big automotive cat takes off without me.

That would not be a brotherly act from a fellow feline. I need to keep my tail.

I can only hope the rest of the Cat Pack is pursuing their assignments with equal savvy and vigor.

And less dependence on our feathered friends.

Chapter 49