Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Or … am I hearing the moon?

That is not such a crazy notion. My kind are creatures of the night. We court and sing by the light of the moon. And hunt. Some writers have fancied that all of us leap up to the moon every night. (I do not know why we would. If it is indeed made of green cheese, it would attract taste bud–challenged rats, not cats. On the other hand, a planet-wide rat-chasing is an excellent fitness routine.)

Louie. Come up.

Manx, that moon is insistent! You would think it is Miss Midnight Louise, my liberated and obviously misbegotten (by somebody else other than me) would-be daughter.

The light dawns. That phrase is a metaphor, not a descriptive fact. A metaphor is a … sort of alias.

I leap to the palm tree trunk and ratchet up its scabrous curving height until I can leap to the frond that brushes the Circle Ritz roof. I slide down its bendable length, using my weight, and leap onto the patio three stories above my Miss Temple’s place, a perfect four-shiv-point landing.

This equally small space puts me face-to-kisser with two round blue moon-shaped orbs, the slightly crossed eyes of Miss Electra Lark’s reclusive, exclusive so-called sacred cat of Burma.

Her name is Karma, and she likes to play with everything from past lives to future predictions.

To add to my annoyance after climbing up to the penthouse level to join Miss Mystic Muse on her Juliet balcony, she does not even invite me in.

“You must stay out here, Louie. Miss Electra Lark has insomnia and just now fell asleep,” she explains. “It was bad enough that I was drawn outside by the moon tides. I had to ease the door shut one toe at a time.”

Insomnia is an inexplicable malady to me. I can fit in a catnap anytime, anywhere, and am about to doze off right here and now from boredom while Karma proceeds to extol the glories of the night sky.

“I know you are at home in the moonlight, Louie, but do you ever look up from your crude expeditions for prey and playmates to contemplate the vast clockwork motions of our universe?”

I am usually too busy looking down to make sure I do not lose my footing on whatever wall I am using for a serenading stage.

“Do you never sense, Louie, the presence of some thing, some entity, far larger than our petty struggles to survive?”

Uh, yeah. Like Animal Control.

And what is this “our” petty struggle to survive? I doubt Karma has ever set one of her sacred white-tipped feet out of the penthouse apartment, other than onto this tiny balcony.

“Do you not think sometimes, Louie…”