Lilian Jackson Braun - Cat 11 Who Lived High

Riker broke the silence as they approached the motel. "I had enough sense to grab my credit cards, but I don't have my socks or my razor or my partial!" "I'm in the same boat," Qwilleran said. "I have my wallet but I've lost everything else, including the cats' turkey roaster." The clerk at the motel said, "We have a few rooms with waterbeds." "Not for me," said Riker.

"I'll take one," said Qwilleran. "And do you have a disposable litterbox for the cats?" Once situated in the room, he opened the door of the carrier and threw himself on the bed, while the Siamese inspected the room like veteran travelers.

In a matter of minutes someone kicked the door, and Riker was standing there with two paper cups. "Turn on the TV! There's live coverage on 'All-night News' right after the commercials. And here's some free coffee." An announcer in a parka - filmed against a background of fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars - was saying, "Firemen are still fighting the blaze at the Casablanca apartments following an explosion at 3:18 this morning. The blast, of unknown origin, destroyed three floors of the building, which is almost a hundred years old." The camera zoomed to the top of the blackened, smoldering structure, while the voice-over continued: "Forty-two residents have been hospitalized with injuries, and many are missing. No bodies have been recovered. Jessica Tuttle, manager of the Casablanca, says it is impossible to tell how many persons were in the building at the time of the explosion." The face of Mrs. Tuttle, grim and managerial, flashed on the screen with a microphone thrust in front of her. "We have about two hundred tenants," she said, "but we don't know who was in the building when it happened and who wasn't. We're grateful for the prompt rescue attempts. Everything's been handled very efficiently... No, I don't know what could have caused it. Perhaps the Lord is trying to tell us something." A cracked voice off-camera shouted, "He's tellin' ya to tear the place down!" The video cut to a Red Cross van and then a bus being loaded with refugees in nightclothes, some huddled in blankets. Voice-over: "Survivors are being bused to temporary shelters. Residents who were not on the premises at the time of the explosion are urged to telephone the following number to assist in the search for the missing..." Qwilleran said, "There's Mrs. Jasper with Napoleon, boarding the bus!" She raised the cat's paw to wave at the camera. "And there's Yazbro, the skunk who let the air out of my tires!" A man in a red golf hat was helping elderly tenants into the bus. Then, as the camera panned the windows of the loaded vehicle, showing strained and frightened faces, Qwilleran caught a glimpse of plucked eyebrows, marcelled hair, and a head tilted prettily to one side. His sigh of relief was more like a groan.

He said, "I wonder if poor Charlotte got out safely. I wonder if her 'gentleman friend' got out in time. If not, he's lost more than an ear on this job." "Yow!" said Koko. He was sitting tall on the TV and washing up - just as he had sat tall on the volume of Van Gogh, licking his right paw and washing his mask, his whiskers, and particularly his right ear.

"Remarkable cat!" Qwilleran murmured with- out elucidating to his skeptical friend.

"I've had all I can take," said Riker. "I'm going to bed." As soon as he was out of the room the Siamese engaged in a sudden expression of joy, chasing each other wildly under and over the furniture; they knew they were going home. Qwilleran propped himself against the headboard and watched the steeplechase.

Eventually Yum Yum snuggled down on his lap. She had lost her apathy and moody aloofness. Had she been affected by the "opalescence" that hung over the city like a stifling blanket? Did she find it unsettling to live on the fourteenth floor (which was really the thirteenth)? Or was she simply using feline strategy to get her own way? Qwilleran stroked her soft silky fur and called her his little sweetheart, and she responded by raising a velvet paw to touch his moustache, all the while squeezing her eyes and purring deliriously.

As for Koko, he jumped on the bed and flopped down in an attitude of exhaustion. It had been a strenuous night.

He had saved an estimated two hundred persons.

The End