The Tangled Tango: Part 4

Even a cat who has walked the Earth since the time of Pharaoh Siamun can learn too much, as I did four weeks ago. Since then, I've entered Josie's office every Sunday night to write my journal. And every night, I've been unable to tap words into meaning. All I could do was sit on her computer in the darkness, licking my psychic wounds. I was alone in my thoughts, but I could not walk alone in the world, not with the minions of Lususnaturae free. It has now been a month and the Cat's Cradle crew and I have traveled far. Perhaps even far enough for me to look back and start writing clearly again.

In my last entry, Uthopia had just run out of the Dancing with Karen studio and Boris had stopped my pursuit, reminding me that Hyaline was our quarry.

"Hyaline is not here, Boris," I answered dully.

His distinguished gray face was expectant, but I could not tell him more. I had finally read all the scent data processed by my Sherlock organ and the conclusion was gutting all comprehension.

When I first walked into the Dancing with Karen studio, the surprise and pleasure of seeing Uthopia had stunned my suspicious nature. I had been suffused with the Proustian scent of her, and inappropriately comforted by the absence of other toms. I'd read what I wanted to read of her perfumed biography, and stored the rest for the day-after-never.

But the day-after-never arrived when she darted out that door, Hyaline artfully woven into the fur of her left hind leg. I hadn't so much recognized Hyaline as identified the dissonance in the silky fur that I knew so well. I was no longer able to protect Uthopia from my suspicious nature; scores of suppressed questions rushed to reopen the Sherlock organ.

At first, I relived Uthopia's bright and genuine happiness at seeing me. I could have stayed there forever, but suspicion clawed me down to the shadowy engine underneath her pleasure. In Buenos Aires I hadn't just left her with a broken heart, I'd left her humiliated. She had come here for revenge, and when she saw me, she knew it was at hand. Encouraged by success, suspicion pressed my face into the sharp, odorous ire of a molly scorned, and it took my breath away.

"Brumous, where is Hyaline?" Boris asked, his eyes narrow and suspicion brushing his whiskers forward.

"Take Sheena home," I gasped, "Get Brie and Casseopeia. Now."

"And return here?"

"Yes - but just the three of you."

As Boris loped out the door with Sheena, she gave me a soft look. It was that twelfth sense of mollys: she didn't know what she knew, but she knew. I scanned the cat H.A.T.S. clowder as they diligently continued their search, despite the growing suspicion that Hyaline was not in the room. Confirmation would have to wait. The next step could not be taken until Sheena was safely home. Even as that decision returns to life on this page, I get a whiff of the madness that compelled it.

© Silver Cat Works

The Tangled Tango: Part 3

At Sheena's scream, the entire feline tango class dropped into a battery of defensive postures. Fur of every stripe exploded into full-body Mohawks while tanguero hats tilted over dangerously blazing eyes. Some of the younger toms hissed in tense accompaniment to the faint breathing of Piazzolla's bandoneón solo.

As Sheena and I stared down Main Street, the last nanoglimmer of the Hyal twin twisted out of sight. The shape-shifting Selofainian had eluded us.

"I didn't see Hyaline, Brumous," Sheena whispered giving me a sidelong glance, "and they are always together. That means she's still here."

We heard a sharp spitting tussle and Boris shouldered casually between us, shrugging at my quizzical look.

"Longhairs should have better manners," he explained gruffly, whiskers twitching.

I turned to see the offended Persian rapidly licking himself, as if such an unmannerly skirmish were utterly beneath his notice, much less his participation. It might have been convincing had it not put him at such odds with the rest of the class. His was the only pair of elliptical eyes that were not staring at the three of us with expectant menace. Most had retracted their fur from red alert, though their backs and tails maintained a brushy warning caution. We had disrupted their fun. They wanted a good explanation but did not expect one. I gave a sharp, guttural growl and spoke.

"That was Hyaloid. Hyaline is here."

A kittenish calico gasped and looked around with wide eyes.

"Lususnaturae?" demanded the burly tiger who had been dancing with Sheena.

The music drifted to a gypsy singing Tango Notturno in a sultry tremolo purr, but at the mention of the ruler of Selofaine, the chords of love were forgotten. All felines know of Lususnaturae, bladed suzerain of the seventh dimension who grows stronger with each attempt to enter ours.

"Not yet." I replied, "Never if we do our job."

There was no need for more explanation. The clowder had already begun to prowl around the studio in search of Hyaline. Ears twisted at every sound and tails flicked as they jostled one another in distracted concentration. I reflected that the midnight H.A.T.S. class did not have to dance to exude its powerful grace.

Sheena's delicate murmur slid into my ear.

"Brumous, I think you need to talk to Uthopia."

In the bitter realization that I forgotten the molly who had followed me here from Argentina, my eyes darted around the room until they found her. She was near the door, staring at the floor. Her slender back was toward me and her silky ears trembled with tension. She heard me walk up behind her and raised her head, but refused to turn around.

"She's beautiful. And smart," Uthopia mewled unsteadily, twitching her tail in Sheena's direction, "the little Manx."

"Sweet, too, but she's not mine, Uthopia. Sheena's looking for a human home."

"You can't expect me to believe that Sheena hasn't had her choice of homes, Brumous. She's adorable."

"There are a lot of homeless cats, Uthopia."

She faced me abruptly, "And what happened to our home, Brumous? What good was having five lives if you weren't in them?"

She darted out the door.

I wanted to go after her, but a thick white-gloved paw stopped me. Boris planted himself in my line of vision, white chest and chin emphasizing his serious gray face.

"We're here for Hyaline."

Closing my eyes, I allowed the scent data stored earlier to wash over me. A mocking illusion of Uthopia heated my eyelids and for the hundredth time, I considered my infinite lifespan as nothing more than an echo chamber for regrets.

I turned back into the studio.

© Silver Cat Works

The Tangled Tango: Part 2

As the bandoneón cried Adios Nonino, moonlight wept through the windows. Her vague, silvery memories of sun-drenched days flashed on the pyramid ears and rhythmically twitching tails of the feline tango class. The scene flickered like a film on the cusp of the grass-green eyes that held my attention. Suffused with Uthopia's scent, my jaw dropped. It is the unfortunate side effect of our Jacobson's organ. Located just behind the front teeth, an open mouth gives the Jacobson a direct line to the nasal cavity. Cats call it the Sherlock organ for its ability to deduce copious amounts of information from microscopic bits of evidence. Even as the music swayed, I could read the last week of Uthopia's activities with stunning clarity. Her home was close, her route a dull glow in my receptors. She lived alone and she walked alone. I was grateful to detect no tom.

It had been wrenching to leave Uthopia in Buenos Aires but I could not take her. Even with my experience, the trip had cost me five lives. Although that is a drop in the bucket to my infinite span, it is more than half of her nine-lifespan. Like many feral felines, she'd already lost several lives in kittenhood. A journey like that could have cost her all that remained.

And yet here she was. Her grass-green eyes blinked inquisitively. I decided to store the rest of the scent data and read it later.

"Uthopia."

"I'm as surprised as you, Brumous. I lost your trail in D.C." Her accent was a melody sweeter than any bandoneón.

"But how…"

"I knew you had come to the states so I insinuated myself with the first two-legged American accent I could find."

"And they brought you here…safely?"

She smiled, "I have the same five lives as I had when you left," the last word was almost a sigh, "Brumous."

My name was never so at home as when it slipped through Uthopia's sharp little teeth. Why did hers sound so alien on mine? I tried again.

"Uthopia…" I said with a pang that must have been guilt, "When did you get here?"

"Six months ago."

"It didn't take you long to become the belle of the Dancing with Karen studio."

"Only because the felines in Harrisonburg are so sweet," she said modestly, "Are you here to meet someone?"

"Yes, my friend Boris," I answered smoothly, not wishing to admit that we had been casing her joint.

"Which one is he?"

She scanned her students curiously and that was when we noticed that they were all making a point of not looking at us. I turned back to find Uthopia blushing.

"They wonder about this mysterious cat with their teacher," she murmured with a smile.

"Brumous!" Sheena's howl crashed across the room.

As I bounded over, I could see Sheena's claws just miss the almost invisible sliver of light as it darted under the window. The slippery Hyaloid of Selofaine had made his escape. I pressed my nose to the glass alongside Sheena and we watched him streaking down East Market Street, his trail nothing more than a series of staccato nanoglimmers.

We turned to find Uthopia staring at us, stricken. Seeing the look, Sheena swiveled back to the window before whispering sotto voce.

"Brumous - Hyaline is still here!"

© Silver Cat Works

The Tangled Tango: Part 1

Today Harrisonburg is cradled in a thick blanket of immaculate white snow. At least that's what humans think. But when sunlight hits snow, millions of transparent ice crystals shatter the beams into zillions of colorful photons that dart in every direction. The three primary color receptors in human eyes record all the reds, blues and yellows in equal amounts, so human brains level the chaos into pristine white. But Selofaine eyes from the fourth dimension, the transparent world, can't do that. To Hyaloid and Hyaline, the kaleidoscopic explosion is blindingly colorful. To protect their sensitive eyes, they've hidden inside. And we know where.

Recently the Dancing with Karen studio down the street started offering midnight tango lessons for felines. It's an outgrowth of H.A.T.S – the Harrisonburg Argentine Tango Society - and it's become quite a hit with the young ladies at the Cat's Cradle Adoption Center. Ella, Juliet and Bess are regulars, and the other night Juliet talked her brother into going, because Buzzy made such a dashing escort in his tuxedo markings. Buzzy, however, was not quite so happy about the whole thing and asked Brie to chaperone.

And again it was Brie of the tanzanite eyes who first saw Hyaloid. The shape-shifter had iced over the mirrors to watch the dancers, spreading himself to cell-thin invisibility. The following night, Sheena signed up for the class and confirmed the minute distortion in the mirrors as characteristic of Hyaloid.

It was a surprising move, hiding in a roomful of cats. Even though tangoing felines are not the most alert of clowders, the shape-shifter would never have risked such a thing had he known we were aware of his arrival in Harrisonburg. He was confident in his skills and was using them to spy on us. That put the element of surprise on our side.

When Boris and I arrived the following night, it was almost half past midnight and the class was well underway. Stunning mollys and stalwart toms slinked across the floor with flashing eyes. As I stood in the doorway, the room swelled with the heartbreaking bandoneón of Adios Nonino, a nostalgic reminder of my time in Argentina. Sheena flashed in front of me, gliding across the floor with a burly gray tiger. As a Manx, she had to finesse an alternative to the gancho-tail-step so popular among felines, and she did it beautifully.

Then I saw the instructor and my heart lurched. Of all the dance joints in all the towns in all the world, she slinks into mine. It was Uthopia, the magnificent molly who first taught me to tango in Buenos Aires. As I stood riven in the doorway, she glanced over and I heard her little trill of surprise. So did the entire class. A cat with my age and experience doesn't blush easily, but in that moment, I was grateful for the blessing of fur.

She came toward me, grass-green eyes and a rosy pink nose centered in a delicate triangular face. Uthopia doesn't so much walk as undulate, her lithe dancer’s body eloquently sheathed in silky black fur and suffused in the intoxicating scent of musk.

"Brumous, is it really you?" she purred.

© Silver Cat Works

Brumous Siam: The First Crew

We cats owe our nine lives to more than just our ability as escape artists. We have nine lives because when we dream, we are the guardians at the nine inter-dimensional gates. It has always been so. It is why the Egyptians, who were a highly evolved people, worshipped us. And that is why Pharaoh Siam gave me an infinite number of lives.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am Brumous Siam and as I told you last week, I am not a good cat. I am too fond of catnip and mollys. You will not find me curled up next to your fireplace or artfully arranged on your cushions. You will not feel me rub against your leg or hear me purr in your lap. But you will enjoy all these things with other cats because I make it possible.

Which is why I have been called to Harrisonburg. The bladed crystal suzerain of the fourth dimension is coming here. Lususnaturae of Selofaine, the colorless world, aches for the richness, the dazzling chroma of our world. And he will have it, unless I stop him.

To that end, I am gathering my crew from the fine clowder at the Cat's Cradle. Boris, the grey ghost, had a rough time of it as a lad, but he's still willing to risk one of his eight remaining lives on this adventure. I take it very seriously when it comes to that. Nine lives can go pretty fast, and no one knows it better than someone who has an infinite number. The lifespan for one is a pawprint for another.

Boris will head my first team and three charming mollys will lend a paw. Casseopeia is a gorgeous silvery-white cat with blue eyes. When she sits in the sun with her tail curled around her front paws and eyes closed, I think of Egypt. But it's her brains we'll be using, for she is a crackerjack linguist. It’s the Siamese in her. Sheena is a little manx minx with calico camo, perfect for undercover operations. Brie is a tortoise-and-Siamese mix graced with amazing tanzanite eyes. She has been tragically de-clawed, but it is her powers of observation that we need.

It was Brie who first saw the dimple hidden in the blue sky. It was only a pinpoint but as she watched, there were two nearly invisible pulses in the light around it and she knew: Lususnaturae was making another attempt to wormhole his way into our world. The light shifts were two of his scouts threading their way through the nanotube they have opened between our dimensions.

We have met before, the scouts and I. Hyaline is a polished operator, but completely degenerate. To listen to her is to skate with razor blades on a dangerously thin shell of deception. Hyaloid is a shape-shifter. His favorite disguise is to ice himself over an object or another living being, even a human eye. And if you were his victim, you would neither see nor feel him. Only the superior oculus of an experienced cat can catch the minute change he causes in the refraction of light.

The Hyal twins are here to make the wormhole large enough to accommodate the suzerain of Selofaine, a job that will take many months. But unlike Lususnaturae, the twins do not love our world. We are fortunate to have these days of constant rain and gray skies because the watery heavens remind them of Selofaine. Homesick Hyaline will be unable to resist swimming unseen in swollen creeks and rivulets, while wistful Hyaloid will play among you as a shower of raindrops or a puddle in the sidewalk. While they play, we will practice, and when the sun restores their visibility, we will be ready.

© Silver Cat Works

Brumous Siam: The Beginning

"There are times when a wide and silver moon rises above banks of iron clouds to illume their churning edges with lambent pearls…nights like that are, as any feline knows, the calling card for Brumous Siam."

It was my howl that inspired Allen Ginsberg. It was my grin Lewis Carroll drew on the Cheshire cat. It was my purr that moved Tibetan monks to chant. It was my profile Egyptians worshipped. But these are not the reasons I was called to Harrisonburg.

It began in the time of Pharaoh Siamun when the sun and Sirius rose together on the first day of Dhwt in the year 980 B.C. I was slumbering in my temple when the incense smoke, which had been rising in peaceful columns, suddenly twisted toward the ground as if trying to escape the terrifying shriek that clawed the air. When I saw the humans and dogs acting as if nothing had happened, I knew it was a frequency beyond their capabilities, a creature beyond their perceptions. Something was tearing into our dimension. Nothing was visible, so I opened my mouth to amplify the odors and there it was: the sharp, glassy smell of Lususnaturae.

Lususnaturae of Selofaine, the fourth dimension, the transparent world. To us, it looks as if it were made of glass and water. Smudged memories of color exist at certain angles, but disappear if you look too closely. Even the inter-dimensional barrier is transparent: they can see us. And to them, we are a dazzling, irresistible riot of color. And Lususnaturae, ruler of Selofaine, craves color. He would give up his throne to live here, but it is not allowed. There are beings of other dimensions who can and do immigrate to Earth, but no being from Selofaine is allowed. Their bodies are like crystals bristling with razor sharp edges. And they are large, almost 15 feet wide. Imagine the damage such a bladed creature could do walking down our sidewalks, hiking through our woods or swimming in our waters. Lususnaturae doesn't care. Red is his favorite color.

When he first arrived near my temple in the desert of Egypt, he appeared as a ghostly cloud, a shimmer of brilliance in the wide blue sky. Then he dropped to the desert like a mirage. It took six months, but we sent him back to Selofaine. That is when I discovered my talent, and that is when Pharaoh extended my nine lives to infinite because he knew that Lususnaturae would return.

And now Lususnaturae is coming here. I am gathering my frontline crew from the fine clowder of felines at Cat's Cradle. But your cat will also work with us. The next time you see your kitty sleeping, feet twitching in hot pursuit, don't lull yourself into the tender reflection that he is mousing. He is not. He is guarding your world. And the next time you think your cat is staring at nothing in particular, remember this: it is the duty of all felines to repair the small inter-dimensional leaks that occur almost daily. A simple glare from our magic eyes will do it. But when the leak becomes a flood, the call goes out for Brumous Siam. I am not a good cat. But I am very good at what I do.

© Silver Cat Works

Caught in the Act

I promised Freddie I would have this blog up by 9AM this morning and it would have been, too, if Josie hadn't worked so late on the night I was supposed to write it. I don't know what she was thinking. She cut off the storefront lights, headed to the back room, and sat down at my computer for hours!

It wasn't just my blog that was delayed – it was our entire cat business agenda. We are nocturnal, after all. Superb night vision, sensitive hearing, an exquisite sense of smell…you get the picture. The point I'm trying to make here is that for us, it was nerve-racking to be in the glorious dark, yet unable to exercise these primo night skills. Especially at a time when there was so much depending on them.

Ultimately we had to ignore Josie's disregard for protocol (she was, after all, working for us) and get down to cat business, albeit with the utmost silence so that Josie could continue typing away, blissfully unaware of our front-room activities. After a few diligent hours, we agreed to take a feline break and the moment we did, Josie popped out of the back room and flicked on the light!

There I was, balancing on a teeny-weeny ledge heading to Little Man's crate for a bite of kitten chow. It was really embarrassing, but I just wanted some comfort food and it's not as if Little Man cared. He was too busy playing with the other kitties in the window, which, of course, was another complete surprise for Josie since Little Man is usually hiding in his crate. Then she saw the desk drawer kitty, Cassiopeia, lounging in the middle of the floor with a big grin on her face. Why? Because the bashful Velveteen cat was industriously licking the itty-bitty Cinnamon kitty. At that point, Josie just laughed out loud and asked what we'd done with her demure daytime felines.

We all breathed a sigh of relief. Our ploy was working. Even though Josie had caught us in the act, she didn't really know what the act was. Humans aren't very good at keeping secrets and it was important to keep this quiet…until tonight.

Anyway, as soon as Josie left I jumped on the computer while Little Man and the gang dashed back into our preparations. Several nights later, I'm proud to say that we are ready – and just in the nick of time. Because tonight there is a wide and silver moon rising above banks of iron clouds to illume their churning edges with lambent pearls…which is, as any feline knows, the calling card for Brumous Siam. It means that he is due at the stroke of midnight. Suffice it to say that life around here is about to get a lot more exciting in 2010. So from all of us to all of you – have a very Happy New Year!