I has not shave ... and I has not stayed long enough for the lone hair to come home to me. I am through the swinging door into the back service halls that connect with every hotel ballroom and restaurant. Via the same hip variety of door, I am into the Lalique Ballroom and under a floor-length tablecloth before you can spell Esiuol Tghindim frontward.
Only my nose and eyes peek through a tea rose-pink linen tent. I view the expected horrors: the blackened spaghetti of thick electrical cables; the restless, high-heeled feet of Miss Savannah Ash-leigh; the pungent sneaker-clad tootsies of the camera crew; the Italian loafers of the director; the wingtips of the watching catfood muckety-mucks; and the pink canvas carrier of the Divine Yvette.
I see no sign of transport for the loathsome Maurice, but I know he is lurking somewhere.
Meanwhile, I shimmy from tablecloth tent to tablecloth tent until I am within whisker-distance of Miss Savannah Ashleigh's ankles. These are not the dainty appendages of my own little doll. Miss Savannah Ashleigh is no tenderfoot. Her ankles are tanned to within an inch of their epidermis, but the varicose tracks of blue veins deface the landscape nevertheless. I know Miss Temple would want a full description of Miss Savannah Ashleigh's footwear, were she here, so I overcome my distaste to examine the area further. There is no doubt that Miss Savannah Ashleigh has a taste for flashy shoes. The current pair are oil-slick patent leather that zip up the back of the heel and the so-called throat of the vamp.
Given that her spike heels tower at least an inch higher than Miss Temple's most elevated pair, the bony, blue-veined Ashleigh feet look forced into the shoes. Her insteps bulge like Cinderella's stepsisters' feet. All in all, a most unappetizing sight, normally unworthy of comment, did I not have a moral obligation to consider my roommate's interests before I focus on my own.
Speaking of which, Miss Savannah Ashleigh does. Speak, that is. Of the Divine Yvette.
"What are you doing with that stick?" she demands in a voice both low and breathy.
Mr. Italian Loafers spins on the soft carpeting. "It is a toy to encourage your cat to perform for the camera."
"Yvette does not play with such cheap diversions. They do not interest her."
I see a turquoise ostrich plume spin near the carpeting. I agree that the color is cheap and obnoxious, and that I would much prefer the natural feather, attached, in fact, to its natural ostrich. Size is not a factor for Midnight Louie. However, it is all I can do to restrain myself from dashing out of cover and clawing that feather flat.
Apparently I am not alone. A silver shape vaults out of nowhere to clutch for the feather. The Divine Yvette, despite pedigree and petite size, is quite a stalker. In fact, she is adorable when she is mad. I watch her fierce face bare tiny fangs as her dainty velvet mitts swat the feather-on-a-stick to smithereens. Well, perhaps feathers cannot smash into smithereens, but turquoise curls fly like emigrees from a Ginger Rogers ballgown.
It is all I can do not to sneeze, which would be disastrous.
"Tacky, tacky," frets Miss Savannah Ashleigh.
I am surprised that she is not looking at her feet instead of the Divine Yvette. She rises and moves nearer the camera.
"And what are those... grass clippings on the rug?" she wants to know next.
Mr. Italian Loafers shuffles. "Ah, something to make kitty happy. Catnip."
"Catnip? You are supplying my Yvette with a mind-altering substance? Get rid of it at once! She has never had anything herbal other than a bit of organically grown rye grass now and then, and my Boston ferns."
"It is just a little nip, Miss Ashleigh." The loafers do a soft shoe of irritation on Miss Van von Rhine's finest broadloom. "It relaxes them. I have done dozens of animal commercials--"
"That is obviously your problem," Miss Savannah Ashleigh interrupts. "Yvette is not an animal."
"Animal companion commercials," he revises through gritted teeth, trying for a more politically correct term.
Politically correct oils no hinges with Miss Savannah Ashleigh. "She is not an animal!"
"Cat?"
"Hmmph." Miss Savannah Ashleigh swivels on the ball of her high heels to turn her back on the Italian loafers and the unenlightened person in them.
"She is not a cat? The manufacturer will be pretty upset to hear that."
Miss Savannah Ashleigh bows low without bending her knees, a maneuver that keeps her posterior high in the air like a lady cat's in heat, which presents the director with much more to think about than the precise nature of the Divine Yvette.
The Divine One snarls prettily as her mistress wrests her from the feather into her arms and next to her face. She straightens-- the mistress, not the questionable Yvette.
"Mommy's little sweetums is not a nasty old animal! She is a little fairy princess yummy-nummums with an ancient, wise soul. She does not chase foolish toys or need hallucinatory substances to perform.
She is a natural star, like Mommums."
If that is truly the case, the Divine Yvette, the Italian Loafers and the catglop commercial are in trouble-wubble.
The director suddenly decides to direct. He plucks Mommy's yummy-nummums (I do have to agree with Miss Savannah Ashleigh's besotted estimation, for vastly different reasons) from the vicinity of Mommy's facey-wacey.
"Sit down, Miss Ashleigh," he says. "It will be over much more quickly if you let us do our jobs."
Moving to a set surrounded by a convocation of tripods and cameras, he plunks the Divine Yvette down on a Plexiglas balustrade. A crystal chandelier has been lowered from the high ceiling to twinkle and flash above the Divine Yvette's perch like a diamond waterfall. Nearby sits a long banquet table covered in the tea rose-pink damask that matches the pale pink pads of the Divine One's silver-velvet feet and the center of her tiny triangular nose set like a rosy pearl in a thin bezel of black enamel. She looks adorable, and she is still mad, thanks to sequential bouts of feather-sniffing, catnip-licking and Mommy-mauling.
"Where is the other cat?" The director turns to the crew while Miss Savannah Ashleigh settles back in the pink canvas director's chair that matches the Divine Yvette's carrier and apparently accompanies her everywhere as well.
"Yvette does not need a costar," Miss Savannah Ashleigh sniffs in a soft, injured tone.
Did she not need the dough from this venture, one can be sure that Miss Savannah Ashleigh would not be here. In fact, she gasps as a woman on the staff darts toward the Divine Yvette and backs away to reveal a pink-ice cubic zirconium collar circling my beloved's delicate neck.
Miss Savannah Ashleigh sits up indignantly. "I hope that I... that she will be able to keep that after the shoot."
The director rolls his eyes and curls his toes in butter-soft, and colored, Italian leather. "I am certain that can be arranged, Miss Ashleigh."
It is obvious to both him and me that the trinket will be adorning the Ashleigh wrist rather than the Divine Yvette throat from now on.
My poor lady love! Forced to labor under the influence wearing confining gems destined for her greedy mistress. There should be laws against this sort of thing. And the alien, intrusive male has not even made an appearance yet. This entire scene begins to smack of a forced mating, with my captured darling decked out for the harem.
"All right." At the director's nod, the same woman who had collared my lady love waves the feathered lash before the Divine One's pink pearl of a nose.
The Divine Yvette's blue-green eyes widen to perfect, baby-doll circles as her platinum whiskers tremble. She leaps along the balustrade, balancing like a Chinese acrobat, as airborne as a prima ballerina performing Swan Lake. (Speaking of Swan Lake, I wonder if that is an upscale version of Duck Pond. I have enjoyed games of cat-and-mouse in such vicinities.) Despite the weight of the alien collar, the Divine One floats like a butterfly ... and stings like Ali, fiercely boxing tiny turquoise curls from the plume that catch in her silver neck ruff like falling stars. Miss Savannah Ashleigh is right about one thing: the Divine Yvette is a born performer. A catfood manufacturer could sell worm-steak with this pussums!