"No, Louie," she tells me while lolling on her side to cool off. "Being overheated is one of the prices of natural beauty." Va-va-varoom!
All around us sit polished, stalled cars of a similar vintage, though some are more colorful than our hearse like vehicle, like tan or even cream-colored. But most are the same basic black as our car.
Of course we are back in costume: I in my flamingo-pink fedora, Yvette in her feathers and diamonds. Our A La Cat servings are salmon fricassee , so the color goes well with my dashing but ridiculous headgear. If Bast had meant me to wear a hat, she would have made them all with ear-holes. A massive picnic hamper reclines on the car floorboards. Its open cover reveals such niceties as silverware and china plates, cans of pate and long loaves of French bread, none of which appeal to our predators' palettes. But I suppose it adds some eye-appeal to the human viewers who actually buy the glop that the poor house cats are forced to eat.
I glimpse my mortal rival, Maurice, on the sidelines. He is out of his carrier and in the cat trainer's arms, apparently quite the favorite. I realize that the animal trainer has a big stake in her alley cat's mangy hide. Favoritism is an ugly tendency.
The next thing I see I do not like one bit. The crew is rolling another humped, black car alongside ours, with another punk-looking driver and--who do they plunk in the backseat but His Majesty Maurice Two, the Maurice One slayer? That is like Macbeth giving King Duncan a friendly ride home in his Rolls while his missus lurks in the boot with a knitting needle.
Miss Temple has dawdled behind, no doubt questioning the boys and girls of the chorus about the demise of their leader. I know it is important for her to feel useful by making her little inquiries, but I do think she should be here protecting our contract from infringement. In my understanding, this was to be the Midnight Louie/Divine Yvette show. Maurice was nowhere mentioned.
And he also has footloose privileges while the DY and I are locked up. This kind of favoritism will only give him a chance to booby-trap the commercial. He has deceived this same set of subcretinous humans before. So he is only a body double who offed the celestial body he was substituting for, i.e., the star. They do not know nor care.
At last my ears hear tiny heels clicking on the hard-composition floor paving the car-museum area. I leap up and put my paws on the sill created by the rolled-down window.
You should hear the screeching! You would think a colony of bats were abroad.
"No! No paw prints on the finish!" the crew screams, descending on me in a raving horde.
"Ugly damp pads."
They are lucky that I make my protest only with paw prints. There are other, even more corrosive ways of damaging prized human property, if I make myself clear?
Miss Temple does not help my cause.
"What has he done now?" she asks, clattering up to the car door I am desecrating.
"He was sitting in the backseat nice as pie," the trainer explains, "then he was up on his hind feet looking around."
Miss Temple, to give her credit, examines the scene of the crime by walking around my car.
"Maybe he's upset because this other male cat is hogging the backseat of the neighboring vehicle. I thought Louie and Yvette were the focus of the commercials. What's Maurice doing here?"
Way to go! Keep those legal beagle tough questions coming.
On the seat beside me, the Divine Yvette bestirs herself. "Is that nasty Maurice causing problems, Louie? I do not like him. He is a bad boy!"
My heart glows to hear my rival dismissed by the one who counts.
"Do not flutter your furs, my dear," I return in my manliest swaggering tone. "My mistress will make Vienna sausage out of him, with no Great Poop-on to ease the transition."
The animal trainer comes to loom over Miss Temple, which is not hard to do even when she is wearing high heels, which only make her a feisty but tottery five-feet-three.
"Listen, lady, your cat is completely untrained. At least Maurice knows some tricks and responds to clacker signals."
"Louie is a natural performer, from what we saw of his improvised dance down those stage stairs. And what about Yvette's contract? Is she supposed to be shoved into third place by that camera-hogging yellow mongrel?"
Miss Temple's germane inquiries have even stirred Miss Savannah Ashleigh from flirting with the twenty-five-year-old cameraman. She undulates over in languid irritation.
"What is this about another cat intruding into what is already an imposition on my Yvette, who was to star solo in these tawdry commercial epics?"
By now the director has come over, patting shoulders, even mine.
"Calm down, everyone. The trainer suggested a spoof of the mustard with the two old gents commercial, and I thought it was a good idea. Maurice is simply in the scene as a loser, the cat who carries a no-name brand of cat food that Louie and Yvette can sniff their noses at as they partake of A La Cat. We will only see a flash of his swill and his hide, I promise."
"Just so he is not as prominent as my Yvette."
"Just so he does not get more airtime than Louie."
The director keeps nodding and crossing his heart and patting the ladies' shoulders. There is nothing like a good pet for soothing the savage beast. Not to mention Miss Savannah's savage breasts, of which the like I have never seen.
The ladies calm down and back off the set, but their two sets of eagle eyes watch director's and cameraman's every move. I notice both men's hands shake ever so slightly as they set up camera angles.
"Is the rude interchange over, Louie?" ma petite's voice mews from her recumbent form.
I must say that these Persians are very laid-back cats, except when they are mad.
"All is well," I reassure her, adding a lick or two, including a slow tour of her shell-pink ear.
"Louie!" she simpers with feminine delight. 'That could show up on camera."
"Let it," I declare. 'This scenario could use a little more spice, and that certainly will not come from Maurice, so it is up to us to uphold the standards of the species."
"Whatever you say is so sensible. You may lick my other ear, if you wish."
I waste no time taking up her invitation, and hear the director telling the cameraman to
"catch that."
But they will not catch anything from us, as we are both exceedingly clean, especially after all this ear-licking.
So the action begins. I mean the commercial-filming action, of course.
The two cars' facing back windows are rolled down. I am tempted to our car's inside window by a feather on a stick peeking up over the windowsill. Frankly, this tired feather, dyed a disgusting orange, would not lure me into a bordello of Birmans. But I do know what is expected of me, and bound to the open window, planting my broad black paws on the surface. No cries of paw prints on the wax job now. This is show business, and this pose is my business.
"Good boy," the director croons as the trainer crouches below the opposite window with the same tawdry toy.
And, lo! The awful Maurice puss pops up in the opposite opening like an ugly jack-in-a-box.
It is all I can do to refrain from sticking my tongue out at him, but I know that this would be an unflattering pose for the camera. I am trapped by fame and fortune from following my basest instincts. This is not a good trade-off.
We make faces at each other for a minute or more. The computer geniuses will add lip movements in the studio to fit the script. I have read the script, and know that I am supposedly boasting about the superiority of my brand of cat food, so Maurice must be singing the praises of some real poopon stuff.
The cameras pan past us to focus in turn on dishes of glop on each of our backseats. I do not know what ugly stuff is showcased in the ugly Maurice's ugly container, but our set features an Irish-crystal bowl heaped with this stylized A La Cat that has been plumped and tooth-picked until it resembles a beehive hairdo from long ago--if hair were usually salmon-pink.