I’d always liked to follow offbeat “leads” and wrote an article on Louie’s journey and the new home he found on a farm. After writing the first who/what/when/where sentence, I paused. Maybe I should let the cat tell his tale in his own words. Maybe the real and original Midnight Louie inspired me to do just that. Black cats do have that “mystical” aura.
Eleven years later, when I left my union-guaranteed-for-life newspaper job (remember those?) to write fiction freelance, that feline “voice” revisited me and demanded a cameo role in four Las Vegas–set short romances (with mystery). The editor happily bought the quartet, then cut much of the mystery and Louie out, without telling me.
I told you nine lives were not enough for this canny feline survivor. Midnight Louie did an athletic flip-flop, landing on his feet in a mystery series bearing his name that featured any ongoing human romance elements in their proper place, as subplot.
In 1996, the series publisher, Tor Books, sponsored a wonderful Midnight Louie Adopt-a-Cat tour that brought me and homeless cats to adoption/book-signing events in every region of the country. They started in my new home state, Texas, with multi-city events. And, new to the animal rescue scene, the publicists didn’t know about no-kill shelters and “booked” me into the main city shelters.
I had six rescue cats and a rescue dog at home, but I saw so many, many beautiful kittens and cats, so many cats only a year old and kicked out, at stop after stop, it was heartbreaking.
When a small black cat in the open colony at Lubbock Animal Services looked up at me and “skritched,” I bent to pick it up. Midnight Louie Jr. had me on hello. There’s more to the story, but it wasn’t until three weeks later my husband and I drove almost seven hundred miles round trip to fetch our seventh cat.
We stayed overnight at a nice motel and came back to the room after dinner. I have never seen a cat so aware that he’d found a home, and so happy, not anxious at all. He jumped on the bed when we retired and moved back and forth on our chests all night, purring and meowing until he was hoarse by morning and we were sleepless in Lubbock.
He wasn’t very big, his coat was dull, and his tail had been broken in two places so he couldn’t lift it higher than a croquet-hoop position.
Long black hair turned glossy, and his tail did lift again, the mysterious break hidden. A short mystery story, “Junior Partner in Crime,” is my imagination of how he might have got in that condition following in Senior’s fictional crime-fighting footsteps.
Since there is only one “real and original” and eternal Midnight Louie, he became, after a brief detour as “Midnight Louise” (sometimes it’s hard to tell in busy shelters), the Midnight Louie Jr. seen with me in the dust jacket photograph.
After fifteen years, he was called to the Rainbow Bridge as I was finishing this book. He fought hard not to leave, and he did not go alone.
Xanadu, his longtime pal and the chow-husky cross pup I’d found on the street four months before meeting Louie Jr., had a massive seizure the very morning we were about to call the vet for Midnight Louie Jr.’s last appointment.
He may not have been “the real and original,” but he was the best and the brightest in our lives for a long time and will never leave, not really.
By Carole Nelson Douglas from Tom Doherty Associates
MYSTERY
MIDNIGHT LOUIE MYSTERIES
Catnap
Pussyfoot
Cat on a Blue Monday
Cat in a Crimson Haze
Cat in a Diamond Dazzle
Cat with an Emerald Eye
Cat in a Flamingo Fedora
Cat in a Golden Garland
Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt
Cat in an Indigo Mood
Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit
Cat in a Kiwi Con
Cat in a Leopard Spot
Cat in a Midnight Choir
Cat in a Neon Nightmare
Cat in an Orange Twist
Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit
Cat in a Quicksilver Caper
Cat in a Red Hot Rage
Cat in a Sapphire Slipper
Cat in a Topaz Tango
Cat in an Ultramarine Scheme
Cat in a Vegas Gold Vendetta
Cat in a White Tie and Tails
Midnight Louie’s Pet Detectives
(anthology)
IRENE ADLER ADVENTURES
Good Night, Mr. Holmes
The Adventuress*
(Good Morning, Irene)
A Soul of Steel*
(Irene at Large)
Another Scandal in Bohemia*
(Irene’s Last Waltz)
Chapel Noir
Castle Rouge
Femme Fatale
Spider Dance
Marilyn: Shades of Blonde
(anthology)
HISTORICAL ROMANCE
Amberleigh†
Lady Rogue†
Fair Wind, Fiery Star
SCIENCE FICTION
Probe†
Counterprobe†
FANTASY
TALISWOMAN
Cup of Clay
Seed Upon the Wind
SWORD AND CIRCLET
Six of Swords
Exiles of the Rynth
Keepers of Edanvant
Heir of Rengarth
Seven of Swords
* These are the reissued editions.
† Also mystery
About the Author
Cat in a White Tie and Tails is the twenty-fourth title in CAROLE NELSON DOUGLAS’s sassy Midnight Louie mystery series. Previous titles include Cat in a Vegas Gold Vendetta, Cat in an Ultramarine Scheme, and Cat in a Topaz Tango. In addition to tales of her favorite feline, Douglas is also the author of the historical suspense series featuring Irene Adler, the only woman ever to have “outwitted” Sherlock Holmes. Douglas resides in Fort Worth, Texas. Visit her Web site at www.carolenelsondouglas.com.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
CAT IN A WHITE TIE AND TAILS
Copyright © 2012 by Carole Nelson Douglas
Cover art by Jo Tronc
Hand lettering by Iskra Johnson
All rights reserved.
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN 978-0-7653-2747-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 9781429948272 (e-book)
First Edition: August 2012