"Terrific, Uh, What kind of . . . cat? . . . is this?"
Cleo leaned inward to study the animal in question. "Oh, that's a very rare cat, but it's not a recognized breed."
"It does look ready to be sauteed or something. I've never seen a cat look so much like a plucked chicken."
"It's supposed to. That's a Sphinx."
"It looks more like a naked lunch." Temple shivered in sympathy. "Isn't it cold without any fur?" she asked sensibly.
"No . . . a Sphinx's body temperature is four degrees higher than the ordinary cat's. Most owners keep them in sweaters when they're not on show."
Temple gingerly bent to study the creature's hanging creases of greige skin at flanks and chest. "That furrowed forehead is so sad. Seeing a naked cat is awfully shocking. And the ears are so big. I keep thinking of Dumbo."
"Have you ever seen your own cat wet? He might look as spindly as this one."
"Not Louie," Temple swore with conviction.
"Anyway, the Sphinxes are here just as a curiosity. They don't breed true."
"So they're a genetic freak?"
"An anomaly," Cleo said quickly. No negatives to anything feline were permitted anywhere near a Fancy Feline fancier. "That's how some of today's most prized breeds began, with one oddball kitten in a litter that was carefully bred and cultivated."
"I certainly can cultivate some print exposure for this poor, overexposed kitty," Temple said. "Where is the woman Electra told me about, the one who got the threatening phone calls before the show opened?"
"Threatening?"
"Hisses sound pretty sinister, absolutely viperish."
Cleo just laughed. "You haven't been around cats much, have you? Cats hiss plenty if provoked. I think Peggy is imagining things, or else someone she irritated recorded a cat fight and is playing it over her phone."
"This Peggy irritates a lot of people?" Temple asked, dutifully following Cleo as she wove between tows to the big central aisle.
Cleo stopped, allowing Temple to stare pupil to pupil with a huge, long-haired white cat that resembled a snowy owl with great gold eyes. She expected it to cry "Who?" at any moment.
"Everest Sweet Snowball Heavenly Hash," Cleo rattled off automatically as she gazed fondly on the gigantic feline.
"Champion Persian male. Two years old, great doming, they call him 'Hash' for short."
A cartwheel of stiffened lace circled the animal's neck like an Elizabethan collar, no doubt to keep it from licking its lavish ruff. Temple examined this mound of powdered and blue-rinsed fur and found a face that was short on nose but big on eyes. "It looks like a white Pekinese."
"They breed Persians for that flattened nose, but frankly, that makes the animals prone to breathing difficulties. A more natural nose may now be permissible with some judges."
"Hooray for Hollywood," Temple said sardonically, Cat breeders were beginning to get on her nerves almost as much as unearthly purebred cats did. "Have they resorted to giving these cats collagen to ensure the proper profile?"
Cleo eyed Temple as if she were crazy, or worse, a heretic.
"That would be strictly forbidden. The point is to breed for the look. Any breeder who physically tampered with a cat would be barred from competition."
"What would that mean?"
Cleo grew even more incredulous. "That person's cats would be as dead as dodoes. No one would buy them, no one would covet a mating with that source, the kittens would be worthless and the breeder would go out of business."
"These shows are that important?"
"They are if you aren't just running a kitten mill. Listen, Temple, our breed standards are serious and are rigorously applied. We may not get rich selling purebred cats, but we certainly take it seriously. It's an achievement similar to nursing along a bonsai tree. Years go into forming the proper line to produce a champion.
"We slave over these cats, we primp and pamper them. If we're very, very lucky, sometimes we get a kitten that can go all the way in its class. lt's like owning the winner of the Kentucky Derby, only there are no roses and not much money in it, unless you count all we spend on our animals."
"But it's not a hobby--a pursuit--worth intimidating anybody for?"
Cleo considered that while running her admiring eyes over Hash's immaculately indifferent body and soul. "I suppose people can get wrought up over lesser things. This isn't just what you call a hobby, you know. Cat people are passionate on the subject."
"Then a rival might want to unnerve Peggy Wilhelm to get her to withdraw her cats from competition?"
Cleo puckered her lips and seemed to consult the Oracle of the magnificent Everest Sweet Snowball Heavenly Hash. The great yellow eyes blinked, and Cleo shook herself out of her reverie, turning her full attention on Temple.
"Might," she said, nodding, "Might go to any length. I tell you, people get crazy about these cats. Sometimes you'd think they were their children. You ever hear about the Texas cheerleader mom's murder attempt? It made time on 'A Current Affair.' "
"The only current affairs I know about are my own, I'm afraid," Temple said with a grimace, "and sadly lacking."
Cleo shook her parti-colored, fine-coated head. "Some people get too competitive for their own good--and anybody else's. In that Texas case, a stage mother tried to hire a killer to ice the mother of her daughter's cheerleading rival, figuring the rival would be too broken up to try out for the squad. Over cheerleading! Anybody who fixates on any kind of competition can go over the edge. I'm afraid your friend who's worried about Peggy's cats has good reason."
"Then let's go find Peggy and talk to her," Temple suggested.
They moved into the main aisle, a perpetual-motion melee of people carrying cats. Temple eyed perfectly groomed Persians dangling limp-legged from the hands of their breeders, who held them at arm's length on the way to the judging area to avoid ruffling a single hair.
She tried to picture herself carrying Midnight Louie that way. All she could see was four flailing black legs and a sprained, if not broken, wrist for her.
Temple gawked at lean, short-haired oriental breeds being whisked to and fro in the same fashion. The Siamese, in particular, were so attenuated from narrow head to hindquarters that they looked like something from an El Greco nightmare.
She and Cleo paused to watch a judge rate a cat--a fluffy white one with gorgeous blue eyes--that looked half-normal.
"Oh," Temple said, instantly enamored.
"Turkish Angora," Cleo explained. "They're long-haired but much rangier than the Persians, which are a cobby kind of cat."
While they watched, the judge sprayed the tabletop with disinfectant, and then fetched a snowy beauty from its cage.
Temple tensed at the no-nonsense way the man handled it--like an inanimate object. He posed it on the table, examined its head, legs and tail, all the while making loud and personal pronouncements for the benefit of the people occupying the folding chairs arrayed before the table.
"No cat I know would put up with that," Temple remarked, although she knew only one cat, which maybe was the point.
"These are show cats. They're used to it, and they're ranked on how well they respond to handling."
"Sounds like white slavery to me."
Cleo Kilpatrick stared at Temple. "You could be right. That attitude could be the problem."
"Huh?"
"Peggy Wilhelm could be hearing from animal-rights activists. Some are such Fanatics that they don't even feed their dogs and cats meat, fish or dairy products. Some local types could have decided that cat shows are cruel."
Temple nodded. That made sense. "Where is Peggy's stand?"
Cleo paged through a sheaf of papers. The locations of the various breeders were indicated by microscopic numbers on a layout sheet that had to be checked against a separate list.
An exasperated Cleo hissed like a cat----or a snake----and pulled her half-glasses, dangling on a pearl cord around her neck, up to her nose. "Looks like . . . row L, numbers sixty-six to sixty-eight, or eighty-six to eighty-eight."