WHEE! If I had a headdress I could be the Flying Nun.

Not that I’d sign up for the chastity part. Or the obedience part. Poverty I could handle, having been born in the streets.

Meanwhile, the Hesketh Vampire and I are flying down side streets lurching to the left and to the right, the metal foot-peg caps sparking on the pavement. I am at my claw-hanging, balancing-like-a-butterfly, screaming-cat-spat best, vocalizing in counterpoint to the engine.

I realize my Miss Temple must be a trifle worried by my absence and means of egress from the limo, but I did not want Mr. Max doing anything intemperate with a firearm. He is not quite himself, as you may have noticed.

I am sure that he believes the person in biker leather in front of me is Miss Kitty the Cutter. He may be right. Such a sneak attack would be up her alley. But does he really want her dead before he can have a nice long heart-to-heart with her about then and now and why and why, why, why?

In this way, Mr. Max is sort of a Hamlet person. I am a just a ham.

So I bask in the double-takes that pedestrians shoot my way as we zoom past.

By now we are down to street-legal speeds, say forty-five miles an hour. It is getting so a guy could almost jump off and just skin his shins and chinny-chin-chin. Not that I want any scars.

The Vampire slows to glide into the service area behind a row of one-story businesses. By now I am hanging by a single nail, preparing to drop off where I can shelter in the shade of the handy cat’s best friend, a dumpster.

The rider is dragging the soles of—what else?—motorcycle boots, which I judge to be a size 6 or 7. I am looking for a woman a bit taller than my Miss Temple. Five-three, I heard long ago.

My unintentional driver drops the kickstand and dismounts. This lean, slight build looks womanish, but then the figure doffs the silver helmet. I hold my breath and snick out my shivs.

No need.

This nefarious knight of the road is an Asian man, small, wiry, and black-haired. He has a cell phone to his ear before you can say “brain damage.”

“I am leaving the ride behind a Chinese restaurant,” he reports then snickers. By this I gather that he is Japanese. “Yeah, the dorky helmet, too. Glad none of my bros saw me in that thing; I might have had to defend my honor.” Another snicker. “I will walk a couple blocks away and call another biker for a ride. I really rattled that snazzy limo’s tailpipe. I am sure the contents were well shaken up.”

His motorcycle boot soles flash the overkill of steel cleats, so I hear his scraping steps fading away out front.

First, I check to see that I am alone, then I leap upward to the seat and start working out the saddlebag flap latches with my bare shivs. My improvised hitch on the saddlebags has more than somewhat marred the leather, but I know my Circle Ritz acquaintances would prefer to lose some anonymous cowhide accessories over my well-groomed turf of shiny black fur.

Alas, the stuffing inside the saddlebag is just a Red Hat Sisterhood sweatshirt decked out with sequins and rhinestones, most likely belonging to Miss Electra Lark.

I certainly have no use for it, since my breed does not sweat.

I look around from my solitary perch, planning my necessary next steps. First, I need to guard this valuable vintage motorcycle. Then I need to guide my handicapped humans to where it is.

The second step is the easiest. I spot a Wong Ho’s coupon on the littered asphalt behind the restaurant, which smells of fried noodles and … fish.

Now I have also settled problem number two.

Just as hobos left marks on places good for handouts during the Great Depression, so we survivors of the Great Recession have our own marking system. No, it is nothing so crass as inappropriate littering. Even our homeless members know enough to bury our eliminations if we can.

It is an auditory signal, aka a mew news line.

In no time, local alley cats come pouring in from all directions, left, right, and up.

I make the proper paw gestures and gang signals, adding a few choice audible calls. The moniker of my maternal parent, Ma Barker, is like a passkey on the mean streets of Vegas. Even bulldogs tremble at the mere mention of her name.

Soon I have the coupon in my fangs and twelve hardened street fighters at my back, three remaining behind to guard the “undead” bike.

I lead them from the back alley onto the nearest main street, retracing the way the Vampire and I have come. We all make quite a sight, though it takes some nerve for these retiring, dark-of-night slinkers to do a public cat-pride parade under the streetlights. Luckily, most establishments along here are closed and traffic is thin.

Soon I see the cruising Silver Cloud approaching at a stately crawl then veering wildly to our side of the street. I halt the clowder and wait. You do not often see thirteen of my discreet breed gathered in a docile pack with a solid black dude with white whiskers at their head.

The limo’s back door opens without the polite offices of Rico.

Miss Temple Barr comes barreling out, Mr. Matt right behind her, followed by a slightly gimpy Mr. Max.

It is a good thing I have my cat pack cowed. I have learned the Ma Barker theory of management from the old dame herself. Gruff voice, clear orders, and cocked shivs.

Before my Miss Temple can reach me and undermine my leadership position with an avalanche of sloppy human sentiments, another gang arrives—a silent-running confluence of the sleekest red, black, and red-and-black sports cars I have ever laid eyes on, and I have laid eyes on a lot of pricey cars in Vegas.

Seven or eight surround the Silver Cloud, and they arrived faster than special effects in Avatar. Even I am blinking with surprise, but then I do the math. It helps that lots of long, tall dudes in summer-pale Zegna suits unbend from the low, futuristic cars, talking on cell phones and doing things with GPS devices.

It is, of course, Fontana, Inc., in their new fleet of electric Tesla Roadsters.

The absence of vroom in their descent en masse unnerves me, but is most reassuring to my troops.

Miss Temple brings herself to an equally silent dead stop at my feet and looks down, rebukingly.

Yeah, it was a bold move, but all is well that ends well. I drop the Wong Ho coupon at her Gianmarco Lorenzi-clad feet, which she passes on to Emilio or Eduardo or Ralph.

Two of the brothers hop in an unnervingly silent idling Tesla Roadster and vanish. Another Tesla driver dismounts.

(These are really low, two-seater sports cars, with just room enough for a guy and his girl and a lot of high-end audio equipment that will be way louder than this cool green expensive electric car will ever be.)

Boys must have their thundering bass one way or another.

Pretty soon I hear the siren song of an engine that will not tiptoe. Eduardo and Emilio return, one driving the Tesla, one steering the recovered Hesketh Vampire. Sans helmet, which is tied on the back facedown. No Fontana brother will don a helmet that reads Speed Queen.

I notice that Giuseppe has collared Mr. Max and handed him something bulky in a plain brown-paper wrapper. Obviously, he has retrieved the lost handgun. I know Mr. Max meant merely to blow out a tire and catch the rider, but I cannot permit such a risky maneuver with my Miss Temple present.

After all, she is a jewel, and she immediately understood the import of the Wong Ho coupon I laid at her feet.

“I feel,” she says to all within hearing, “in need of a wonton special dinner at Wong Ho’s. I also spy a fish special that is too good to pass up.”

She thanks the gathered brothers and various vehicles, which scatter to deliver the Vampire back to the Circle Ritz.

The Silver Cloud shadows my three human companions at about five miles an hour as my feline escorts swagger back to Wong Ho’s.

By my observation, it is hot, crowded, and sweaty inside the humble eatery as my humans sit elbow to elbow at a tiny table filled with large platters of Asian delicacies.

Me and my new street gang enjoy the night air behind the place with a dozen orders of the fish special.

Koi it is not, but it is ambrosia to my homeless kin.