Since some unknown person or persons has been making it easy for the inside cats to slip out, I am happy to find that it is just as easy for an outside cat to slip in.

So I am already the inside dude when my Miss Temple and Mr. Matt pay a visit to Miss Violet. I also witness my sweet and straightforward roommate making a surreptitious survey of the house’s nooks and crannies, specifically the hall leading to the closed doors of the bedroom wing.

I must say that I am shocked—shocked!—when I see her prying inside a chest of Asian design under the icon of some saint with a candle burning in front of her. You would think that an intimate associate of a former priest would not tamper with religious artifacts, but then she is an intimate associate of a former priest, and I am not sure if that is kosher. Great Bast never expressed herself on rules of personal conduct. She is a Rules of Prey sort of gal.

However, the search and abstraction of evidence is smoothly done, thanks to the fact that humans can tote objects by other means than their mouths. That gives them great versatility.

So, once she and Mr. Matt have made their adieus to the folks in the front room and are gone, I resume my mission.

First off, I look up my inside guy, Maverick.

Being shades of brown, he comes and goes in the dimly lit interior like a shadow.

“Psst!”

I nearly jump out of my best satin-lapelled suit down to my skin when he ambushes me in the kitchen.

“How goes it,” he asks, “with our exterior brethren?”

“And sisters,” I add. Or is that “sisthren”? One never knows when Miss Midnight Louise is listening, although I have her stationed outside.

Maverick shakes his head impatiently at the fine points. He would not be so rude were my own fine points at his throat.

“What do you want in here?” he demands. “There are no resident black cats. You will stick out like a sore dewclaw.”

“I need to get the Ashleigh sisters out now. It will be a delicate extraction. I have scouted a work-crew outbuilding near the flood channel where our homemade clowder can shelter until the evil afoot here is rooted out.”

Maverick eyes the heaped bowls of Free-to-Be-Feline that now outnumber the cats around the place.

“What can they all eat and drink in the wilderness?” he asks.

“We have scouted a leaking water pipe near the flood channel, and Miss Midnight Louise is a very vigorous, ah, cook. If you like desert sushi.”

Maverick nods sagaciously. “Sushi is good. Miss Savannah has brought us boxes of it lately.”

“Where are the sisters?”

“With the greater number of people coming and going, they have hidden.”

Oh, Great Bast’s earring! I will not only have to convince them to accompany me into the great outdoors, I will have to find them first.

In minutes, Maverick and I have searched the house, floorboard to furniture, to no avail. Even the occupied main room, which he covered because he’s a known resident, is not hiding the Persian sisters. We are stumped.

Then I recall rule number ten of feline behavior. If a door is opened, you are through it, and the less you are noticed, the better. That is how all Miss Violet’s cats are wandering out of the house, through deliberately ajar exits. The Ashleigh girls would never venture outside alone, though. I rush to the hall and employ my street-sharp shivs as a crowbar under the Asian cabinet doors.

Presto, pussycats! Four fluorescent green eyes blink back at me. They slipped in when Miss Temple turned her back to slip the purloined goods into her tote bag. I was so busy watching her, they even evaded my keen private eye.

“Bonjour, chéries,” I say. “I have come to escort you out of this unhappy domicile to a fine new nightclub down the street. It serves sushi.”

“Oh, Louie,” says Yvette, forgetting her snarled hairdo. “You look very handsome in your freshly washed tuxedo.”

“And,” says Solange, “Miss Savannah often brought us sushi when we were with her.”

“Well, you are with me now, mademoiselles, and we have only to slip outside and be on our way.”

Solange’s pretty face looks worried. “Oh, Louie. I do not know if we can, without permission.”

“Of course you can,” I say, nudging each along by the shoulder. “You are French. And so am I.”