I stare through the window, hoping to spot a friendly face.

Heck, an unfriendly face would be welcome.

If I thought that clinging to a mesquite tree eight feet up was a risk to life and limb—my limbs, not the tree’s—I have never been more wrong.

I am now on the twelfth floor of an ominously named high-rise, having inched along a ledge barely wide enough for a squirrel, much less a dude of size.

So it is with more than hope but sheer desperation that I tap my shivs on the double-paned glass, longing to see a familiar face, but willing to greet the Wicked Witch of the West if she will but let me in by the hairs of my chinny chin-chin.

I tap out an SOS. I even look skyward for a handy, lost California condor I could hitch a ride on.

At last! My window view fills with not one, but two lovely faces.

They make sexy French moues at me, their green eyes as round as flying saucers as their spidery whiskers flatten against the glass that separates us.

With eye rolls and head nods the Persian sisters manage to indicate a balcony about twenty feet farther along the ledge.

Well, it is a toss-up if the balcony or retreat is nearer. I inch along, losing sight of my motivation. When at last I squeeze my middle through the iron bars, I discover the balcony is only a foot wide. It has curtains over a sliding glass door, all right, but is not meant to be stepped on by human feet.

Luckily, mine are much daintier by those standards. Yet I do not confront the easy-opening French doors on my Miss Temple’s condo, and on the second floor.

I hunch in a funk, safe behind prison bars, but with no way of entrance and my only egress requiring more pussyfooting than I can manage at this point.

The sound of the door sliding open has me pasted against the hot glass. I slither along it to the foot-wide crack, about to duck in when a sudden snowfall covers me in flakes the size of … dust bunnies. A mop is shaking them down onto my head.

I sneak around the opening and hide behind the inside curtains before you can say “sneezing spell.”

Luckily, the maid is moving on to another room, and I am following in her footsteps.

“Louie!” a sweet mew greets me in double-time when I reach the main living area, which is full of overstuffed furniture in floral tones of pink and lavender.

I turn to meet the aforesaid green eyes, but my own grow wide with disbelief as I view lean torsos of yellow and gray.

“Yvette. Solange. You have turned … squirrelly since last we met.”

“Are you saying we are lacking in the little gray cells, Louie?” Yvette huffs with attitude.

“I am saying you are all tail fluff with the skinny torsos of the breed know as Sphinx.”

“Those cats have no fur at all,” Yvette sniffs. “We have kept the best parts.”

Well, I am always interested in best parts, and I see on longer inspection that only the torsos and the tops of their legs have been shaved to the skin, giving the girls a Puss-in-Boots look with fluffy lower legs and furry tail tufts on the end. And an Elizabethan ruff of hair around their faces.

“No wonder they call it the ‘lion cut,’” I exclaim. “I am not sure it is flattering.”

While Yvette hisses and spits at my last word, Solange smoothes her ruffled, golden-shaded feathers … er, fur.

“The style is light and comfortable in this Las Vegas heat, Louie,” she says.

“You are under air-conditioning most of the time,” I point out.

“It will be hot,” snaps Yvette, putting on airs despite a ludicrous lack of hairs, “when we go before the cameras for our new cat-food commercial contract.”

I have heard of this deal and well know I have been omitted in favor of a piece of vermin.

Speaking of which, I hear the maid scream in the other room, “A rat, a rat!”

I race to the scene of the crime, sensing the Persian girls hot on my tail. There is no breed better for the merciless pursuit called “bugging.” I have seen the Divine Yvette take down a moth faster than the Jaws shark swallowed a fishing boat.

The maid has her eyes squeezed shut and stands atop a boudoir chair, embracing her mop like it was Ashton Kutcher.

I bound onto the foot-wide concrete ledge. Hanging from it between the bars is a pair of long-clawed feet. One swipe and my usurper would be a flying squirrel for twelve stories down. Then … history.

No one can see past my large muscled torso to see what I actually do.

The possibilities are tempting.

Then I sigh. I have been on rescue duty at Violet’s house for too long. I stick my kisser through the bars and down, snag Captain Jack by the furry nape of his neck, and toss him over my shoulder to firm ground.

He is unsinkable. He scampers to his feet and heads straight for the maid’s chair.

Meanwhile, the resident dames prepare to get grateful.

“Oh, Louie,” Yvette and Solange simper, making me the meat in a purring, shaved Persian sandwich.

“You have saved our careers,” the Sublime Solange says with a very effective ear lick.

“I am yours, body and soul,” the Divine Yvette says, flipping down to curl up with her furry front boots under her dainty shaded-silver chin.

Then her gorgeous green eyes widen and stare above and beyond me.

I turn as she takes off like the Silver Streak train.

Yup. There is a moth on the ceiling at twelve o’clock high, as the fighter pilots used to say.

Solange has gone mothing, too.

I turn and make my way to the apartment’s front door, hunkering down behind a gold-leafed wastepaper basket.

Either Miss Sue-Anna Weiner will walk in, or the maid will get up the courage to go out and I will be on my way … to the bigger and better things that await a dude of swashbuckle and savoir faire.

Savvy?