I must say that this case has given me pause.

Previously, I thought I had a pretty good grip on the ways of the world, especially my special turf in Las Vegas and the art of crime solving.

It is no secret I was born on the streets and came up the hard way. I am a self-made dude. I may even have looked down my black nose leather at those of my kind who settled for being people-dependent “pets.”

I know that I could lose access at any moment to Miss Temple’s bed and, more important, that lumpy bed of Free-to-Be-Feline nuggets topped with shrimp, salmon, scallops, what have you—and she has plenty of those—and still eat.

Only the koi pond at the Crystal Phoenix could keep a large and lusty fellow like myself going indefinitely. What is the old saying? “Give a cat a fish and he is a happy cat. Give a cat a chance to fish and he is an independent contractor.”

Midnight Louie’s Koi Emporium would hold up nicely next to Chef Song’s five-star restaurants at the Phoenix, and I would attract a better class of clientele.

But my entrepreneurial spirit is not the matter at hand. Or paw. Until this case, I had no idea that these willing domestic slaves could be so helpless and so abused if something happened to their loving masters.

Apparently, there are Cruella De Vils lusting to harm cat kind of all stripes as well as the spotted canine kind. (I still am not sure if Cruella De Vil is an actual person or a model of Cadillac.)

OK, pet is a politically incorrect word these days, and I quite concur. Call me a “pet” and I will staple your clothes to your epidermis for a couple feet.

“Animal companion” is more like it, putting us on equal footing with humans, even if “we,” the animal part of that expression, can come as close to vermin as a, ahem, black-masked ferret of my acquaintance.

Anyway, I have become convinced that our human companions, if we so choose them, are obligated to plan for the dread day when they are no longer available to serve us.

Look at the sad case of Miss Violet Weiner’s beloved cat clowder, at the mercy of whomsoever entered her home in her days of illness and weakness, none of whom could love her animal companions as much as she did, and some of whom harbored hatred of the helpless, whether human or animal.

Take nothing for granted, folks. We have cast our lots with you people since we became “domesticated” four thousand years ago. All we are asking is a little forethought of what dreadful fates might await us when the Grim Reaper starts tapping on your particular shoulder … say, when you are born! Do not get mad at me for saying so.

Remember, my kind’s first so-called “masters,” the ancient Egyptians, valued our vermin-catching ways and venerated us as gods. You can do no less, as you are four thousand years more evolved than those bewigged pyramid-builders. So they tell me.

Therefore. I will let my sometimes useful collaborator give you all the dull particulars. My role is to mount the soap box and pontificate. To agitate. To play the gadfly and annoy. To bask in the roar of the crowd and the approving purrs of Miss Great Bast Herself, cat goddess of ancient Egypt. I do not know why Bast is a she.

Her only flaw, but even gods are not perfect these days.

Very Best Fishes,

Midnight Louie, Esq.