Desdemona, The Cat, Meets The Zodiac Killer

Desdemona The Cat Meets The Zodiac

Desdemona, a very frustrated and bewildered Cat Person, celebrating Christmas with a few Siamese Siblings, in San Francisco, became very disconcerted when her Siamese sister began to play “Do You Hear What I Hear” on the Piccolo, while her brother, Iago, lip syncede “Voices” for her with his Larynx.

When the Surprise “Christmas Carol” had concluded, an abrupt silence ensued in which the “performers” stared in rapt glee at their “audience” for some very intense moments, as if anticipating a reaction to what they’d all just “heard.”

“Well!?” Desdemona’s Siamese sister, Sheba inquired, finally, as if she’d already asked a “very important Psychiatric question,” that no one else could answer except the world’s first Freudian Rocket Scientist, “Do you? Do you ‘what I hear?’”

Desdemona the Cat kicked her “clawed legs” up on a nearby table, knocked off a few Kibbles and Bits, and “studied” her “Siamese Siblings” for a couple of “equally tense moments for a reaction,” until, finally, responding, with a tad of irritation, thusly:

“Iago, brother of mine, where in the world did you pick up the Art of “Voices,” The University Of The Pacific Ocean or The Martian School of Shakespearean Suggestion or do you just ‘talk to people right in the middle of an A Cappela Performance, by Artfully Dodging the Key Change?”

Iago, with a sort of confused preoccupation which seemed to indicate “something was entertaining,” glanced towards Sheba, whose eyes, like her brother’s, gleamed with the beckoning fire of the Sirens, not knowing what in the hell she wanted to  hear next, except, something like “Glad Cat Rag” by Will Nash (1905) in order to make the Christmas earth and sky shake and burn with greater fury than Ragtime’s Reign could ever have delivered to San Francisco “a year later” for the outrage it wrought upon society, in those days.

“Aren’t we being entertaining enough for you this year, my little deer?” Iago inquired, insinuatingly, glancing again towards Sheba with an artfully conceived blink. “Or is our Hawaiian Wine Concert not old enough for you, between here and the Golden Gate Freezer?”

“Only if you’re old enough to remember Virginia Woolfe from the Tennessee Ford Williams Movie. Otherwise, DO NOT EVEN GAME ME LIKE THAT with the same kind of voice tricks they use with the old-fashioned ventilation system at Napa State Hospital! It’s the same damn trick! I know EXACTLY what you’re doing. In “Suddenly, Last Summer,” a film from 1959, starring Katherine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and Montgomery Cliff, Elizabeth Taylor knew EXACTLY “what she was hearing in that flick” without having to “have another one of them downtown.” She didn’t want “good, old Insanity Clause” to “pick up her jolly old Christmas money this year and walk away, did she, Sheba?”

Sheba blinked and paused for a moment, before, shifting gears, and responding, “Now, who in the world says someone’s trying to ‘collect on a new Christmas Policy this year, honey?’” Sheba evasively answered. “We JUST wanted to sing you a little Christmas Carol, right now, to bring you good cheer, my little big-nosed reindeer. What in the world could be the matter with my little deer sister, named Rudolf, in our grand Victorian, upstairs? How’s she doin’ right now?”

Desdemona thought quietly about this, for a moment, thinking briefly about the room she was “supposed to sleep in” on the third floor of the old Victorian, upstairs, and responded, thusly:

“I might not entirely feel like Rudolf, the conveniently sleepy, little rain deer, here, tonight, honey, ready to fix Dr. Leaky’s problem upstairs with Lucy, the Missing Link’s Cunny Faucet, after knocking off a couple of tasty nutmeg cookies at Grandma’s, OK? Virginia Woolfe, here, and, that’s me, still wants to know when “the other one is gonna show up,” to “polish off the rest of the game plan.”

Iago, suddenly “predisposed to conveniently prearranged agitation,”  glanced towards Sheba with an “artfully conceived” wink upon which a brief silence ensued.

“Hey, you know what?” he said, finally. “I wanna hear Ragtime! OK? Let’s just go down to Pier 23, sit at the bar, and party with the rest of our buddies! It’s Tuesday, and the show lasts from 5 until 8. After that, who knows where in the world we’ll want to party next!”

“Oh, no!” Desdemona returned. “I don’t care whether I’m supposed to hear Ragtime, after the fact of the party trick, whether its thought-broadcast from the very heights of Mt. Tam, after the show has been over an hour, or from the steaming Plateaus of Iran! It’s the same fucking scam, right! I, already KNOW there are Ventriloquists down there working a “cell phone Broadband maneuver” for the Big Money, at Pier 23, and, between the Ferry Building Promenade and “whoever’s supposed to be still out there after 45 years,” as an ‘interceptive Dish Owner, abutting Nob Hill, somewhere,’ if it ain’t Phyllis Diller! I already know, EXACTLY, what I’m hearing all over this town, and it ain’t gonna work! I don’t care if your Twin “Peeks at me,” while I’m up on “The Peaks,” making out with ma baby! I’ll, at least, know it ain’t Phyllis Diller, from twenty feet away on the cell phone, doing the background filler, if it ain’t the still phenomenal  __________!”

Iago and Sheba stared at each other with astonished incredulity, albeit, very conveniently pre-arranged bewilderment. “Now, what in the world could THAT have to do with us? Desdemona, are you sure, you’re entirely all right? You look a little “twin-peaked,” right now, as if you were, literally, choking on something or other, like your own Mount Diablo Boulders.”

“Only if your own rocks and Iago’s are ‘where they ought not to be, up there, on Mt. Diablo’ near Rock City, Sheba! Otherwise, if I don’t spot Iago’s boulders sleepily positioned next to yours, out there, while negotiating the slope of the incline, I can figure out “the rest,” regarding which “Slopes” I have to negotiate, next, at Twin Peaks, once I decide to hike around there, unless you two aren’t the same, aforementioned “cell phone-slamming Slopes that hammer away at my Christmas Account,” everyu year, between there and the nearest Cell ‘Tower.’ And, by the way, how in the world do I already KNOW you two WEREN’T doing that JUST LAST WEEK, before you decide to tell me, without Iago, interrupting to act out the role of your ‘cell phone-speaking twin?’ Huh? Do you call that Acting, sugar? Or Re-Acting?”

At that very moment, Sheba, suddenly, yet, very conveniently, received a “very important, although interceptive cell phone call,” which, temporarily required her full, undivided attention, in which she “appeared to identify, herself, to the other party, as Phyllis Diller, the Phenomenal Background Filler, voice-dubbing the role of the phenomenal __________.

Once this “extremely important cell phone call” had terminated, Sheba, now, once again, fully, at leisure, turned to her sister, again, inquiring, “Now, what was your question, again, honey?”

Desdemona became a tad irritated at this, responding, “I’ve already ‘intercepted’ my ‘deductive response’ to that, Mrs. Watson, and, in case you didn’t realize it, you weren’t sending a message to ‘Text’ Watson in the slammer a minute ago, for Sherlock to figure out the rest of that ‘Cell Phone HookUp Scam.’ So what is ‘Sister Sherlock Cat’ trying to tell you, over here, before the holidays, besides ‘Hello, I think I know who I’m hearing?’”

At this, Sheba and the “Artfully Predisposed Iago” gazed at each other, for a moment, in complete bewilderment. Finally, Sheba responded, thusly:

“Honey, all we want for Christmas is ‘our two front teeth,’ don’t we? Cunt we just celebrate with each other like we did ‘in olden days, happy golden days?’”

“As long as we know ‘who’s doing the background filler, out there,’ Mrs. Sheba Phyllis Diller, aside from some guy named John, walking with his Girlie In Red ‘by the side of a Notorious Lake,’ and his ‘twin,’ ‘peaking’ in his general direction from the San Franciscan Heights. I imagine you don’t have to ‘appear to be’ the infamous Background Filler of San Francisco, if you’re using your cell phone to do it.

“By the way, weren’t you and Iago up there, last week, peeking at me and ma baby, while were doing something up on Twin Peaks, then? I think your voice sounds familiar.”

Again, Sheba, suddenly, received another “very urgent, though extremely interceptive call.” At that moment, she, suddenly, became “extremely agitated” and “appeared to be talking in a very frightened tone” to someone Desdemona had previously observed to be “The Notorious Background Filler of Larger San Francisco.”

Desdemona was, literally, engorged with, and, taken completely ‘ablack,’ by ‘complete, choking, and unabridged whorror.’ She could hardly contain herself.

She could only look on in growing rapt and bewildered terror, as The Background Filler Of Larger San Francisco, before her, continued to commence “what appeared to be” Her New Dawn of Terror over the City By The Bay.

Desdemona wasn’t sure “what the hell to do about the threat before” except “choke back the terror,” and, deal with the responsible “TERRIER,”  afterwards, so Christmas needn’t be so Shakespearean a Bitch in it’s New Year’s Melodramatic Resolution.

Besides, Desdemona, The Cat, had already decided not to see “Othello” this year, at the Warfield, after all. She had already “heard” the actors audition right in front of her. The Shakespearean “play on words” was not going to work this time. She was, already, “engorged.”