Cat Burglar

I believe I have written about the feral cats that now inhabit my office. Originally they were named by my wife as Shadow (the all black male) and Patch and Paw, the two calico but primarily black females. I renamed Shadow, Lamont Cranston, and Doreen has up-classed Patch to Patrica (I prefer Patchtricia)  and Paw to Pawline.

The two females have three primary goals: 1) food, 2) petting (for, which they will forgo food for a while,  pet me, pet me, pet me, pet me, pet me, pet me, pet me, pet me, pet me, pet me, pet me, pet me, followed by 3) brush me, brush me, brush me, brush me, brush me, brush me, brush me, brush me, brush me, brush me, brush me, brush me, for which they will purr prettily.

Shadow/Lamont loves to spend a good deal of times trying to catch the mouse pointer on my computer screen and typing on its keyboard in Catonesey, of which I cannot understand. He has also well lived up to his name Lamont Cranston or perhaps he has desecrated it.

Aha, is Lamont planning a theft of this watch?

For the uninitiated (read younger folk) The Shadow was once right up there as a fictional character with Batman and Superman. He was a detective who recounted his tales on the radio and was played by a young Orson Wells, who portrayed him from 1936 to 1954. Originally he was a character on the Detective Hour and was a pulp fiction star for 18 years.

Lamont Cranston was a wealthy playboy who had travelled to the orient and learned the ability to cloud people’s minds and had hypnotic powers and could render himself invisible (easy to do in radio). In the pulp novels it turns out that even Lamont Cranston was a nom de plume and his real persona was Kent Allard found in a crashed plane in the orient. In the 30’s and 40’s Victor Jory played him in a 15 part film series. He appeared in film again in 1958 in Invisible Avenger a.k.a. the Bourbon Street Shadows.

In 1994 Alec Baldwin reprised the role for Universal Studios. It bombed in spite of big bucks being invested.

I don’t know why I inflict all this archaic information upon you, but I guess that is my nature.

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Now to the exploits of the current Lamont Cranston/Kent Allard/Shadow who dwells in my office. It turns out that Lamont has a dark side, in that he has turned cat burglar, purloiner of desk items (my desk) which he whisks away to secret hiding places (primarily under the rug at the entrance of my office. Yes, I have master sleuthing abilities myself to foil his secret criminal activities.) So far he has, with regularity, taken two pens and a flash drive from my desk and whisked them away to this hiding spot on a daily basis.

The old radio program always began with the words, “Who know what evil lurks in the heart of men? The Shadow knows.” Now I can say, “Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of Shadow? Who knows -The Hugh knows.” However I suspect I am being outfoxed (is a fox a feline or a dog? I’m going with cat,) on a regular basis by this upholder of justice to a cat burglar.

And an ominous lurking thought, what do we really know about Lamont’s cohorts, Pawline and Patchtricia? Currently appearing to lie docilely in my recliner chair; or, is it another cache for purloined articles? Stay tuned to this same cat station and cat channel for possible cat gang exploits.