Felidae - Special U.S. Edition

that way, too. Now and then they would honor us with their company at dinner and even bring a bottle of wine as a present. Now and then they would in turn invite Gustav, and he, too, would bring them a bottle of wine as a present. So the wine bottles would change ownership regularly every four months—but the feelings, Gustav's feelings (for he did indeed have some), remained in that prison that holds both the lonely and their feelings captive. As a matter of fact, of all of them Archie was the most reliable, although he, too, showed up only a few times a year, and he had these terrible quirks. But at least he helped out my life companion in emergency situations, and so kept up the appearance of friendship. And I? Well, I wasn't a human being and so wasn't in a position to satisfy the emotional needs of Gustav, a human being. And yet (if I may venture this sentimental confession on this sentimental day), I was the only living being in the world who really did love him. That's right, I loved that fool, that overripe watermelon in human form, that talking hippo, that meganerd, that all-around failure, that self-satisfied bourgeois pig, that analphabetic author, that fatheaded failure, that conglomeration of inferior atoms, that total zilch—and if anyone laid a finger on him, he'd find out what my scalpel-tipped claws were like!

Right after we had jointly devoured the roast—I under the table, Gustav on an uncomfortable designer kitchen chair that was much too small for his elephantine behind and must have cost a fortune—I slipped out the back door. I made sure that the back entrance was open for the meeting participants and then trotted up the rickety wooden stairs to the next floor. While I was away, my lonely friend, as always on Christmas Eve, would listen to the pastoral harmonies of some children's choir or other on the stereo, and, when he got tired of the whole hullabaloo, would once again plunge into research on his thirty-five-hundred-year-old goddess.

Outside the snow fell thickly and incessantly, and the streets, wrapped in an oversized, bluish-white cape, would have been an ideal Christmas for a naïve painting. Yet an icy wind already signaled that the wintry idyll would soon turn into a malicious snowstorm. Through the windows, whose shutters had been battered to pieces or reduced to their hinges in the course of time, the wan light of the street lamps shone into the dilapidated rooms, providing scanty illumination. I arrived intentionally an hour early so that I could be alone with my thoughts, for somehow I had the feeling that tonight something decisive was going to happen. Naturally I could not hope to expect that the meeting would bring something spectacularly new to light. Pascal and I merely wanted to draw an interim balance and perhaps make a show of something resembling collective strength. Whoever the butcher was, wherever he happened to be, we were going to let him know that all of us were hunting him down and were no longer willing to bow down to his bloody tyranny. There was a strange suggestion of something in the air that promised resolution.

Sitting in the center of the room between whose execrable walls everything had begun, I spent my time in a meditative frame of mind. The more the chaos in my head yielded to crystalline order, the more an agreeable energy pervaded me whose thrust made me believe that I was only seconds away from solving the case. It was as if the metaphysical stillness around me had liberated my nerves from all the muck that had collected in this morass of lies and deceit, of blood and hate. I began to think more clearly and more smoothly while time seemed to fly by …

Finally Pascal and Bluebeard entered the room, putting an end to this strange meditation before it could lead to solid results. Judging by the way old Pascal looked, the hike up here had been an enormous strain. He greeted me briefly, then, as if narcotized, plopped down on his rear and gasped for air.

"When's this show finally going on the road?" asked Bluebeard impatiently, scornfully eyeing the loose electric cables poking up from the cracked parquet floor that had once racked him with pain. He had just said these words when the first guests shuffled in, an endless caravan of the curious consisting of brothers and sisters of the most various breeds, colors, and ages. Although the majority were the very usual European Shorthair, such rare specimens as the flap-eared Scottish Fold, the proud Somali, the tailless Manx, the delicate Japanese Bobtail, and the Devon Rex, whose face was not unlike a bat's, streamed into the room. Some mothers came in accompanied by their children, who frolicked unself-consciously with one another. The most successful studs in the district and a couple of its senior citizens looked around skeptically, making no secret of their opinion that events such as this one were absolute nonsense. Yet although it was absolutely certain that they would do everything in their power to make fun of Pascal and me, you could detect a certain intentness and curiosity behind the facade of disapproval. Others regarded the whole affair as a kind of Christmas party, giving them the chance to renew social contacts. They sniffed at and licked each other in greeting, or revived ancient enmities, hissing at each other or immediately beginning wild brawls. But the majority seemed to be seriously interested in the matter at hand, because the atrocities had become sufficiently known to provide for an atmosphere of continual threat.

The dimly lit apartment filled up now with increasing speed, and for the first time I got a pretty good idea of the great many cripples living in the district. The ones I had seen before now seemed to me like a mere sample, considering the poor creatures now before me. The many wounds that Preterius