A Night Out (in Short Story Collection Vol. 035 )

MP3 Audio CD. A Night Out (in Short Story Collection Vol. 035 )

I


Omar Ben Sufi was a cat. This unadorned statement would have wounded Omar
Ben to the marrow of his pride, for he chanced to be a splendid
tiger-marked feline of purest Persian breed, with glorious yellow eyes
and a Solomon-in-all-his-glory tail. His pedigree could be traced
directly back to Padisha Zim Yuki Yowsi Zind--a dignity, in itself,
sufficient to cause an aristocratic languor; but, to the layman, he was
just a cat.

He dwelt with an exclusive family of humans in a little
eighty-thousand-dollar cottage on the outskirts of vulgarity--which is
to say, the villa was situated near enough to town to admit of marketing,
but far enough removed therefrom to escape the clatter of plebeian toil
and the noxious contact with the unhealthy, unwealthy herd. Here the
humans entertained selected friends who came at the ends of weeks to
admire the splendor of Omar Ben's tail, to bow down to the humans' money,
and to hate them fiercely because they had it.

The master did not toil. He lived, for certain hours of the day, in Wall
Street, where he sank his patrician fingers into the throats of lesser
men, squeezed them dry, then washed his hands in violet water, and built
a church. True, he did not attend this church himself, but he built it;
otherwise his neighbors might have been deprived of the opportunity of
praising God.

Omar Ben had a French maid all to himself--a perky little human with a
quasi-kinship to the feline race--who combed him and brushed him and
slicked him down and gave him endless, mortifying baths. Also, she tied
lavender bows about his neck, and fed him from Dresden china on minute
particles of flaked fish and raw sirloin, with a dessert of pasteurized
cream.