How to Catch a Cat (26 page)

THE LOANER BOAT

THE REGATTA’S FATEFUL
ninth race was scheduled for a one thirty
P.M.
start, but Mother Nature refused to cooperate. Strange as it may seem for a sailing competition, there were strict regulations on both the upper and lower wind speeds that were deemed suitable for racing.

High wind conditions forced the race organizers to delay the ninth competition and reorganize the rest of the day’s schedule. Likely only one race would get off that afternoon, and it wouldn’t start for at least another hour, assuming the actual weather conformed to the forecast.

For the Baron and his demoralized sailing team, the postponement only extended their torture.

While outwardly, they proclaimed their intent to fight to the finish, inwardly, they had all but given up.

—

BACK AT CITY
Hall, a lull had settled over the mayor’s office suite.

The reception area was sealed off from the gusting wind that had disrupted the day’s sailing. In fact, the room had grown quite warm. The stuffy temperature combined with satiated stomachs to create a den of peaceful slumbering.

The television had mercifully been put on mute. Human and feline snoring filled the void.

Rupert sprawled across the cat bed, Isabella lay flopped across the top of the filing cabinet, and Monty had stretched his long frame over two office chairs.

Only the niece remained awake, and she was struggling to keep her eyelids open.

When the phone rang, she picked it up and said sleepily, “Mayor Carmichael’s office.”

“I got the boat.”

“Van?”

“Well, yeah,” he responded, somewhat incredulous.

The niece’s comment instantly brought Monty back to life. He nearly fell to the floor in his scramble to reach the niece’s desk.

“Did he get the boat?”

The niece nodded warily. “He got the boat.”

At Monty’s wild hand waving, she spoke into the receiver.

“We’re on our way.”

—

TWENTY MINUTES LATER,
the mayor’s black town car stopped at a curb near the city’s baseball park. There weren’t any available parking spots, so this was the closest the driver could get them to the address Van had given them.

Monty jumped out and began lifting the cat stroller through the car’s side door as the niece consulted a map.

“Van said to meet him at the Mission Bay boat launch . . .” She squinted at a walkway that ran beside the stadium, leading toward a dock beyond. While it was sunny directly overhead, a thick wall of fog had begun to roll in through the Golden Gate. “Um, I’m not so sure about this . . .”

Monty was already guiding the cat-filled carriage down the sidewalk. “Come on! The race could be starting any minute now. There’s no time to waste!”

—

VAN MET HIS
City Hall colleagues behind the stadium and motioned for them to follow him down the walkway toward the pier.

“What kind of boat is this, exactly?” the niece called out, realizing she should have posed this question at the outset.

Van appeared not to hear her.

She soon had her answer.

When she caught up to Van and Monty, they were standing beside an inflatable raft. Van held an electric pump in his hand, which had presumably been used to inflate the tubing.

The niece stared at the raft, puzzling. “Wait, isn’t that—the Batman boat?”

During every home baseball game, local fans took to the water outside the stadium in the hopes of catching fly balls or home runs that sailed over the wall and landed in the bay.

This being San Francisco, it wouldn’t do to simply float about in black monochrome wet suits or unadorned canoes—such activity must be performed while wearing elaborate costumes and gear.

One of the most popular participants in this bonanza was a pair of sports enthusiasts who dressed up like Batman and Robin and drove through the stray ball zone on a handcrafted Batman-themed boat.

The duo—and their distinctive inflatable raft—were regularly featured in cutaway shots from the televised game.

The niece looked up at Van. “Your friend is the Batman guy?”

Van cleared his throat. “Technically, I’m Batman. He’s Robin.” He shrugged. “Because I’m taller. But since it’s his boat, he calls himself Batman, even though he wears the Robin outfit.”

Monty murmured to himself, trying to follow the convoluted logic.

The niece shook her head, unable to imagine her intern as the masked figure she’d seen on television news clips.

“I never would have recognized you.”

“Well, we wear costumes.” Van opened a locker next to the dock. “The water’s cold. You’ll need to put on a wet suit.”

Isabella poked her nose against the stroller’s zipped cover, sniffing at the inflatable raft. Her eyes focused on the rubber tubing, inspecting its seaworthiness.

Monty reached for one of the decorated wet suits.

“I have to be Batman,” he said emphatically. “I’m the mayor. I can’t be Robin.”

Van shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t be Robin. I won’t fit in the costume.”

Monty and Van turned toward the niece.

“No,” she said adamantly. “No way.”

An overriding feline voice called out from the stroller.

“Mrao.”

—

MINUTES LATER, VAN
waved as the raft pulled away from the dock, powered by an outboard motor attached to the rear of the inflated tubing. The motor had been rigged so that its power and direction could be controlled from a front-mounted steering wheel and drive shaft.

Monty stood behind the front console wearing the Batman wet suit, which included a long rubber cape and a pointed mask that covered the top half of his face.

The niece occupied the copilot position beside the mayor. Under protest, she had donned the red, green, and gold Robin outfit.

The cats, of course, couldn’t ride along without some form of accoutrement.

Van had improvised their costumes from a stuffed animal that was typically mounted to the boat during the baseball sessions.

It took some convincing, but Isabella eventually allowed herself to be fitted with a black waterproof vest. Rupert had agreed to wear the cat-sized cape.

With all of its passengers suitably attired, the raft, which was thankfully far sturdier than it appeared at first glance, sped off into the foggy bay.

“Which way to the racecourse?” Monty hollered over the motor’s loud hum.

The niece was unable to point directions. She was too busy holding on to the front railing with one hand and Rupert with the other.

Isabella assumed responsibility for navigational instructions.

“Mrao.”

I’M BATMAN

RUPERT HUDDLED IN
his person’s arms, trying to avoid the spray coming off the water as the raft motored toward the buoys marking the eastern edge of the regatta racecourse.

Being a cat, he had only a vague notion of the famous superhero who had inspired the boat’s elaborate décor. He hadn’t read any of the comic books that featured the fictional character’s Gotham City exploits. Nor had he seen any of the movies dedicated to the Batman franchise.

Rupert’s only frame of reference was based on the humans he’d seen dressed up like the famous masked crusader. He gathered the costume gave the wearers a sense of empowerment—that it conveyed unique skills and made possible otherwise unachievable feats.

He was a little unclear as to why a bat-human hybrid would inspire such beliefs, but he could support the underlying theme.

Moreover, Rupert knew this about the caped crusader: Batman had opposable thumbs—thumbs that could be used to rifle through a phone book or to access online databases to search for the secret location of a kitchen with the capability of making both fried chicken and donuts—or, more important, fried chicken baked inside donuts.

Yes, a superhero could do that.

And he, Rupert, now wore a superhero cape.

Bravely, Rupert lifted his head, letting the breeze catch the tiny cape tethered to his neck.

He flexed his front paws, imagining the extra digits sprouting from his wrists.

I’m
Batman
.

HELLO, SAN FRANCISCO!

THE LATE-SUMMER FOG
filled the bay, a dense wall of liquid air that swallowed everything in its path.

The peaks of the Golden Gate Bridge rose above the mist, the red pillars floating as if suspended in midair. The city itself lay cloaked in a feathery gray boa that had been slung across peaks, valleys, and street shoulders in elegant adornment.

Despite the inclement weather, the niece had never seen so many watercraft squeezed into such a limited space. The area surrounding the racecourse was a literal traffic jam of boats.

Alcatraz was under siege, surrounded by an armada of yachts, motorboats, and local ferries, the last of which had been co-opted to provide special racing tours. The ferries still making their regular routes maneuvered with difficulty through the bottleneck of boats.

And there in the middle of it all was the Batman and Robin raft—which in addition to its regular cast of superheroes today included two orange and white cats.

—

MUCH TO THE
niece’s chagrin, Monty had found a bullhorn in one of the raft’s front storage compartments.

With delight, he steered toward a high-end yacht. After waving up at the yacht’s regatta spectators, he hollered into the horn’s mouthpiece, “Hello, people of San Francisco!”

Given the Batboat’s popularity in the Bay Area, a few of the passengers raised their wineglasses and beer bottles in toast. Some even clapped and cheered—a sure indication that they hadn’t recognized the mayor in the Batman costume.

Monty cleared up that misconception with his next announcement.

“It is I, Mayor Carmichael!”

Hisses and boos were hurled over the water. One man looked as if he was about to throw an empty bottle at the raft, but an environmentally conscientious colleague held him back.

Other observers were more interested in the raft’s feline passengers.

“I didn’t know Batman had cats . . .”

—

WHILE MONTY CONTINUED
to blast the yacht spectators with his bullhorn, Isabella focused on driving. Perched on the front console next to the steering wheel, she was able to control the raft’s direction—so long as Monty was suitably distracted.

The pedal that regulated the motor’s speed, however, was beyond the reach of her back legs, a source of constant frustration. She glared down at the lever, cursing the raft’s poor design.

“Mrao.”

“Aren’t we supposed to be staying outside of these buoys?” the niece asked, worried they were veering too close to the racecourse.

The question was answered by an earsplitting blast from a Coast Guard cutter, whose horn volume far surpassed that of Monty’s.

Monty waved cordially as Isabella steered the raft out of the zone.

—

IN THE DISTANCE,
at the far west edge of the course, the two racing boats picked up speed, heading toward the starting line.

Shifting Rupert in her arms, the niece fiddled with a shortwave radio mounted onto the raft’s console and dialed to the frequency broadcasting the race announcer.

“They’re off! It’s a clean break across the line!”

Monty revved the engine. Dropping the bullhorn, he wrapped his hands around the steering wheel, gripping it on either side of Isabella’s paws.

“Let’s go!”

—

UNDER ISABELLA’S EXPERT
steering, the raft dodged in and out of the much larger boats that had been prepositioned along the edge of the course. Soon, the Batman crew neared the center of the race action.

The competing sailboats moved at breathtaking speed toward the buoy marking the first corner. Gasps were heard across the bay—and from the radio announcer—as both teams threw their craft into a whipping reverse.

The Kiwis tilted almost forty-five degrees. Sailors clung precariously to the hulls and cross-netting as the boat hung in the air and then landed, with a crushing
whomp
, back on the bay.

With nothing left to lose, the Americans were just as gutsy in their approach—and were rewarded with a far smoother landing. Steely expressions were visible beneath their plastic helmets and water-splashed visors. Despite the long odds, they were giving it their all.

It was no small endeavor to keep up with the racing sailboats, but Isabella was the cat for the job. She hunched over the steering wheel, urging Monty to give the motor more gas. The raft bounced around the outer edge of the course, once more weaving in and out of the stationary ships lining the perimeter.

Helicopters hovered above the action. The cameramen, by now accustomed to filming while hanging out the aircraft’s side doors, trained their equipment on the fast-moving race—and on the cat-driven Batboat.

The resilient Americans were neck and neck with the upstart Kiwis, but the race announcers were torn between providing play-by-play of the race and reporting on the superhero felines among the spectator boats.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. One of those cats is actually driving the boat!”

Monty nudged Isabella’s shoulder. “A little to the right, Captain.”

Her furry expression reflected annoyance, but she grudgingly complied.

“Mrao.”

Seconds later, the Batboat zoomed past the Baron’s yacht. Monty pulled out the bullhorn and aimed it at the fancy ship’s top deck.

“Hey, Baron! How do you like me now?”

—

THE BARON WOULD
have been furious at Mayor Carmichael for invading the regatta—except that his team had just won the race.

The Kiwis had been momentarily distracted by a Batman boat carrying two costumed cats the crew had seen circumnavigating the racecourse.