Le Chat du Voler

Leone Cheshire

Burglary. A crime in which one breaks into the dwelling of another and enters with the intent to commit a felony or misdemeanor, even if the crime has not been committed at the time of apprehension. I nod and roll up the Xeroxed page of my law book after reading the definition, sticking it in one of the many pockets sewn into the inside of my jacket. I wonder if a zoo counts as “the dwelling of another.” I had pulled out the page to check, but of course it doesn’t say anything about it.

The law text book is uncreative, really. I should ask my professor about it on Monday, but he’s not really that creative either. I mean, he got mad at me for asking if the stealing of a French man’s piece of toast off of his table after creeping in through an open window was burglary. He said I was being disruptive. I had to ask, though. I mean, if I’m going to get caught over in the country that nickname me ‘The Flying Cat’, it might as well be for the Mona Lisa rather than a rather disgusting piece of toast, which is probably still in one of my pockets somewhere. I don’t look in all of them all the time; there’s no way I could know. I will defeat that ugly painting yet. Wait, now what was I doing?

I look around, remembering that I have just broken into the Lockhall zoo. Oh. Right. Cousin Venom’s birthday present. I wander through the zoo in a search for the correct animal. My home city of Lockhall is my ‘safety zone’ as a criminal, as my professor would say. I like to say it is the place I honed my amazing master thief skills. It sounds cooler, really. Not to mention, zoos are more interested in watching their animals than their visitors. That’s their job.

My cousin Marcello, or Venom as I like to call him due to both his trademark weapon and the awesome Spider-Man reference, loves animals. I’m going to get him one because he’s a good guy. Well, he is to me. Professionally, Venom’s a hit man for the mafia. Well, one of the mafias. Lockhall has four and, in all honesty, he’s a freelancer whose a part of the Italian faction because The Abandonato crime family is now headed by our cousin Fiore.

I’m not a made man myself, even though The Family is my family. I’m just the half-British, cat burglar, law school student that my cousin comes to when she needs something stolen. Fiore’s tried to talk me into officially becoming a mafiosi, but I’ve dodged that like a ninja. I don’t like the idea of having to kill for her.

I’ve never killed anyone, not on purpose anyhow. There was this terrible accident when I was fifteen involving a firework on the Fourth of July, but that wasn’t really my fault. I’m twenty-two now, and I still hate fireworks. They scare me. A lot. It’s kind of hard to get over seeing red and blue sparks shooting out of a man’s face.

I brush my shaggy blond hair out of my face as I peer at a directional sign in front of me. Hm, I need a haircut. Now that the anime convention is over, I really should get it cut. I cosplay a great Full Metal Alchemist character with it long though, shortness and all. I was a runner up in the last contest I entered.

The sign reads ‘Big Cats’, which is perfect. In fact, it is exactly what I was looking for. I am a cat burglar, with a cat moniker, stealing a cat. I love it.

I peer into the first exhibit of the four to see a large striped feline pacing. He’s obviously a tiger. I shake my head. Tigers are huge. They’re the biggest cats in the world. I’m not nearly stupid enough to try that one. Tony can stay where he is and keep his greatness to himself.

I move on to the next exhibit and read the plaque on the railing. Lions. A Leo stealing a leo. That’s pretty cool. I start to climb over the rail and onto the wall that separates the exhibit from the visitors’ walkway. Balancing, I search for the service ladder that these things have, and as I do, I realize that it’s a really long way down.

I pause and my foot slips a little, but I catch myself using my completely badass thief skills as a bit of knowledge I learned as a kid floats back to me. Lions live in groups. Bloody hell.

I climb back over to the walkway and put my feet back on solid ground, incredibly grateful that I watched a few animal shows as a kid. Whoever said TV wasn’t good for kids is full of it. There’s no way I’m trying to take a lion because this cat doesn’t need a pack of bloodthirsty cousins chasing after him. Hm, that sounds a lot like my real family. Weird.

I shrug and continue my quest for a big cat who will not instantly kick my ass. I peer down into the next little chunk of fake Africa to see an anorexic looking kitty with spots pacing around. I back up right away because that’s a freaking cheetah. I don’t trust something that can run as fast as a sports car because it could definitely run down me, Mr. I-run-as-fast-as-a-human-because-I-am-one.

Looks like I’ve got one more chance or Marcello’s going to have to settle on whatever I can find in my pockets. I check what kind of cat it is, and, it turns out, these are leopards. I can’t remember anything particularly, especially deadly about them. Looking into the exhibit, I can see three little gold blotches curled up near a big spotted cat, which I assume is a Momma kitty and her babies. Looks like the fourth time’s the charm. I should’ve known.

I climb over and down the ladder, after some crafty maneuvering, because these things aren’t really meant for visitors to climb down. Making sure my shoes don’t clink too loud against the metal, I make my way down and then creep carefully toward the kittens. Are baby leopards even called kittens? I don’t know. I don’t even know why there’s a fake tree over there.

I sneak up to the baby cats that may or may not be called kittens, watching their mother carefully. I don’t need her to wake up and decide to rip my face off or something. I like my face. A lot, really.

The toe of my shoe nudges something soft and there’s a small mewing noise. I look down to see what seems to be a defectively colored leopard baby. Instead of being gold and properly spotted, its mostly black with a few gold outlines where spots should be. I didn’t even see this one before now.

I pick it up and examine the faulty colored cat and it just stares at me. I hold it up a little bit higher, looking at it carefully.

“You’ll do,” I tell it. It mews at me. Obviously, it agrees with me.

I unzip my coat and tuck my feline prize carefully into one of the larger pockets that I usually keep my comic books in. I zip it back up, making sure not to hurt the fuzzy victory while making sure it’ll stay put.

I look up, ready to make my daring escape, to see a pair of eyes staring at me. Momma cat’s awake and looking at me. Uh huh. I take a step back, then another, before I turn around and run as fast as I can. I really don’t like the idea of being a midnight snack. Really, really don’t.

The ladder is almost within grabbing range when I see a gold-colored blur out of the corner of my eye. I turn my head to look and see another leopard jump out of the fake tree and streak across the grass towards me. I didn’t even think Daddy cat would have to be nearby. No one ever told me leopards sleep in trees!

“Blast it!”

The second leopard gains on me quickly and bats at my side with what seems to be an obscenely large and deadly paw. I throw out my arm on instinct, as if to push it away, and realize after a split second how utterly stupid that just was. The cat’s claws rake my arm, and I scamper up the ladder with blood seeping through my sleeve and a throbbing arm. I hate blood. I especially hate my blood outside of my body, where it doesn’t belong. I jerk my foot up out of the leopard’s range when it bats at my shoe like a toy. I’m never stealing things that can kill me again. Not soon anyway.

Nearly falling back off of the ladder as I climb off of the top, I manage to scramble back to the zoo’s walkway. Trying to make sure I don’t bleed all over anything but myself, I pull a small towel out of one of the pockets of my coat. I’ve kept a towel with me ever since I read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and realized “Always know where your towel is” actual makes good advice if you do dangerous things. I wince as I wrap it around my arm. I hate blood; I hate it, and I hate pain too. God, I hope no one DNA tests that leopard.

I hurry away from the scene of the crime as I check on the little black cause of my pain, who is still in my pocket completely oblivious. Marcello better appreciate this. Bloody cat. I cringe as I close my coat and hold my arm as I realize the iron of using British slang at this point. This was not a good idea, but I’m never going to admit it out loud.

I pound on the door of my cousin’s large two story home, bouncing on the balls of my feet on the doorstep. My cousin lives outside of the city with pretty much no one around, which is probably good considering his line of work. I cradle my arm, flinching every now and then. I really want to go to the hospital but I can’t. I’d get caught and I’m not willing to do jail time over cat scratches, no matter how massive they are. If I can’t use my right hand normally after this, I’m going to be so pissed off, but I won’t check. The towel I wrapped it in is dyed red, and I’m having trouble even looking at that. Why won’t Venom open the blinking door?

I rap on the door again and it finally opens. My cousin, a man a few years older than me with messy black hair, dark eyes and a darker complexion due to his partially Costa Rican heritage (one of the reasons he’s a freelancer; he’s not fully Italian) is standing there, looking tired.

He just stands there, blinking at me, in a pair of jeans and a grey sweater while holding a bowl of Coco Puffs in his hand. Cereal is not a deadly looking accessory so he looks even less like a killer than he usually does, which isn’t much in the first place.

Marcello chews for a moment as he stares at me before speaking. “Leone, do you have any idea what time it is?”

I check my watch as I push past him into his living room. “It’s like one in the morning. You’re eating Coco Puffs, and you answered the door to me standing here bleeding on your front steps. It’s not the weirdest thing that you’ve ever done.” It’s true, too. Marcello killed his boss at one of his first jobs with a paperweight out of irritation when he was younger. I think it was the only murder he every actually did out of malice. I plop down on a chair in his living room, sitting in my typical fashion with my back against one armrest and my feet over the other.

Marcello stares at his steps for a minutes, as if looking to see if I really did bleed on them, before shutting the door and taking another bite of his cereal. “It’s late. I haven’t been to bed yet, and I’m out of groceries,” he says in explanation of his own state. “So, why are you bleeding, Leone?” He has the tone in his voice like this happens all the time. It does not; I’ve never been bleeding before when I showed up at his house in the middle of the night.

Instead of answering his question, I cringe as stretch out my injured arm to hold the black leopard that caused my problems during my present finding adventure up over my head. “Happy birthday, cousin Venom,” I say as I glare at it. Black cats are bad luck.

Marcello sets his cereal down on an end table and takes the cat out of my hands, looking as if he was worried I was going to hurt it. He inspects the feline, but I don’t know what he’s looking for. Maybe he is looking for the tag or the off switch.

“Leone,” he says as he cradles the cat and raises an eyebrow at me. “This is not a house cat.”

“Of course its not. There’s nothing cool about a cat burglar stealing a house cat. Stealing a leopard kitten, on the other hand, that’s ace work even if the daddy leopard tore up my arm.”

He sighs and shifts the cat so he can hold it with one arm. “She’s a leopard cub, and you do know you could’ve been killed, right?” He walks out of the room, taking his new present with him. Ah, so it’s not called a kitten and it’s not an it, but a she.

“It would’ve been fine,” I call to him, “but no one ever told me leopards sleep in trees.”

Marcello comes back with what looks like first aid stuff. “You’re just lucky the Lockhall zoo doesn’t keep jaguars instead. Those go for the skull.” I flinch when that image comes to mind, but he doesn’t notice. Marcello simply puts his new pet down and unwraps my arm, pulling up the sliced sleeve. “I think these are going to scar pretty bad if you don’t get to the hospital.”

Leave it to the hit man to be good at first aid. I shake my head. “Can’t. I’ll get busted. Not doing time for a cat scratch.”

My cousin shakes his head and sighs again. Venom seems very exasperated today for some reason. “Well, you must’ve gotten away fast if this is your only injury.”

I nod, and he cleans my arm with something that stings before starting to wrap it with white cloth bandages, starting at about my wrist and spiraling them up. I open my mouth to say something about how he better get me a good birthday present for my trouble, but I shut it again when I hear someone laughing. Insanely. Creepily. Almost like...Zaq. Then, a power tool whirs and my doubts are destroyed. “Zaq’s here.”

Marcello nods, and answers in a tone like he invited our younger cousin over to tea or something. “Yeah. I’m supposed to be training him. Work ran late and he’s finishing up.”

“Supposed to? Should you be down there supervising him or something?”

“I don’t have to,” he replies as he secures my bandages. “Zaq’s a natural.”

It’s my turn to stare now. “Venom, you’re training Zaq as a hit man. There shouldn’t be a natural in that.”

Of course, if anyone’s going to be a natural in murdering people brutally without remorse, Zaq’s a likely candidate. I mean, not only is he unreasonably touchy about his last name, which is Adlerflugel and about the funniest word I’ve ever heard, but he’s hit me with a dining chair before for telling a long joke he thought was annoying. He’s a freaking psycho, and I’m pretty sure he can’t feel anything. By that, I mean that Zaq has two expressions: blank and creepy smile, neither of which seem to have any emotion behind them. I’m not sure which is more disturbing, either.

“Shouldn’t I, you know, not be able to hear Zaq laughing like the barmy maniac he is?” I ask. He looks at me for a moment for using the odd slang. Marcello once told me my accent and use of words sounds like a geography book threw up everywhere but Spain. I told him he wasn’t one to talk because he himself speaks Spanish.

Marcello just shrugs and sits down on the chair next to me, putting the cub onto the floor and starting to dangle an length of bandage in front of her, his Coco Puffs forgotten. She pounces on it. “I must’ve left the basement door open.”

“You did,” says a flat voice that can belong to no one else but the half German, psychopath Zaq. “It doesn’t matter, though. He’s not going anywhere.” I look up from watching the stolen cat, and I see something that creeps me out worse than usual. I didn’t even think that was possible.

Zaq is standing in the doorway to the living room, his blue eyes blank and a creepy smile on his face. He’s wearing black dress pants and a white button up shirt, but there’s a splatter of blood down his shirt. He’s also holding Marcello’s pet rabbit, a lazy, nearly forty pound Flemish giant I dubbed Lemon. Lemon himself seems completely unconcerned that he’s being held by a murderer, but then again, he does get that a lot considering his owner and our family.

Lemon is not lemon colored, nor lemon sized. In fact, he’s an orangish-brown color and huge, but I named him that because Marcello was a little irritated that I insisted upon calling his rabbit something stupid when the rest of his pets have interesting names. It stuck though, so the bunny is Lemon to this day.

Zaq sets the rabbit that has nearly as bad a name as he does onto the carpet. “He got down the stair when you left the door open,” is what he says, talking about the rabbit. The look on his face, however, says he’s thinking something more along the lines of ‘I effing love this job’. He’s nutter, that one.

The baby leopard suddenly attacks the giant bunny, as if trying to convince him to play with her. Unfortunately, the rabbit is far too lazy for that and just lays there. Zaq stares at them and then looks at Marcello questioningly.

“Her name is Kali. She’s a baby leopard.” Great, so he named it something cool already. I totally wanted to call it Spot. “So I assume he’s dead?” Marcello’s tone is once again like he’s asking about something as normal as a movie or something. My family is deranged.

Zaq simply grins in return as a reply. Marcello walks up to him, pointing at his shirt. “I assume you made an absolute mess.”

Zaq just shrugs and Marcello shakes his head before looking at me. “Thank you for the pet, and get out of my house, Leone.” He doesn’t sound mad, just matter-of-fact.

I stare at him. “Why?”

“Because its two in the morning, I’m tired, there’s a dead man in my basement and I have to teach a rookie how to clean up his own mess. Why, do you want to help me?” Venom cracks a smile as he looks at me.

I stand up out of the chair. “Um, no thanks. I h-have class tomorrow, and I–” I start to walk towards the door, hoping they won’t stop me. “I’ve got to get to sleep cause it’s late and I–” There’s no way they’re making me help them. I’ve seen enough blood for tonight.

I hear Zaq laugh as I shut the front door. “He is aware it’s Sunday and there’s no way he has class, right? Idiot.”

I’ll take being called an idiot if it means I don’t have to be near Zaq around deadly objects. The Flying Cat wants to live to steal again.

As long as that theft doesn’t involve another cat.

The End

(Kind of)