Political heiress Priscilla Kingsbury is about to marry Carson de Kruk, son of business mogul Augustus de Kruk, at the Kingsburys’ waterfront compound. For reporter Sunny Coolidge, an assignment from the Harbor Courier to cover the event is like catnip.
But when Sunny photographs men pulling the body of a dead woman out of the water, the Kingsburys’ private security isn’t happy. They claim the woman’s death was an accident, but the story seems fishy. Now, with a little help from her police officer boyfriend and her cunning cat Shadow, Sunny is determined to get the scoop on a killer.
For Sunny and Shadow's latest outing, I decided to throw a little ailurophobia into the mix, with a billionaire, a really domineering alpha male, going to pieces whenever Shadow crosses his path. The dictionary definition of this psychological condition describes an irrational aversion to cats, a fear and even a loathing of them. And while I play the situation for laughs, it's serious for the sufferers. They can suffer panic symptoms – trembling, nausea, shortness of breath, even heart palpitations.
What causes this phobia? It could be due to an unfortunate
experience with a cat during the sufferer's childhood, picking up anti-cat
attitudes from parents, or an intense belief in cats' bad rep in terms of evil
magic. I like a semi-Buddhist friend's theory – cat-haters must have spent several recent reincarnations as
mice.
Let's face it, though, loving cats is just about as irrational
as hating them. The ancient Egyptians worshiped cats as gods and even mummified
them. The darker side of that was the temple kitten mills where cats were
raised to become mummies and sold to the devout. X-rays of some of those
remains show the embalmed “gods” had broken necks. And they
certainly didn't get much love in later days. Some 38,000 pounds of mummified
cats were exported to England for use as fertilizer in the late 1800s.
A lot of websites list historical figures like Alexander the
Great, Julius Caesar, and Genghis Khan as ailurophobes. More recent members of
the cat-haters club include Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler, and Joe Stalin. A lot
of this seems to be more myth than history, however. It's an intriguing notion:
Mighty despots who could order millions around couldn't stand little furry
creatures with a famous independent streak.
Of course, if you ever tried to order a cat around, a quick
descent into irrationality is the least you could expect.
And it's not just bad guys who suffer from ailurophobia. Dwight
D. Eisenhower, the general who won World War II and became 34th
president, apparently ordered his staff to shoot any feline trespassers
wandering near his home in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I have no reports
regarding the situation around the White House during his presidency. Artists,
too, have been afflicted with this cat hostility – Shakespeare, the dancer Isadora Duncan, even La Toya Jackson.
But creative folks have also been cat lovers. Hemingway, Mark
Twain, and Stan Laurel all were friends of furballs. When it comes to the
powerful, two figures from the American Civil War, Lincoln and Lee, were
kitty-lovers. One of the greatest leaders of the Twentieth Century didn't just
love cats, he continued to do so from beyond the grave. During World War II,
Winston Churchill not only attended dinners but Cabinet meetings with a cat
named Nelson sitting beside him. During Churchill's final years, he was given a
marmalade cat whom he named Jock. When the former prime minister passed away,
he arranged that a similar cat should continue to live at Chartwell, his
stately family manor, which is now run as a national historic site. At present,
Jock V is living there, although he's not allowed in the historic rooms for
fear he'll destroy the antiques.
Perhaps the sorest point of the ambivalent relationship between
humans and felines lies in the field of religion. St. Gregory the Great, an
early pope, was apparently very fond of cats.
Eight Gregories farther on, though, Pope Gregory IX denounced cats as
limbs of Satan, issuing a papal bull
against them in the 1230s that resulted in cats being burned. A few centuries
later Pope Innocent VIII wasn't so innocent when he issued a bull branding cats
as co-conspirators with witches. Any woman burned at the stake would be
accompanied by her supposed familiar. That was in 1484. Apparently the faithful
did such a good job thinning the cat population that the bubonic plague,
carried by flea-infested rats, repeatedly ravaged Europe. The city of London
alone suffered outbreaks in 1563, 1593, 1603, 1625, 1636, and 1665, killing off ten to thirty
percent of the population during those years.
More recently, though, cats had a friend in the Vatican. Pope
Benedict XVI was a cat-lover from when he was young and had a feline companion
while he was a cardinal. Vatican rules, unfortunately, do not allow a cat in
the papal apartments. However, Benedict had many furred pals on the streets of
Rome, a city with many strays. Onlookers report that the cats knew the Pope
when he went out for strolls and would come running to him. On one occasion, a
procession of about ten cats followed him back to the Vatican, forcing the
Swiss Guards to warn the pontiff about a “cat invasion.”
We still don't have a pill to cure cat-phobia (or cat-mania, for
that matter). But science has come to the defense of cats and the way they
behave around ailurophobes. The kitty that makes a beeline for the one person
in the room who's uncomfortable around cats isn't using some feline sixth sense
to make his victim miserable. It's simply a cattish reaction to two-leggity
behavior. Among cats, a prolonged stare is a challenge. So for somebody like
Shadow, strangers making kissy noises, calling “puss-puss,” or trying to
pick him up would be seen as threatening types. The person who's sitting still
and not looking his way comes across as pleasant and non-threatening, the
perfect lap to hop onto. How's a cat to know that will cause cold sweats and
pounding hearts?
Maybe the ailurophobe should react like my character in Hiss and Tell, having a loud meltdown
whenever he catches a glimpse of Shadow. At least then the cat has a little
warning. . .
The theme for this book was a wedding. When Sunny goes to photograph and she finds men pulling a woman's body out of the water, she then finds herself caught up in the whirlwind of a homicide investigation of which she feels she has to solve.
Superbly written, Hiss and Tell is a great addition to this series. It's clever, funny and absolutely adorable. This is one series that I'd read again and again!
Rating: 5 Stars
I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All conclusions reached are my own.
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