Case of the Missing Cat, The

 

I surveyed my dishevelled apartment, the ceilings were high, it was an old Victorian house, converted to apartments, wooden floorboards, an old chesterfield leather sofa, helium canisters strewn around the place, and air compressor in the corner, and an air of dustiness and disarray, papers everywhere, a yellow latex suit laid over the couch as if it'd been discarded in haste.

 

The phone rang. 

 

"WATSON! Could you be a dear and get that for me." I shouted in a slightly squeaky voice. It was a little hard for me to answer the phone due to being about 8ft off the floor. "WATSON!". She appeared and looked up at me. "Holmes, not again..." she had her hands on her hips. "Yes, again Watson, this one is a different one, but it's good fun and it helps me meditate on the cases. Look at the brochure."

 

 

"You enjoy that catsuit far too much, did you read the leaflet yourself? and anyway what cases?" she replied, the phone was still ringing. I shifted my weight slightly in my shiny black helium inflated sphere of a suit. I bounced off the ceiling and bumped back against it. "Just answer the phone Watson."

 

She answered the phone, at last, after a short conversation she threw some newspapers off the couch and sat down and looked up at me. "We have a case. Lady Fontonbury-Smithe, her cat is missing."

 

"Her cat?" I rolled my eyes at Watson. "Yes her cat Holmes, she's willing to pay a rewards of up to ten thousand for its return." I grinned like a Cheshire cat. "Watson... Get me down." 

 

Watson tugged on the hose still attached to the rear of my suit and pulled me down, held onto my foot and twisted off the hose. I start deflating. "Ten thousand pounds, to find a cat, she must be rolling in it." I waiting until the last puff of helium left the suit. "No time to lose Watson... Let's go."

 

"Like that? You aren't going out like that?" Watson looked a little embarrassed. I looked down at my body clad in shiny black rubber. "Of course not Watson, I can't be bothered to get out of this, there's no time to lose." I quickly put on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a tracksuit top over the suit, I have slight trouble pulling the bottoms over the small pony tank of helium at the side, and then put my coat over the top and put some trainers on to go out. "Come on! come on!".

 

"Holmes, you've got a bit of string sticking out under your coat." she said "Not now, not now, we have lots to do." I reply tersely.

 

Watson followed me out to our dilapidated car, it's a 1990s British Leyland heap of junk, but I love it, the beige paint, the vinyl roof, the velour seats. It starts fifth or sixth time and we disappear up the road in a cloud of blue smoke.

 

Some time later a cloud of blue smoke arrives at Fontonbury Hall, it's a vast red brick country pile of a house, acres of land a lake with a fountain, columns surround the door, and looking over the place, it looks to have at least 30 rooms. It's in somewhat of a state of disrepair, but that's like all country houses these days, we're greeting by a tweed jacket wearing a posh blonde lady who is wearing jodhpurs, she couldn't be over 25 if she was a day. 

 

"Lady Fontonbury-Smithe, and you are Sarah Holmes and Jane Watson I presume?" she guffawed in an extremely upper class way.

 

"Yes, and you are are definitely Lady Fontonbury-Smithe?" I replied quizzically. She shook my hand, and I can hear the squeak of a rubber underneath my tracksuit, I bite my lip as this feel really quite naughty, wearing rubber, in public, even though it's hidden away is a slightly sexy feeling. "Yes, Jenny to my friends, I inherited all this 3 years ago, isn't it lovely." she looked genuinely pleased to own this place, she raises one eyebrow at me. "Come in, I'll show you where His Lordship usually sits. We call him His Lordship as he's the one who really runs the place. Ahahaha. His real name is Harry but we never call him that." we're ushered into the Hall. "I want you to be very discrete please, we have a shooting party in, this is His Lordship's cat basket. He's a white persian. We need him back, there's a covenant in perpetuity on the Hall that if we don't have a white persian cat at all times, the Hall defaults to the original family who owned the hall. It's a strange covenant, the original owners my grandfather bought the house from put that covenant in as they loved persian cats, it's all legally binding. We need that cat back."

 

We're taken through the old house, and in a side room we're shown what looks to be an exact scale replica of Fontonbury Hall, but with an opening for a cat to sit in. I take a quick stock of the surrounding area, cat basket has cat hairs, white, there's part of a petal, red, looks like a rose petal in one corner, the bed has a small amount of muddy paw prints on it, there's a small TV inside the replica hall, that damn game show Bounce was on again. "He loves TV" Lady Jenny exclaimed.

 

"Where does he usually go?" I ask. 

 

"The garden, he has free roam of the grounds, he's usually gone for a few hours then returns for food, he's been gone over a day now" Jane looked visibly worried now. 

 

"We'll find him, we'll definitely find him." I replied confidently "We'll need to see the garden, does he have anywhere in the garden you'll usually see him."

 

"Oh yes, the shed, he loves the shed, it's got a cat flap fitted, it's a bit of a mess, but I'll take you there, I'll get the key" Jenny went off to get the key and take us to the garden shed.

 

I have a good look around the garden on the way to the shed, roses, lots of roses, red, pink, white, the gardener was out there pruning some, he looked up at me from his work. "ello" he said in a broad west country accent. I squeaked past him, my rubber undersuit was feeling a little warm in this weather, I took off my coat and passed it to Watson. He smirked at me as I went past, maybe he could hear the squeaking. He was a handsome man, very fit from all the gardening, he had piercing blue eyes and a shock of short brown hair messed up in the fashion these days. Distractedly I bumped into Watson. "Sorry. The shed."

 

We go over to the shed, it sat in a shady nook under a large oak tree, it looked uncared for, but functional.

 

Lady Jenny opened the shed and showed us in, she goes over to the gardener to talk to him. There was gardening equipment everywhere and a blanket placed on the window sill inside where a cat obviously sat. I peer over to take a look, unbeknownst to me the string had snagged on a lawnmower handle. I moved closer. I look around, there was a slight hissing noise. "Do you hear that?" I say quizzically "A hissing noise". I look down, it's me, I'm hissing. My tracksuit looked a bit bulgier than before. I prod my slightly fatter looking stomach and slightly fuller breasts, the tracksuit looked somewhat tighter. "Erm... Watson" I look slightly embarrassed "Am I... am I blowing up?". 

 

"Yes Holmes, I think you are." she smirked, and untangled the string from the lawnmower handle. The hissing stopped. "Thank you Watson. I guess we should be careful." I tuck the string into the band of the tracksuit trousers and look around the shed more. Watson shakes her head and walks out. I peek about some more, another petal laid on the floor, I bend over to pick it up, the helium in the suit shifting slightly, and the string, which was tucked into my waist band had worked it's way out again.

 

I walk out of the shed, and slam the door behind me, "Lady Jenny! I need to speak to the gardener." I shout over, and walk towards her. The string had got caught in the door and as I walked forward the string got pulled out of the device on my suit. 

 

"Emergency system activated" an electronic voice said. "Emergency system? What emergency syste....." I was cut short. There was a loud hissing and my tracksuit inflated rapidly. "WATSON, I'm inflating!" I shout. My tracksuit was filling rapidly with latex suit which was filling rapidly with helium. My arms flew up and outwards, as did my legs so I looked like a starfish. Watson ran over. "You certainly are." she picked up the string and looked at my rapidly blowing up form, I looked like an enormously fat person had been squeezed into a far too small tracksuit, hugely inflated arms and legs and a round torso. The tracksuit was straining at the seams, but holding up well. "The... pressure... Watson..." I puffed for breath. 

 

"I think you probably triggered the emergency system, pulling the string out slightly would inflate the suit according to how much you wanted, but if you activate the emergency system, it inflates rapidly until you reach a 6 feet diameter or there's viable lift" she said over the hissing.

 

I felt a lot lighter than usual, I was on tip toe, trying to work out how to stop the suit inflating, my arms flailing and now my toes were no longer touching the ground. There was a loud bang as my tracksuit bottoms gave way revealing the black latex suit was I wearing, throwing Wastson back onto the ground. My legs suddenly disappeared into the lower hemisphere of the suit with the change in pressure. I float gracefully upwards very slowly. More pressure, my tracksuit top rolled upwards towards my chin as the burgeoning suit sphere claims more real-estate from the tracksuit. BANG the sleeves and zip give way on the tracksuit top and my full rubbery sphericalness is revealed to everyone in the garden. I float faster now upwards about 9 feet and hit the branch of the oak tree overhead. Just then hissing stops. 

 

Great. The suit was being sarcastic. Luckily I had been caught by the tree. "WATSON, fetch a ladder..." I cry outwardly, humiliated, but with a slight smirk of satisfaction.

 

- Epilogue.

 

We found the cat.