"I can guess what that is!" said Bill, looking cynical and vindictive.

"Percy!" shouted Margaret and Cornelius in unison. "What-have-you-done?" Recoiling at the unjust accusation, Percy shrank into his smallest size. He was a fastidious cat who observed the formalities of the litterbox with never a lapse.

Margaret circled the puddle. "Somehow I can't believe that Percy would do such a thing."

"Who else would leave a puddle on the floor?" said Bill with a cutting edge to his voice.

"A ghost?"

"Ghosts!" cried Deedee. "I knew it! It was that crazy stunt of yours, Bill!" She peered into an oversize brandy snifter on the bar. "Where's-my-diamond-ring? I put it in this big gla.s.s thing when I helped Margaret in the kitchen last night. Oh, Bill, something horrible happened here. I feel all cold and clammy, and I can smell something weird and musty. Let's go home. Please!"

Bill stood there scratching his right ankle with his left foot. "We'd better get back to the city, folks, before she cracks up."

"Let me prepare breakfast," Margaret said. "Then we'll all feel better."

"I don't want breakfast," Deedee wailed in misery. "I just want to go home. I've got some kind of rash on my ankles, and it's driving me nuts!" She displayed some streaks of white blisters.

"That's ivy poisoning, kiddo," Bill said. "I think I've got the same thing."

"It couldn't be," Margaret protested. "We've never seen any poison ivy at the cemetery!" The Diddletons packed hastily and drove away from Big Pine Lake before the sun had risen above the treetops.

Percy, his pride wounded, refused to leave his refuge under the sofa, even to eat breakfast, and for some time following the weekend of the big puddle he remained cool toward Cornelius and Margaret. Although they quickly forgave him for all the untoward happenings, he found scant comfort in forgiveness for sins he had not committed. The incident was related to a new houseful of guests each weekend, and the blow to Percy's reputation caused him deep suffering.

At the end of the season Deedee's diamond ring was found behind the pine woodbox.

The Diddletons paid no more visits to the chalet, however. Nor did Cornelius and Margaret return to the loggers' graves; almost overnight the entire cemetery became choked with poisonous vines.

"Very strange," said Margaret. "We've never before seen any poison ivy there!"

"I fail to understand it," said Cornelius.

The Fluppie Phenomenon We first became aware of the Fluppie Phenomenon fifteen years ago. My husband and I had no pets at that time, and innocently we agreed to provide bed and board for a Siamese kitten while my sister in St. Louis traveled abroad for a few weeks. Geraldine a.s.sured us that cat-sitting would be an enjoyable experience. She wrote: "I wouldn't trust Sin-Sin with anyone but you. She won't be a bit of trouble. Just keep her indoors and be sure she doesn't meet any male cats. She's almost old enough to get ideas, and I don't want her to mate casually. She has an impressive pedigree, and I intend to breed her with discrimination when she comes of age . . . . You will be rewarded with affection and entertainment. Sin-Sin has lovable ways and is a very mechanical cat . . . .

What would you like me to bring you from Paris?"

"What's a mechanical cat?" I asked Howard. He was tinkering with the stereo, which had been performing erratically for several weeks.

"When I was a kid it was a windup toy," he said, "but I suppose they're all battery operated now."

"No, Geraldine is referring to her kitten," I said. "Do you object if we cat-sit for a few weeks?"

"Go ahead and do it, if you want to," Howard said, "but don't get me involved. I'm going to stick with this stereo problem till I get it licked. I think it's the amplifier." My husband made a startling discovery very soon; it was impossible to remain uninvolved with Sin-Sin.

We picked her up at the airport. Inside the ventilated cat-carrier there was an indistinct bit of fur. It stirred. It was alive. We placed the carrier on the back seat of the car.

"Now I can relax," I said. "She made the trip safely." With Howard at the wheel, looking blissfully uninvolved, we drove away from the airport and were exceeding the speed limit only slightly when we were unnerved by a devilish scream behind us. It was the cry of a wounded sea gull, with the decibel level of an ambulance siren. Howard ran the car off the pavement and halfway into a ditch before realizing that Sin-Sin, who had been lightly tranquilized for the journey, was getting back to normal and introducing herself.

"Perhaps she wants to get out of the carrier," I said, hoping that the demonstration we had just heard was not an example of our new boarder's usual speaking voice. Lifting her out of the carrier I had a twinge of misgiving. Who was this lovely creature entrusted to my care? Her pale fur felt far more precious than my dyed-squirrel jacket. Her brown markings were arranged with a chic that made me look dowdy, and her haughty manner did little to put me at ease. As for her eyes, they were a celestial blue filled with mysteries beyond my comprehension.

Nervously I placed Sin-Sin, whose lithe body had the tension of a steel spring, on an old sweater on the back seat, wondering if a ten-year-old cashmere was good enough to offer her.

On the way home we stopped at a supermarket to buy a supply of catfood and a bag of litter for her commode. Would she be satisfied with a plastic dishpan? Or would she expect something in porcelain or cloisonne?

While shopping we left her on the cashmere sweater with the car doors carefully locked.

When we returned with our purchases, however, the car was surrounded by curious strangers, and Sin-Sin was outside-on the hood. One rear window stood wide open!

There she sat like an ancient Egyptian cat idol, stretching her neck and accepting the adulation of the mob, which she evidently a.s.sumed was her due. I elbowed through the crowd with my heart beating fast and made a grab for her, but she moved aside in disdain and hopped to the roof of the car. There were giggles and guffaws from the crowd.

"Don't frighten her," I pleaded.

Then Howard scrambled after her, making frantic lunges and muttering under his breath as he tried to match wits with a seven-month-old kitten. The merriment of the onlookers did nothing for his composure, and when he finally got his hands on Sin-Sin, he was far from uninvolved.

We drove away from the supermarket and were busily blaming each other for negligence when a sudden draft alerted us. This time the opposite window was open, and Sin-Sin was craning her neck at the landscape and blinking at the breezes.

I shrieked, and Howard jammed on the brakes. Then the explanation dawned upon us.

Power windows! Sin-Sin had accidentally stepped on the push-b.u.t.ton! . . . Needless to say, she spent the rest of the trip locked in the carrier, protesting at full volume.

Upon arriving at our house the newcomer sniffed disparagingly at everything, declined her supper served on one of my best plates, vetoed the soft bed prepared for her, and ignored the silly toys we had bought. Every movement she made caused us concern, and Howard watched her with such fascination that he forgot to work on his stereo project.

"We're pestering her too much," he said after a while. "Let's go to a movie and leave her alone. She'll get acquainted with the place in her own way." We went to the show, but my mind was not on the film. Would Sin-Sin hurt herself?

Were there any hidden hazards? Some of the windows were open; could she push through those old screens? Suppose she ate one of the plants and poisoned herself!

It was midnight when we arrived home, and as we drove into our quiet street my anxiety turned to terror. The porches, sidewalks, and lawns were teeming with neighbors. They were tramping about and waving their arms in indignation. They were protesting something. They were protesting a screeching, blasting, thumping performance of hard rock, and it seemed to be coming from our house.

A police car with lights flashing pulled up at our door. "What's the idea?" one officer demanded. "Do you think that's a responsible thing to do?-go out and leave the radio blarin' like that? You look like people who should know better." The noise coming from Howard's stereo was ear shattering, and he made a dash for the controls while I tried to explain to the police and apologize to the neighbors. "We knew something was wrong with the stereo," I told them. "Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, but we never antic.i.p.ated anything like this." Poor Sin-Sin! She seemed to be suffering most of all. She was huddled under a bed, obviously displeased with the noisy household into which she had been thrust, but she allowed Howard to draw her out from her hiding place and stroke her fur. Clearly he was proud of his success in comforting the sensitive little animal.

We all felt better the next morning. When we sat down for a leisurely Sunday breakfast, Sin-Sin entertained us by cavorting with some little plaything she had found. (It later proved to be a piece of my typewriter.) She had eaten her breakfast hungrily and was finally accepting her new environment. We beamed with pleasure.

"By the way," Howard said, "if you want that toaster to work, you'd better plug it in."

"That's strange," I said as I pushed the plug into an outlet. "I was sure I connected it." At that moment we both jumped from our chairs as a solemn voice in the family room loudly announced: "We will all join in singing Hymn Seventy-three," and a church organ thundered the opening chords.

We sprinted for the stereo, and what we saw was difficult to believe. Sin-Sin was pawing the controls.

"Amazing!" I gasped.

"Incredible!" said Howard with awe and delight and a little pride. "She's pretty clever, isn't she?"

That was only the beginning.

Back at the breakfast table we were discussing the smart little kitten when we saw her crouch momentarily, rise effortlessly to the kitchen counter, and disconnect the coffee maker. Clamping her teeth on the plug, she gave it a businesslike yank-then jumped down and walked away, her tail waving with satisfaction.

Geraldine's letter had been quite accurate; Sin-Sin had a remarkable mechanical apt.i.tude. We sincerely hoped this sophisticated young thing would know enough to avoid electrocuting herself.

What she could not do with her claws, she did with her teeth. Her powerful little jaws were like pliers, and she was attracted to anything that was operable: k.n.o.bs, push b.u.t.tons, levers, latches, switches. Confronted by any mechanical device, she c.o.c.ked her head and looked at the challenging contrivance sideways until she figured it out.

The kitchen was her favorite playground-a garden of tempting delights. When she started studying the touchtone telephone on the kitchen counter, we tried hiding it in a drawer, but Sin-Sin discovered that the drawer opened easily on nylon rollers. So we put the phone in a wall cabinet, and there it was safe-as long as we wired the door handles together. This arrangement hardly made for convenience, but I shudder to contemplate our long-distance bill if we had not taken precautions.

"It's only for a few weeks," Howard reminded me.

In the weeks that followed, Sin-Sin disconnected all the lamps daily and the refrigerator occasionally. One afternoon while left alone she discovered the electric coffee grinder.

She ground up all the coffee beans in the hopper and burned out the motor.

Push b.u.t.tons markedOFF had no allure for her, it seemed; theON b.u.t.tons activated little red or green lights and produced the buzzing and whirring and growling that made her efforts worthwhile. She particularly enjoyed turning on one or more television sets in the middle of the night, filling darkened rooms with noise and flickering light.

In our open-plan ranch house with no bas.e.m.e.nt it was difficult to lock this industrious animal in or out of any area, but bathrooms were definitely off-limits after the hands on the water meter started spinning like pinwheels. Sin-Sin liked to b.u.mp the faucets and watch the swirling water in the washbowl, and she could sit for hours on the toilet tank, contentedly flushing. Scolding was useless; the little charmer merely blinked her angelic blue eyes until I melted and gave her a hug.

In time we learned to forestall her mischief, hiding small appliances, camouflaging large ones with rugs or blankets, and devising catproof expedients with wire or duct tape.

Howard had not touched his stereo for weeks!

"Let's get a cat of our own when Sin-Sin goes home," he said, after she had untied his shoelaces for the fortieth time.

As her visit drew to a close, we congratulated ourselves. We had kept her from meeting other cats or committing suicide or burning down the house.

Sin-Sin had one more surprise in store for us, however. Two days before my sister was due to return from Europe, Sin-Sin came of age. She announced the delicate situation at the top of her voice. Her wailing and howling verged on hysteria and continued nonstop for hours. Even though we kept the windows closed, her vocal exercises penetrated the walls, and the reaction around the neighborhood ranged from simple fury to threats of lawsuits.

In desperation we telephoned a veterinarian at his home in the late evening. He said: "That is characteristic of Siamese queens. You'd better mate her or she'll drive you crazy."

"I can't," I explained. "My sister in St. Louis has plans for breeding her."

"Then put cotton in your ears, and bring the cat to the clinic in the morning. I'll give her a tranquilizer."

Howard and I took a couple of pills ourselves. Then we locked Sin-Sin in the utility room, after wiring the laundry faucets and disconnecting the washer and dryer.

The utility room was farthest from the bedroom, but it was not far enough, and the pill was not effective enough to counteract the bedlam that waked me a few hours after midnight. It was worse than Sin-Sin's howling. It was a cacophony of screaming, growling, snarling-like the sound effects from a horror film. I half fell out of bed and groped my way to the utility room, at the same time shouting to wake Howard. As I opened the door, showers of sparks swirled around me. Red sparks and white sparks were shooting about in the dark like fireworks, amid a bedlam of crashing and clattering.

While I stood there in dumb panic, the sparks stopped churning and hovered in s.p.a.ce.

And then I realized that the little red lights and the little white lights were arranged in pairs, like eyes.

Howard stumbled sleepily into the room and found the light switch. The sparks disappeared, and the room was full of cats-cats on the washer, cats on the dryer, cats in the laundry tubs, and one hanging from the circuit breaker box. They were inside, underneath, and on top of the wall cabinets. Gray cats, black cats, orange cats, striped cats, spotted cats glared at us in indignation.

In the middle of the a.s.semblage was Sin-Sin, looking bewildered but proud. By opening the milk chute she had admitted the entire tomcat population of the neighborhood.

We shipped Sin-Sin back to St. Louis with an explanation that was not well received by Geraldine, and eventually my ungrateful sister shipped us all four of Sin-Sin's mismatched offspring.

All four kittens were remarkably adept at operating mechanical devices-not as advanced as their mother, but far superior to the barn cats and lap cats of an earlier era.

Furthermore, each succeeding generation has exhibited increased capabilities. Can this technological sophistication be attributed to watching television instead of mouseholes?

Or is it the result of nutritional improvements in catfood? It is a trend worth watching, and we are in a position to monitor it closely.

Howard and I now operate a halfway house for wayward or unwanted cats, as well as a boarding school for the truly gifted and a placement bureau for upwardly mobile felines (Fluppies).

The Fluppie Phenomenon should not be taken lightly. The time may come when all household appliances, particularly computers, are required to be catproof. Today's catly mischief could be tomorrow's CATastrophe.

The Hero of Drummond Street After the unpleasant accident on the Jamisons' front lawn, the cat retired to the shade of a juniper to ponder the situation, and little Vernon Jamison ran indoors and cried for hours. In time his weeping became dry and unconvincing, but still he raised his voice in a penetrating six-year-old's wail. Meanwhile, the neighborhood children stood in front of the house and chattered and shrieked and ogled the spot on the lawn-now covered with a bushel basket-where the accident had occurred.

Mrs. Jamison finally telephoned her husband at the advertising agency where he worked.

"Vernon has been crying all afternoon and won't stop," she told him. "I don't know what to do."

"What started it?"

"He pulled the tail off the Drooler."

"He pulled the what off the what?"

"The tail! Off the Drooler!" said Mrs. Jamison, raising her voice. "It's that gray-and-white cat that hangs around the neighborhood. All the kids tease the poor thing, and Vernon was pulling his tail this afternoon. A piece of the tail came off in his hand, and he's been crying ever since. Now he's running a temperature." There was a pause on the line. "Hmmm," said her husband. "How's the cat's temperature?"

"Oh, the Drooler seems to be okay. He's just sitting under the junipers with three-quarters of a tail, but all the kids on the block are trampling on your lawn."

"My lawn!" Mr. Jamison shouted into the phone. "I'll be right there!" Drummond Street, where the Jamisons lived, was lined with split-level houses, all of them identical except for the quality of their lawns. Some looked like cow pasture, some like country club fairways. Only Mr. Jamison's gra.s.s resembled green velvet.

Each family owned two cars, three bicycles, a tricycle, a baby stroller, a power mower, and an electric lawn edger, but no one claimed to own the Drooler. He was a large gray-and-white cat with an unattractive habit of driveling. Festoons of saliva continually draped his whiskers and chin, glistened on his breast, and collected in puddles on every doorstep where he elected to doze in the sun. If any resident of Drummond Street sat down in a patio chair and quickly stood up again, it meant that the Drooler had been there, napping and salivating copiously. He played no favorites but gave every household, one after the other, his damp blessing.

The Drooler had another defect that impaired his prestige. Two years before, a TV repairman had backed his truck over the Drooler's tail, which afterward drooped forlornly and was apparently insensible to pain. The children rode their trikes over the tip of his tail to prove that it was totally numb, and because of his unappetizing appearance they jeered at him and made faces intended to scare him to death.

None of this ill-treatment bothered the Drooler, who continued to loiter wherever the youngsters gathered, waiting hopefully for their insults and purring at their abuse.

"Get outa here, Drooler," they would yell. "You're a sloppy old cat," and the Drooler would rub against their ankles and gaze at them with devotion.

When the Drooler lost the tip of his tail, he took it calmly, but Vernon-who was left holding the grisly souvenir-gave vent to mixed horror and guilt with a marathon of weeping. Only the rea.s.surance that his father was coming home from the office succeeded in quieting him.

When Mr. Jamison arrived, he chased the wide-eyed, thumb-sucking spectators from his prize lawn, then called to his wife: "What's this bushel basket doing on my gra.s.s?"

"That's covering the Drooler's tail," she said. "I didn't want to touch it. Vernon is in his bedroom, drinking cocoa."

At the sight of his father, Vernon opened his mouth in a piercing wail and clung to his parent with renewed anguish.

"Now that's enough, young man!" said Mr. Jamison, removing Vernon's sticky hands from the sleeve of his seersucker coat. "Crying won't fix the cat's tail. It was an accident, and there's nothing you can do about it-except to apologize and promise to be nice to the poor fellow in the future. He's one of G.o.d's creatures, and we must treat him with respect."

"He's crummy," said Vernon, sniffling and rubbing his nose. "He s...o...b..rs all the time."

"He probably has an allergy. Now make up your mind to be kind to him, and he'll forgive you. Blow your nose."

"What'll we do with the tail?" Vernon whined, clawing his father's coat sleeve.

"We'll dig a hole in the backyard and bury it with a dignified ceremony. And don't yank my sleeve! How often have I told you to keep your hands off people's clothing?" The interment of the Drooler's tail was observed by hordes of preschool mourners, and the cat himself made his moist presence felt as he rubbed against any ankle that would permit it. The accident that had shortened his tail had not curtailed his affection for his tormentors.

By the end of the week Drummond Street had forgotten about the tail; there was excitement of another sort. A new row of split-level houses was being added to the subdivision, and trucks and backhoes were swarming over the site.

One afternoon when all residents under ten years of age were supervising the sewer excavations, Vernon rushed home for his third chocolate-chip cookie and said to his mother: "The Drooler's smelling at our gra.s.s in the front. I think he found an animal down a hole."