Miss Cuddlywumps reviews the story “A Case of Catnapping” by A.H.Z. Carr
“A Case of Catnapping” is the story of the abduction of
Dizzy, a cat who lives with a vaudeville performer and is in fact the star of
his act. Dizzy does things your average self-respecting cat would never do. She
wears little boxing gloves and punches a punching bag, she jumps through hoops
and does somersaults (that’s how she got her name), she dances. Audiences love
this little gray tiger cat, and her person, Dave Knight, rarely lets her out of
his sight, because Dizzy is pretty much all he has going for him.
When Dizzy disappears minutes before a performance, Knight
is frantic and hires a private detective, offering to give up his entire
savings—$5,000—if only the cat can be found. The detective, Jack Terry, takes
the case, largely because he and his wife have seen Dizzy’s act and his wife
would never forgive him if he didn’t help. So the detecting begins.
At first I suspected Knight’s fiancée, Maribeth, of doing
something unfortunate to Dizzy, because she says this: “As if a cat—even
Dizzy—should be allowed to decide how people should live their lives. Isn’t
that ridiculous…?” (Really, life would be so much simpler for you humans if you
would just do what your cats want—without
delay or complaint.) But the detective quickly rules out Maribeth and sets
his sights on other characters in the theater.
It’s interesting to see how Terry puts the case together,
from one clue to the next. There’s a leprechaun (not a real one), a trapdoor,
an open window, and a tell-tale cat scratch. Terry figures out who took Dizzy
and why, but he still has not done the most important thing, and that is to
locate her. To do this, he uses some old-fashioned cat psychology.
(She of
Little Talent and I are big believers in cat psychology. Old SoLT once used
this method to find her lost cat hiding outside under an overturned
wheelbarrow. This was one of the proudest moments of her life. Poor old SoLT.)
Terry surmises that Dizzy has gone off to find a “boyfriend,” so all they need
to do is locate an eligible tomcat and they will locate Dizzy. Personally I was
not so sure Dizzy would shack up with the first tom she ran into, but I suppose
she is more of a floozy than I thought, because the detective’s method works perfectly.
“A Case of Catnapping” is an enjoyable and interesting read,
though there is nothing cozy about it. The story was written in 1954 and has a
very 1950s feel—sort of noir-ish without being too dark. We don’t actually get
to see much of Dizzy herself, but the people—especially Knight and Maribeth—are
interesting. All in all, this is a captivating cat mystery, and so I give it…
[“A Case of Catnapping” has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (1954) and Abigail Browning’s book
titled Feline Felonies (2001).]
[A.H.Z. Carr was actually an economist named Albert Zotaloff Carr. In addition
to mystery stories, he wrote about politics and economics. He wrote just one novel,
Finding Maubee, which
was later adapted into a movie called The Mighty Quinn.]
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