Webster Groves, as an inner and prosperous, suburb of Saint Louis, had plenty to recommend it. For example, the coppers could stop you without you having to fear for your life even if you were a criminal.  In Ferguson, where Roberta worked, cops refused to make a habit of coddling criminals.  I admit I had to adjust my brain to the Webster Groves methods of law enforcement.  Chaucer had taught me his view of law and order:  Better that a thousand innocent people get the lash than 1 guilty man go free.  In his glosses on punishment, Chaucer hastened to add that these severe strictures had no application to cats.  By nature, cats are law abiders.  Chaucer also had no patience with imaginary offenses like a cat attacking a human being. If a cat attacked a human being, he no doubt had had his good reasons. 

Hence, gentle reader, you can imagine how gobsmacked I was about the rioting malcontents in Ferguson.  A copper by the name of Wilson shot dead a sassy, swaggering thief on a Ferguson street.  According to a store owner, Brown, a self-described “gentle giant,” had taken five-finger discounts on items in the shop owner’s store.  Being a giant, Brown displayed enough menace to terrify the shop owner.  Now, following Chaucer, I do put a lot of the blame on that shop owner. Chaucer always insisted that everybody has a duty to arm himself to protect his holdings.  Chaucer lauded the idea of self-help justice.  “Don’t waste time calling for lazy coppers,” he’d cry. “Do it yourself justice is best.”  Of course, nowadays goody-goods try to pretend that defending your holdings is a crime.  Chaucer’s ghost howls with indignation whenever even a whisper of that lefty claptrap reaches his mind.  I can hear him shaking his ghost chains.

If I learnt anything from the meltdown in Ferguson, I learnt that when somebody robs you, do yourself a favour.  Shoot the motherfizzucker before he gets off your property.  If you don’t, you’ll be sorry.  Bart and Fielding were for once in total agreement with my Chaucerian doctrine.  In fact, Bart and I began to hold weekly claw-sharpening circles when Roberta was a work.  “If somebody robs our house,” Bart chuckles, “he’ll wish he had sneaked into the home of Hannibal Lecter instead.” 

Despite our family’s adherence to Chaucer’s views on law and order, when we, at last, moved into a house on Chestnut Street, we adored the local star entertainer, “Mr Squirrel,” (aka St Louie Squirrel and Louie).  Louie’s flagrant raids on Roberta’s tomato plants and lettuce patch delighted us.  When Fielding and the boys came for a visit, they couldn’t watch enough of Louie either.  As time passed, we observed St Louie Squirrel grow fatter and fatter.  We marveled that his chubby legs still carried him away too fast for Roberta to catch him.  Bart took his escapes as more evidence that Chaucer’s calls for owners of anything to arm themselves got matters right.  A Ruger 10-22 would even the game between Roberta and Mr Squirrel.  Still, we kitties liked to watch Louie steal tomatoes and then relax on the backyard deck to eat his loot.  It was as if Jesse James lived!  He was though an inordinately fat Jesse.

During my first year in Webster, I began to work on getting myself connected to the city’s rich and famous.  The Saint Louis Opera Theatre was perfect for that.  Opera as you know attracts masses of rich snobs with a taste for stories emphasizing love, adultery, and murder.  If you know the costs of season tickets to an opera house, you know it also is high enough to keep the number of poor people present to a minimum.  You get your share of wannabe rich college students and art history graduates working as ushers, but praise the gods, most of the people in an opera house have enough money to make them worth a cat’s attention.  And what cat can resist women in evening gowns or men in tuxes? 

Wolverine and Peregrine approved of my opera attendance, as did Lord Caligula.  Only his mistresses know how many hours his Lordship spent in Covent Gardens at the Royal Opera House.  His Lordship touted good opera as better than rhino horn as an aphrodisiac.  Also, Wolverine’s appearance at several of the Operas came as no surprise to me.  I’d see him in the company of executives from Boeing Defense, Space, and Security or World Wide Technology in tow, as well as his usual diet of NGA officers, politicos, and General officers.  Occasionally I’d get invited to parties that made what I saw in Waynesville look like dinner at a Trappist monastery.  Wolverine held these soirees of unrestrained depravity at the Jesuit-owned Hotel Ignacio.  “Always go with the Jesuits if you can.  These smart boys are the playboys of the Church.  The order has had centuries to learn how to hold secrets tight.”  If you saw what went on in those rooms when Wolverine arranged the parties, the SJs better hold secrets tight.  The Ignacio also had a level of luxury that Wolverine and Peregrine’s clientele expected.  Rank, as they say, has its privileges.