Cat in a hot pink Pursuit

Solange regards me with her usual expression, which is calm but devastating.
    “I can understand that,” I say, “but you can see crime has called me like a plate of lasagna calls Garfield.”
    “Please,” Yvette sniffs, “do not mention that common yellow striper. He is not in our league.”
    “No, of course not. He is a joke. But I must ask you ladies to keep your delicate nails out of this fluffy white stuff. It is evidence that the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police crime techs will soon be”— hmm, “sifting” does not quite do it—“nosing around.”
    “What an unfortunate lime odor.” Yvette shakes a dainty foot in demonstration.
    “The brand is Razor’s Edge,” Solange adds.
    I gaze into those mysterious and soulful eyes. Too bad I am previously and seriously attached to her sister Yvette, because this is one great big beautiful doll in her own right. “How did you detect the brand?”
    She sighs, which our kind does by looking sideways. “One of our mistress’s... mates used it. Detestable stuff! So déclassé.”
    “I do not think lime scent is ‘the classy’ either. So your mistress, Miss Savannah Ashleigh, is present here? In what capacity?”
    “Our mistress,” Yvette explains patiently, “does not have any capacity whatsoever. You must have noticed that in our previous mutual encounters.”
    Unfortunately, “our previous mutual encounters” were way too mutual. I am not one for three-ways, despite my roguish reputation. So most of my close encounters with the Divine Yvette have meant her air-head mistress was also present.
    “What has brought out Miss Solange on this occasion?” I ask, for I only met her formally once during our separate but mutual jaunt to New York City and ad agency shenanigans, back when Yvette and I were cat food commercial performers.
    Ah, the lights. The cameras. The action.
    “Our mistress has been promoted,” Solange explains. “She is a judge now.”
    “Miss Savannah Ashleigh, the low-amp of Savannah, is a judge? What are federal appointments coming to?”
    “A judge of the Tween and Teen Queen competitions,” Yvette corrects me.
    If one must be corrected, the Divine Yvette is the one to do it.
    “It is like American Idol," Solange adds, “with a panel of celebrity judges.”
    “More like American Idle," I mutter. It is no secret that Miss Savannah Ashleigh has been living off the TV commercial residuals of her feline companions rather than her own efforts.
    “Our mistress is doing very well now,” Solange says in her defense. “Her old movies are now considered ‘camp’ and she is having a career revival. So she has semiretired us and we both travel with her now.”
    I bring up a sensitive subject with Yvette. “And what about the, ah, you know... the patter of little paws?”
    (I had been falsely accused of felonious littering during our last commercial assignment when the Divine Yvette ended up expecting. However, my Miss Temple fought that charge tooth and fingernail in The People’s Court and proved me innocent. Well, innocent of that particular outcome. The Divine Yvette proved to be the victim of attack when all her kits were born wearing the stripes of my rival spokescat, the yellow-bellied Maurice.)
    “Oh, them.” Yvette yawns. “They were forced upon me and after birth were quickly allocated to other homes.”
    I glance at Solange. Apparently the maternal instinct can be a fleeting thing.
    “Poor Yvette,” she answers indignantly. “Attacked and left in an unwanted condition. Good homes were found.”
    “They all came out yellow-striped,” Yvette adds with a shudder that sends all her fine silver hairs rippling.
    I quite understand how an unwed mother might resent the resemblance of offspring to a foul attacker but...
    “Is there not a strain of Stripe in the Shaded line?” I ask. “Were not common tabbies responsible for the Shaded’s sublime black leather and faint tracery of markings amid the fur that lends such a rich sheen to the divine silver and gold?”
    Yvette shrugs again. “Stripe is common. Black and brown are the weediest variety of cat colors. If we have any Stripe in us, it goes back countless generations and therefore does not count.”
    I did not mean to impugn the Shaded pedigree but must take exception to her characterization of black and brown, being of the very common House of Black § myself.
    Solange addresses this before I can. “I am actually the older type of Shaded Persian. There was a