A couple cats just spendin cash

When writing a novel, it's important to detail how much money your protagonists have and how they spend it. So in the last couple entries we learned that the main characters of my latest story earned 1,000 caesars from recent sales of various goods. And today we see how they start to invest this fortune.

[& I got tired of graffiti-ing tygers onto junk ads, so, for the next few days, the obligatory images that accompany these announcements will be just lazy attempts at hand-drawing copies of ad photos with felt tip marker.]

P.S.

In other news: my Public Private Diary is fully printed; also I made a list of my latest novels that have been printed but not included in any collection.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

So I Bryan the Tyger and my shadow-muse Myala the Black Panther take the 1,000 caesars that we earned from devouring all of Planet Earth’s scientists and selling their pelts on the horn-and-smock market, and we set out on an Adventure in Investment (that’s the title of this evening’s episode). Actually we only have 999 caesars by the time we leave the Alps, because we left one banknote with our castle-cats Nous and Zephyros so that they’d have spending cash to buy kitty chow.

First we gallop overseas to the Ameristar Casino in Council Bluffs, Iowa. We arrive on the weekend and play slot machines until Tuesday. (We do not sleep, and we sincerely believe that we will never die.) I keep losing until, at a certain point, I am down to just thirty caesars in my cat-purse; then I decide to go and bet the remainder of this money on the roulette wheel — for I remember watching that scene in the movie Gilda (1946) where one gambler bets a stack of cash on a certain number, and then the croupier who’s operating the wheel forces the silver ball to stop on the groove corresponding to the aforesaid man’s bet. (Does he pull a trick lever underneath the table, or press a hidden button that activates a magnet? — who knows! I’ve always wondered how this miracle was accomplished.) So I place my last thirty caesars on “green double zero,” and, sure enough, the ball stops on the part of the wheel that I predicted; thus I end up winning back more caesars than I started with originally. This makes me so happy that I decide, on the spot, to give a generous tip to the croupier.

Then Myala murmurs in my Tyger-ear: “We should probably leave now, while we’re ahead.”

So I walk out of the place with one more banknote than I entered with: for I’m right back up at the thousand-caesar mark; tho I feel like a million bucks.

§

As we take a limo to the next casino, I tap on the privacy glass with my razor-sharp claw, and the chauffeur rolls down the divider. I then ask the driver if he will help me leave a review on that last establishment’s web page, or wherever one is supposed to go to rate casinos: “I don’t own a mobile device — would you mind using yours to do this on my behalf, as a favor?” I ask.

The limo driver looks at my vast Tyger-face in the rear-view mirror and begins to tremble in fear:

“If I help you with this,” he stammers with a quivering voice, “will you agree to spare my life?”

“Of course!” I say. “And I always tip more than the cost of the service.”

So the limo driver fishes out his mobile phone from the pocket of his uniform and begins to thumb the touchscreen while driving:

“OK,” he sez, “I navigated to the part of the website where you can click on a rating and leave a comment. What do you want me to do?” (We narrowly miss colliding with the oncoming traffic, time and again, because the chauffeur is paying more attention to his phone than to the road.)

“Just select the highest number of stars that they allow, and I’ll tell you what to write as a review. Are you comfortable taking down my dictation?”

“Yes,” sez the chauffeur.

“Good,” I say; “cuz my paws don’t really work on those tiny keypads. And the speech-to-text function can’t distinguish my individual words — it must not be able to recognize my voice or something; cuz it always just writes ‘Rarr, rarr, rarr,’ over and over, as if I’m some sort of silly cartoon or a stuffed toy for children.”

“I understand,” sez the chauffeur.

“Alright,” I say, “so type the following in as our comment. Quote: ‘This casino offers wholesome fun for days’, exclamation point. ‘The slot machines are nice, but I recommend playing roulette and betting on green double zero’, then put a long dash . . .”

“An em dash?” asks the chauffeur.

“I think so — is that the longer one?”

“Yes. The em dash is the long one, and the en dash is the shorter one,” sez the chauffeur. “Or I could also just use a hyphen . . .”

“No; anything other than a hyphen: that’s too small,” I say. “OK, so, after the long dash, write: ‘I ended up leaving with even more money than I started with’, semi-colon, ‘this place is the best’. And put ‘best’ in all caps, and add three or more exclamation points at the end. Then press ‘Enter’ or ‘Send’ or whatever, so that it gets published. – Oh, and, if you can, sign the review as ‘Tyger Bryan, the True King of the Jungle’, with ‘True’ being in italics, if that’s possible.”

Then I turn and ask Myala: “Would you like to add anything?”

“No, what you said sounds great,” sez Myala.

§

Now we pull up to our destination, which is another casino — this one’s the MGM Grand Detroit, in Michigan. Myala and I climb out thru the window and I tip the limo driver abundantly, as promised. Then, when he drives away, his tires screech. (I believe he’s afraid of us.)

“Well,” I say to Myala, “after paying for the trip here, I’m down to just five hundred caesars. That means we’re gonna need to double our money this time, if we wanna remain thousandaires.”

Myala and I enter the glass double-doors and behold exactly what the promotional brochure advertised: an upscale casino hotel with a spa and several bars.

First we go to the spa, then we spend a long time at each bar.

Finally we rent some rooms (I try to get them to ‘comp’ us, which means ‘allow us to stay here for free because we’re likely to spend a ton of cash gambling at this joint’; but they refuse, because we are felines — that’s why we had to pay for our own suite), and we sleep for more than a week straight because we are exhausted from our Iowa adventure.

But when we wake up, we head straight for the casino and start playing blackjack. I make all the right choices and win back our entire 1,000 caesars, because gambling is childsplay. Then we leave again, since we’re smart.

§

Once outside, we skulk thru the streets of Detroit until we come to a telephone booth. I squeeze myself inside and use the directory to find the number for a local limousine service . . .

When our driver arrives, he almost doesn’t stop, but we stand right in front of the vehicle and threaten to pounce on its hood; so the chauffeur agrees to take us to yet another casino:

This time we go to The Venetian, on the Cotai Strip in Macau. But I’ll tell you about that tomorrow, cuz I’m tired right now and would like to take a catnap.