Retail sales were sluggish. The road in front of his shop had been dug up by construction crews for months and potential customers had to dodge an obstacle course of orange barrels to get to his front door.
George was stymied. His grooming staff was kept busy but retail shoppers were staying away in droves. He racked his brain to come up with new promotions to spark public interest - having the Flying Elvises (Elvi?) land in his parking lot, perhaps? No, they might crash land in the construction zone.
Another visit from Kookie the Clown? No, Kookie probably wouldn't come back. The career clown wasn't getting any younger. A lifetime of pratfalls had taken its toll and he was due for hip replacement surgery. Besides, the last time he had appeared at the shop, some out-of-control yuppie children had ripped off his multi-colored wig.
What about a beauty contest? The idea pleased George. He closed his eyes and visualized himself placing a crown on a nubile blonde, Miss Kitty Litter of 1996. The minute he floated the scheme by his wife Betty, she shot it down in flames. "Over my dead body," she hissed. The concept gave him pause but he didn't want to get sidetracked from his promotional brainstorming. He'd savor that one later, like a sweet piece of candy he had stashed away.
The light bulb in George's head began to ignite while perusing his local paper, the Goldenrod Gazette. His arch-rival, Frank of Frank's Family Pets, had a half-page spread promoting his hamster races, offering prizes and inviting kids to participate in a coloring contest before the big event. There was even a picture of Frank himself dressed in a moth-eaten hamster costume.
"I always knew that guy was a rodent," George sputtered. "Well, at least he's doing something constructive," Betty countered. "Besides, some of the most successful individuals in this country are rodents."
"Yeah, right," he laughed, thinking she was referring to any one of several squirrely politicians he could name, but as usual, Betty was in his face with a snappy answer. "How about Mickey Mouse? Or Bugs Bunny? They could both buy and sell you, bigshot."
George groaned and longed for his single days when he ate Spaghetti-O's out of a can and had time to follow his favorite sport, mud-wrestling. He knew he couldn't follow in Frank's footsteps with hamster racing. For one thing, he didn't even sell small animals or their supplies. What his shop did have was a ready supply of dog and cat customers.
Dog races? No - too much space would be needed and the chance of an escapee would be too great. He could just see Louie the Lhasa perched in the business end of that steam shovel out front, ascending into the clouds. It was not an entirely unpleasant thought but Louie's owner was a lawyer whose business card featured the drawing of a briefcase-toting man bumper-jumping an ambulance. No, dogs were too fast and too risky.
What about cats? He automatically glanced at his arms, criss-crossed with deep scars which looked like the result of a botched suicide attempt but were in fact mementoes of a valiant try at bathing a stressed-out Siamese.
George sighed. Then he remembered his wife's precious pets, Hubert the Himalayan hairball and Priscilla the pompous Persian. "My babies," Betty called them as she returned from work each evening, kissing them, stroking their fur and cooing soft words of endearment before she turned to snap at him: "George, are you ever going to take out this garbage or are you trying to grow your own breed of killer houseflies?"
George was the first to admit it - he was jealous of those cats. Secretly, he suspected they didn't have a whole brain between them, that all their breeding had been based on coat volume. They routinely fell off the sofa and half of their intended litter box deposits fell far short of their target. But they always came when Betty called in that aggravatingly high-pitched baby voice she used which sounded like a cross between Betty Boop and Olive Oyl: "Hubieeeee! Prisseeeee! Come to Mama! Time for your itty-bitty snaaaack!"
Persian cat races! It was perfect! He could see it now, his store overflowing with excited children and their compulsively competitive parents urging Fluffy over the finish line, the same Moms and Dads who stoned that Little League umpire a few weeks ago when he made a bad call. These people came to play.
Why, he might even rent a cat costume from that place downtown! Wonder what ole Frank would think of that! His mind churned wildly, inventing promotional press releases, anticipating a crush of cat customers filling his front room, a juggernaut of goodwill and rich new relationships throughout the Goldenrod community.
When Race Day arrived, twenty-five Persians and Himalayans arrived in their carriers as the shop swarmed with excited families. George had moved merchandise aside to lay out the lanes and each cat sported a number, worn proudly around its neck. Betty busied herself assembling the trophies and prizes, ranging from a plush new bed to bags of catnip goodies.
"How do I look?", he had asked Betty that morning as he donned the fuzzy cat costume. "You don't want me to answer that," she said after a long silence. No matter. He was filled with excitement as held the starter's pistol (a squirt gun) aloft.
The rules were quite simple. Cats were required to stay in their own lanes and to cross the finish line where their youthful owners awaited, using any ploy necessary to lure their kitties down the track. Fighting and hairball hurling were automatic disqualifications as was spraying fellow participants. With the photographer from the Goldenrod Gazette standing by with his flashbulbs at the ready and George's brother Ralph pressed into service to record the event for posterity with his video camera, George fired his pistol as owners released the cats from their crates. He had always dreamed of saying it: "Let the games begin!"
George learned a lot about cats that day. Like Frenchmen, they refuse to be governed, thriving on anarchy. Despite their young owners' lures - a ball of yarn, a catnip mouse, a paper bag - few of the cats even headed in the right direction. One teenager whipped out an extension cord and fired up an electric can opener but her cat, a chubby fellow named Percy, leaped the Dutch door into the grooming room and closeted himself behind a crate.
A young white feline named Tiffany became distracted from her quest by a sudden need to perform personal hygiene mid-course while a blue cream female stopped to rip the number from her neck with her teeth and began eating it. Two Himalayans discovered each other and said to heck with this race, darting behind the dog food bags to work on their relationship.
When one heavyset woman tried to retrieve her panicked pet from the cookie display, the boxes toppled, causing general pandemonium and a large laceration to her nose as Betty ran her own race for the first aid kit.
Those who stayed the course seemed nervous, crouching and crawling, hair standing on end and eyes darting about. A blue smoke boy almost made it to the finish line when nature called, then Betty spooked him with the paper towels.
Ingenuity won the day as one pigtailed girl grabbed a litter box from George's shelf and filled with clean clumping litter, causing Elroy, her red tabby male, to streak down the track and leap into the porta-potty. "Do your thing, Elroy!", shouted her proud father as the victorious feline proceeded to do just that, sending Betty on a desperate search for the deoderizing spray.
George awarded Elroy the litter box as a grand prize instead of the plush bed and once they were retrieved, the other 24 would-be racers got catnip treats as runners-up.
In retrospect, the race had provided its own brand of excitement. "This was more fun than having a substitute teacher!", a young lad exclaimed while one matron called for a committee to work on the rules. Betty's fingers danced over the cash register keys, ringing up sales of every toy and treat imaginable.
But wisely, George decided not to make Persian Cat Races an annual event, noting to the Gazette reporter, "Any great undertaking is bound to have some bugs that need working out."
Still, it was by no means a failure. Splitting the profits three ways, George, Ralph and Betty are cleaning up marketing the video "Persian Cat Racing - An Idea Whose Time Has Come." You may have caught their ad on cable TV. That's George in his cat suit giving the pitch: "Call 1-800-MAYHEM and have your credit card ready. It won't be sold in stores."