Asprin, Robert Lynn – Catwoman – Tiger Hunt (With Lynn Abbey)

She was behind a set of heavy drapes. Again she waited; again there was no need for caution. Parting the drapes, she stepped into the room. She was in a bedroom; there were three doors. One was open and led to a bathroom. The other two were shut. Faint light seeped beneath one but not the other. Deciding that the dark one was probably a closet, Catwoman approached the other. Turning the knob slowly, and lifting up to keep weight off the hinges, she eased it open. She’d guessed right.

Looking down an unlit hallway, she noted another three closed doors before the passage hooked around a corner and—she guessed again—opened into the living room, where the lights had been left on. She listened. She identified and discarded all the street sounds, the murmur of voices—alive and broadcast—coming through the walls. She heard the twang of the elevator cables several walls away, and she heard the plink of a leaky water faucet. This was the loudest and only sound arising within Eddie Lobb’s apartment, and it was enough to convince her that she had the place to herself.

Although Selina Kyle survived from month to month by directing Catwoman at the drug gangs in the city’s underbelly, her alter ego was in her natural element prowling through undefended homes, sizing up unguarded property. In the beginning, she’d taken what caught her eye, only to discover that personal taste was just about worthless on the black market. Through her errors and hard luck, she’d learned that the “good stuff” was generally dull and boring. Monochromes commanded higher prices than rainbows; pieces of charred and twisted metal were worth more than brightly painted figurines. In short, if Selina thought it was ugly, Catwoman knew it was worth taking. The sheer contrariness of art had helped to convince her to stick with taking cash from drug gangs.