Of Mice and Zen by John C. Havens

What can I say? You can push a rodent just so far.

She bought me a year ago at the behemoth Disney store, that garish eye-slicing temple of neon dubbed "The anchor of the new Times Square." Papa Walt would hurl a kidney if he'd seen what they made of his whimsical kingdom, and if I had the stuff I'd rush in and overturn the tables of those moneylenders like another righteous Son I'm fond of.

I was whelped in Manhattan where odds say I should have wound up with some dough-faced tourist killing time on his way to see Lion King. But this sorcerer's apprentice got the bum end of the wand. I went home with an Upper East Side Stepsister with a strain of haughty bigger than the witch from Sleeping Beauty. This gal's mirror wouldn't talk back to her. It would howl to be broken and damn the seven years bad luck.

Her name's Bernadette Kahn and I suppose she's pretty enough in a too much makeup smells like she lost a wrestling match with a bottle of rose water kind of way. But look up obsessive compulsive in Webster's and you'll see her glossy photo next to the abbreviation 'def.' She's higher strung than a castrati playing fiddle on Everest. The woman is TENSE.

And I'm an authority on being wound up. I am a watch after all. Behind my innocuously erect tail I've got more gears than a double-semi. I empathize with Bernie's sense of purpose since it takes serious Prince Charming devotion to move your paws clockwise 24/7. But you gotta' pace yourself or you'll end up like Pluto running on an icy pond. Don't plan ahead and you'll end up wet in the hole. And water's your nemesis when you're made out of ink.

So I'm out of the box and Bernie's on the sidewalk at 42nd and Broadway. I'm higher than Dopey at a Dead concert: smell of hot foot-longs smacking my black olive snout with their sweet porky goodness; (we of the Disney persuasion don't square much with the porcine-the Stuttering Ham runs with the Warner Brothers crowd) tourists swarming excited as salmon during Friday nights in breeding season; voices from a thousand nations mixing in sonorous sonatas as inspiring as the soundtrack to Fantasia.

Then it started. Bernie shoves the flimsy strands of her musty fake mink off my face and starts to tap. At first I'm thinking it's an affectionate sort of knocking like I'm a kitten in a window and she's smashing her face against the glass while steaming it hazy with her nicotine breath.

No dice, Dumbo. This gal's got a COMPLEX. Every five minutes-look, tap, look, tap, like I've got a bum battery and her Lee-Press-on's will jerk me back to life. She's like Buddy Rich on nose candy. While I'm working, arms a flapping, suddenly there comes a tapping, as of Bernie, roughly rapping, rapping so's it makes me sore.

So like I said I snapped. Like fingers to Sinatra or caps stinking of sulfur.

We're on the C train heading uptown and we stop at the Museum of Natural History at 81st street. I always enjoy the mosaic tiles made to look like sea dwellers, their plaster bodies swimming on cement in an indigo parade of briny beauty. So I'm floating in my marina reverie when Bernie pushes back her sleeve and glares at my gloved hands with the intensity of the wicked stepmother watching Cindy strap on her pumps.

It's one-ten in the afternoon, a particularly trying time of day since my paws are crossed in a dyslexic frenzy until one-thirty rolls around. But I rise to the occasion when she looks, juicing up the grin and pointing my arms with purpose like they were the glowing orange sticks that poor slob uses on the runway. Anything to briskly guide freaklady down her sordid runway of life and off my pointy tailed ass.

But not today. Bernie's in a state. She keeps tapping, harder and harder with the urgency of a jilted lover pounding on a locked bedroom door. I was at my wit's end. I couldn't run any more mental mazes with the taunting tapper so I went to Defcon Disney and did the unthinkable.

I called the Boss. Walt's brain. Papa's lobes. The legends are true. His gray matter's on ice like a Donald Duck snow cone. And in worst-case scenarios any member of the Kingdom has one call to the Big Man to cure what ails them. I used mine on Tappy Chick.

The process is simple, a soul-wrenching cry of distress like Bambi watching his mother do the bullet dance. You make the call, you hear the voice.

As good fortune would have it, Papa's brain squats next to Einstein. He gets the skivvy from Albert on some time-space continuum mumbo jumbo and sends me back the following four words:

Halt your right arm.

Takes me a minute to suss his drift before the cartoon bulb appears between my paddle shaped ear flaps. Halt my right arm-stop my second hand. Make time stand still.

So I freeze my right arm and Father Time's a snowman. Bernie keeps tapping as violent as you please, but there's no escaping the long arm of the paw. She looks up and asks the Wall Street hotshot next to her for the time but he looks right through her and turns back to his newspaper with all the animation of the waxy-faced Lincoln from the Hall of Presidents.

And that's where we are now. Our story's complete. Bernie's trapped in the subway like a bee in a bottle and I ain't gonna' move my puffy glove anytime soon so she can fly away. It's comeuppanceville for the tap queen and I say when the demon brooms stop marching and the nightmare draws to a close.

Big brother is watching and Scully can't help you. Heaven may come but you can save the Hosanna's. There's a Zen-like order to the Disney Dynasty and you don't want to tangle with Tinkerbell. Heed my high-pitched voice and take a lesson from Steamboat Willie: Don't mess with the mouse.