Tails Win

In the flickering twilight of early-sound cinema, a harried theatrical booker and his quick-witted spouse inherit not marble statuary nor gilt-edged securities, but a mobile kingdom of sinew and tawny fur: an entire circus pride—manes like solar flares, eyes like topaz mirrors—whose transport crates burst open inside a prim suburban duplex. Instantly, the parquet becomes savanna, chandeliers sway like restless acacia, and every polished surface reflects the absurd truth that domesticity itself has been repossessed by feral majesty. While the husband calculates box-office losses, the wife—half-matron, half-ringmaster—negotiates with clawed monarchs who treat chaise longues as thrones and grand pianos as scratching posts. The narrative pirouettes between bedroom farce and existential menagerie: a butler attempts tea service while a lioness lounges in the dumbwaiter; a debt-collector flees through French windows only to hurdle a pacing male whose tail flicks like a metronome counting down catastrophe. Yet beneath the slapstick lies a cracked valentine to impermanence—property deeds devoured as readily as raw steaks, marriage vows tested by the roar that rattles heirloom crystal, the very notion of ownership mocked by paws that pad across Aubusson rugs without leaving a single trace of remorse. When the final cage door clangs shut, the estate is technically intact but metaphysically razed, its human occupants forever branded by the knowledge that civilisation is only ever one loose latch away from glorious overthrow.