Leia lay snug in the canvas gym bag, seemingly oblivious to the drama unfolding around her. Across the cavernous warehouse, her two humans carefully stepped toward the middle of the room, with their arms halfway raised and the tall, lumbering one holding an identical satchel.

“Hi fellas, sorry about the mixup,” he chattered nervously through an absurdly wide smile. “Y’know, I think we’re all really gonna laugh about this.”

Taking one stride too far, a gaggle of menacing humans cocked and pointed their high caliber weapons at the comedically jittery couple. Backing up a couple of feet, the tall, lumbering one offered his account of what had been an absurdly improbable chain of events.

“All we were trying to do is sneak our cat into the hotel room,” he explained. “I mean, what kind of place allows dogs but not cats? I stepped in two fresh piles of poop going to and coming from the swimming pool, yet the desk clerk says ‘some guests are allergic to kitty fur.’ I’ll tell you what I’m allergic to; cleaning dookie out from between my toes, am I right?

“Anyhoo, what are the odds you’d be doing a — what did your ‘associate’ here call it? A ‘drop’? — in the very same stairwell at the very same time we were trying to smuggle her up? It’s crazy, right? And for us all to get distracted by that lady with the two humongous… Rottweilers? Well, I think we can all see how this happened.

“But it’s all there, so if we can just make the exchange, we’ll be outta here and on the next flight back to Des Moines.”

The leader of the menacing humans raised his hand, waiving off this idea.

“I’ve changed my mind,” he dispassionately pronounced. “I want the cat. You can keep the cocaine.”

This surprised everyone, even his strong-armed lackeys. But Leia’s other human — the smaller, softer one — wanted no part of that deal.

“Look, Mr… Mafia Guy,” she proceeded, realizing mid-sentence she had once again forgotten her antagonist’s name. “We’ve had a very long day and I just want it to be over with. We’ve been shot at, chewed on, felt up, sprayed with mace, doused with chemicals and nearly set on fire. We’ve dangled from ledges, climbed down roller coasters, been blasted out of cannons and had to defuse not one, not two, but three subterranean explosives! And I had to do it all in these God awful uncomfortable shoes, because Dingus here took my sneakers out of the suitcase before we left!”

“Now hold on,” her less-than-better-half interjected, responding to the biting slur. “I asked you if you were gonna wear those and you said ‘no, I wanna walk around New York City wearing heels.’”

The petite one could barely conceal her rage.

“It was sarcasm!!! How do you not get that?!?”

“Oh, well maybe I confused it for passive aggression! Who wears heels on a plane, anyway?”

“Well excuse me for wanting to look nice the one time we get to fly first class!”

The sniping stopped as the bad humans looked on in annoyed disbelief. Perhaps, the lumbering one thought, that last comment required an explanation.

“We won a contest.”

The explanation really wasn’t necessary.

The menacing leader reached into the duffel and scratched his furry new friend behind her ears as she purred contently. His patience was wearing thin.

“The street value of that cocaine,” he asserted, “is more than you two bickering banshees could make in three lifetimes. Take it, start a new life and get a new cat. Sweet Pea is happy right here.”

That last dig, more than anything, sent the petite, softer human over the edge.

“For the last time,” she snarled, “her name is Leia!”

Sensing the obvious aggression, the hench-humans lurched forward, halting a potential fracas. All involved had grown weary of the couple’s incessant squabbling.

“If you don’t want the coke, I’ll take the coke,” the boss-human relented. “But I’m keeping the cat.”

It was an offer they could no longer refuse. With a sudden jerk, one of the lackeys snatched the drug-filled bag from the tall, lumbering one’s grasp, abruptly tossing it to his leader.

And that, as they say, is where things got interesting. Without warning, Leia leapt from her canvas cradle and began barking orders into her shoulder.

“Its a go! Go now!” she shouted.

With that, more than two-dozen heavily armed, black-clad humans with ‘DEA’ emblazoned on their backs stormed the facility. It was a plot twist that caught everybody off guard. Turns out, no one checked to see if the cat was wearing a wire.

After a brief standoff and more squabbling, the villains were overpowered, handcuffed and hauled away. With the crisis averted, Leia apologized to her bewildered humans.

“I really hated to put you through all this,” she conceded as she fumbled with her federal badge, “but we’ve been tracking these guys for months. When you booked your vacation, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to run this elaborate sting.”

The humans just stood there, dumbfounded and disillusioned.

“So, this whole thing,” the tall one queried, as if explaining a complex resolution to a typical American audience, “it was a set up?”

“Yup,” Leia conceded.

“And the boarding pass mixup?” the petite one followed, “you were responsible for that?”

“Yeah, sorry. It had to be done.”

“The cannibal Uber driver? The swarming owl-bots? The piranha dunk tank? That was you?”

“Yes, yes and yes.”

“Oh my God! The lost luggage?!?”

“No,” Leia smirked, “that was just American Airlines.”

The trio laughed and laughed and laughed. It had been awhile since they had done that.

Wrapping things up neatly, Leia reminded the humans that none of this would’ve happened if they had bought the easy-clump litter like they usually do, while the humans admitted this whole ludicrous affair put a spark back into their otherwise dormant love life. And Maddy showed up again, making a well-timed wisecrack that was a callback to an earlier joke.

As the two felines and the two humans strolled back to the hotel — and to their otherwise routine lives — Leia tossed out one final observation.

“If they ever make a movie about this,” she offered, “they should totally get that pretty human with the hair from Friends and that boob from The Wedding Singer to play you guys. Mainstream audiences eat that crap up!”