Did Hillary Clinton Order a Kitten Caper?

Hillary Clinton: first lady, U.S. senator … cat killer?

That's the claim of Kathleen Willey, the White House aide who says President Clinton groped her in the Oval Office in 1993. If she's telling the truth, and if, after making this allegation, she actually was harassed by Hillary-hired thugs who went so far as to abduct one of her cats (Bullseye) and murder another (a mere kitten), then the Clintons are nothing less than feline-felling Mafiosi.

If she's lying — or paranoid — the Clintons are nothing less than selling points.

Regardless, their demonic faces on the cover of "TARGET: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton" should look right at home on bookstore shelves already sagging under the weight of dozens of "Wait! Here's MY Story of How Demonic the Clintons Are" books. (I'm waiting for, "Deliver Me to Evil: One Pizza-Boy's Story of Bringing Dinner to the Most Corrupt Couple Ever to Order a Large Pepperoni. Especially Her.")

It does not help Ms. Willey's credibility that the company publishing her book, A World Ahead, also sells mouse pads featuring a cartoon Senator Clinton banging her fist on a lemonade stand and spilling the children's product. The blurb by Ann Coulter also lends a certain predictability to the book's point of view.

And yet, the book itself is quite a read. It chronicles how Ms. Willey, a soccer mom turned Clinton fundraiser in the early 1990s, came to volunteer in the social office of the White House, where, bizarrely enough, she became best buddies with Linda Tripp.

Yes, that Linda Tripp — the one who gossiped and plotted with Monica Lewinsky and hashed out the famous talking points. Well before she was gabbing with Ms. Lewinsky, Ms. Tripp was gabbing with Ms. Willey, who sought her out right after the alleged groping. Ms. Tripp, being a smoker, suggested she and Ms. Willey talk in the parking lot:

"I said, 'You're not going to believe this!' And I told her.

"Linda went into high gear. 'All right,' she said, her mind working double time. 'This is going to lead to an affair and, now, this is how it's done. They're going to be finding a safe house for the two of you and you'll be going to Camp David and …' I sat there, staring at her. I felt indignant. I wasn't interested in him that way."

That very same day, possibly that very same hour, Ms. Willey's husband was committing suicide. (I told you it was quite a read.) He'd embezzled a quarter-million dollars from some "not nice" people who wanted it back, Ms. Willey writes. With no way to pay it, he succumbed to despair. The reason Ms. Willey was even with the president that day was to request some kind of help.

What he allegedly gave her was some kind of something else.

Ms. Willey told me yesterday that whatever it was, it would have been "going to the grave" with her (and to Ms. Tripp's grave, too, I guess) had she not been summoned, years later, to testify in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case against the president.

Once that case loomed, she found herself skulked by strange, scary people. "A man, he was pretending to be a jogger, he came up to me and just asked did I ever find my cat?" Ms. Willey said. "He mentioned my cat by name and [said], 'Yeah, that Bullseye was a really nice cat.'"

Was? Hmm.

Ms. Willey said the guy was so creepy that she came to the conclusion he'd been hired to intimidate her, and he'd started by killing her cat.

Some time later she had another cat, a particularly fluffy 1-year-old, that turned up dead on her deck. Double hmm.

Eventually, Ms Willey pins all this — and more — on none other than Mrs. Clinton herself because (pay attention now): Ms. Willey once talked to a conservative talk show host, Melanie Morgan, who said she had run into the private eye who'd ostensibly been behind all this skullduggery. The talk show host supposedly said to the private eye, "Aren't you ashamed of what you did to Kathleen?" And the private eye supposedly replied that the only thing he was ashamed of was that "Hillary did not pay me in a timely fashion." (See? Hillary's not only evil — she's cheap.)

If this sounds just a little too pat, too cute, too made-for-Swift Boat TV, all I can say is: You probably weren't going to buy this book anyway.
If, on the other hand, this sounds like exactly the way it plays out in Clinton land, where all the paw prints lead back to Hillary, a lady who likes her power raw and her pets dead, your reading material awaits.

And when you're done, I'm sure there will be more.

lskenazy@yahoo.com