Horace Longstreet operates the most brutal drug empires in the south, dealing in peyote, cocoa leaves, laudanum and opium. When he learns a young transporter known as the 'Cat' has been skimming profits, he enlists the aid of a Pinkerton detective, now deep in the bottle and dying of tuberculosis. Against his will, Tyrone Burke must kill or capture the young offender, but the Cat has many lives and leads his pursuer or a 'Wizard of Oz'-type journey through the most dangerous and perverse opium dens, cat-houses and drag queen lairs in the 1880's south. In the end, however, is the Cat actually running for his life or has the hunted now become the hunter? A startling, final confrontation brings two forces of extreme evil face to face, gun to gun, and the result may change the entire direction of the future.