Of fewer furs and words withheld

Global warming is affecting Kitty O and though it's early for Spring, he is already shedding. His furs are here, there, everywhere. I am constantly picking up small balls of grey -- and yet he looks exactly the same! A pretty neat trick, if you ask me. Well, perhaps I would choose another word over 'neat,' given the extra work I now have.
As I sat looking at Kitty O, marveling that his silhouette remained unchanged, it occurred to me that we were in the same mode. Right now I am editing my second novel in the Commissioner Oscar D'Costa mystery series. I have to shed words, paragraphs, pages -- and yet keep the novel whole, the way Kitty O looks, despite his fewer furs. It's a difficult thing to do, to select passages and then hit the 'delete' key. I am, however, doing it, one word at a time, sometimes three pages at a time.
Soon Kitty O will stop shedding and the novel will be done. And just as I will forget the furs I am now finding, I will also forget the parts I removed.
Then, the novel thinner and moving well (I hope), I will wrestle with the title. Right now I am flirting with "East with the Night," or "Organized Crime," or "The Children of the East." I'm awful with titles and just as I occasionally wish that someone would come and get rid of all those lost furs, I think how nice it would be if someone gave me a title.