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“Well said, sugar muffin,” said Harriet, who seemed to be hardening her stance. Whereas before she’d been a strong defender of rodent rights, she was now eyeing the mouse with a lot more frost than a rodent rights activist should.

“Well, for your information, I like this place, so I’m staying put. And there’s nothing you or your dumb chum cat cronies can do about it. So buzz off already, will you?”

“Oh, we’ll see about that,” said Brutus, finally losing his equanimity. And then he performed the feline equivalent of rolling up his sleeves: he rolled his shoulders and extended his claws. I would have helped him square off against this obnoxious little mouse, but unfortunately I was still stuck in the pet flap, and being stuck has a strangely debilitating effect on one’s fighting spirit. Still, he had my most vocal support.

“You don’t scare me, cat,” said the mouse. “If you want a fight, I’ll give you a fight.”

“Don’t be stupid, mouse,” said Harriet, the master diplomat. “We’re ten times bigger than you. We can squash you like a bug, and we will if you don’t get out of our house.”

The mouse wasn’t impressed. “It’s true that you’re bigger than me, cat. But you’re also a lot dumber. Besides, much of that size is flab, like your fat red friend who’s stuck in that pet flap can tell you, and why should I be scared of a bunch of hairy butterballs? Now if there’s nothing more, I’ve got things to do, mice to see, so cheerio, suckers.”

And with these fighting words, he was off, scurrying back to wherever he came from.

He left four cats fuming. Or actually one cat fuming (Brutus), one cat wondering how to get out of the pet flap (yours truly), one cat counting on his digits how much bigger than a mouse a cat could possibly be (Dooley) and one cat looking like the Terminator about to go full metal menace (Harriet).

“Oh, I’ll show that little jerk what’s what,” Harriet hissed. Apparently rodent rights were suddenly the furthest thing from her mind. And as she stalked off in the direction of the basement stairs, Brutus right behind her, I wondered how I was ever going to get out of my pet flap predicament now.

“I think we’re actually thirty times bigger than a mouse, Max, or maybe even more. What do you think?”

“I think I want to get out of here,” I said.

“I think the situation will take care of itself.”

“You mean the mouse situation?”

“No, your situation. If you simply stay stuck for a while and don’t eat, you’ll automatically get thinner and get unstuck before you know it.”

And having delivered this message of hope, he plunked down on his haunches, and gave me a smile, entirely ready to keep me company while I accomplished this rare feat.

“It will take me days to slim down and get unstuck, though,” I said, pointing out the fatal flaw in his reasoning.

“I don’t think so. A lot of weight gain is fluids,” said Dooley. “So the key is to get dehydrated.” He nodded wisely. “You need to sweat, Max, and sweat a lot. And then all of that extra weight will simply melt away.”

And to show me he wasn’t all talk and no action, he got up, jumped on top of the kitchen table, flicked the thermostat to Maximum, and jumped back down again.

“There,” he said, satisfied with a job well done. “It’s going to turn into a sauna in here and you’ll be free before you know it.” He gave me a reassuring pat on the head.

Odd, then, that I wasn’t entirely reassured.

Chapter 2

Over at the office, Tex was watering his spider plant while listening to the radio. He’d turned up the volume, as the song that was playing happened to be one of his favorites. It was a golden oldie from that old master of melody Elton John. And as he sang the lyrics, exercising the old larynx, he suddenly realized how much he actually liked to sing.

“Humpty Dumpty doo wah doo wah,” he warbled softly.

The spider plant was one of his favorites. He’d gotten it as a present from his daughter a couple of years ago, after she’d been in to see him about a suspicious mole that had developed on the back of her hand, and had told him his office looked dark and gloomy and could use sprucing up. In the week that followed she’d assumed the role of head of the sprucing-up committee and had redesigned his office, making it lighter and airier.

It had been her idea to put in the skylight, and to throw out the old rug that had developed a strange odor after years of use. She’d had the original wood floor sanded and refinished so it shone when the sun cast its golden rays through the new skylight, and as a finishing touch had thrown out his old furniture and replaced it with a nice and modern-looking desk and chair. Now the office didn’t look like it belonged to a nineteenth-century sawbones but a modern young physician hip with the times.

“Doo wah doo wah,” he sang, louder now that he decided that he had a pretty great singing voice. “Doo wah doo wee wee weeh…”