It's always blondes that cause the trouble, so I should have been warned the moment I saw her. A golden tabby, half dumb blonde, half dozy brunette, she comes belting into my office, shrieking at the top of her voice.

"Mr Mush, Mr Mush, come quick. There's funny noises in the kitchen and the white mystery box is open. I told Claire, but she just patted my head and said blah, blah, blah."

I'm not surprised. Claire, the secretary, does her best but she's not exactly the brightest sandwich in the picnic if you get my drift. Must get her replaced one day, but first there's this silly tabby to deal with. I roll off my desk. "Okay, Miss Penny, I'm on my way."

There's definitely something odd going on in the kitchen. There are plastic boxes on the floor, all covered in newspaper. The door of the white mystery box is wide open and, as I watch, a large piece of something (snow? food?) falls from the roof of the box and lands in a bowl underneath.

Hmm... I sit on one of the newspaper-covered boxes to think. The secretary shoos me off. Okay, so let's take a look at the mystery box itself. The inside's made of metal. And it's wet. There's water and snow in the bowl. Let's give one of the metal bits an experimental lick, and...

Ow! Ouch! Help. It'th got by dongue! My dongue ith sthuck.

The secretary is laughing. Trust her to turn hysterical at the first whiff of a crisis. In a moment born of desperation, I whip my tongue away from the icy surface and leap back, right into one of the newspaper-covered boxes. I look round for Miss Penny. She's legged it, of course. Probably halfway up the curtains by now.

I think I have uncovered a plot here. The white box is a cat trap. The secretary lures cats in, gets them trapped by their tongues and then shuts the door on them. I've seen her take lumps of frozen things out of the white box before. You don't suppose... No, no, this is too terrible to contemplate. I must come up with a means of counter-attack. Right after I've had a wash.

Copyright © Claire Fay
December 9, 2001