A week or so after figuring out Lia’s true identity

  I was troubled. I thought I had everything going for me, minus having to have a job. I had a house, I had a decent enough car, and I had plenty of time to spend on my hobbies. And most of all I had a pet cat, something I had always wanted but had never been able to follow through with in the military and with my parents.

  But in one night my dreams were shattered. My job, which up until then had been rexed albeit weird and spooky in multiple uses of the word, massively grew in scope threatening my free time as well as my more basic freedom. I learned I had a house-mate, meaning I no longer had my house to myself. And worst of all, I found out my pet cat was a sentient being with a human form.

  No more would I be able to run my hands through that fuzzy bck fur. No more could I in good conscience have fun pying around with the ser pointer I bought, making it flit about across the floor and walls while a furry fluff ball desperately pursued the glowing-red invader of her domain. All the best years of my life, gone, washed away, like tears in the rain… wait, no this isn’t that kind of story. Anyways, I’m a bit peeved I no longer have a pet cat.

  She had only “revealed” this a week ago, but already we’ve fallen into a routine, me sitting on the couch working my way through homework and a pot of decaf, her with a sketchbook or tablet on my recliner. Sorry. Her recliner. I had purchased it a month after moving in, excited for a comfy chair I could sit back in while reading my test trashy fantasy book. I had put an immense effort into tracking down the perfect lighting for it, a spot with the best sunlight streaming through the window during the day and a natural-sunlight mp for in the evening. Even the table next to it was chosen with my clumsiness in mind, a simple wooden table with a durable surface impervious to both coffee and beer. I had chosen it to be the reading spot of my dreams.

  Immediately after adopting the stray that had taken to hanging out in my back yard, she had taken to the chair like a fish to water. It was only natural. The observation I had put into finding the spot in the house with the best sunlight was second nature to a cat, ingrained into the psyche of the whole species in their quest to find the best spots to nap. And no one would wake up a sleeping cat. Human nature is to leave them be.

  After learning her true nature I had wanted to speak up, wanting to recim my reading spot. But the fact of the matter is that I had invited her in. And she needed the light more anyways. I may have been studying art history, but she was studying actual art. She needs the sunlight more. I can’t really say things have changed much from before finding out the truth.

  I suppose I’m just catastrophizing. My spot here on the couch is comfy. The smell of the leather is fresh and screams of a bank account far more flush than that of most my peers, bancing with the comforting warmth of a throw bnket received as a gift years ago at a Christmas faded into memory. Music pys in the background, loud enough to smother the ringing of tinnitus but not overpowering the rexed mood. The rhythm of pencil strokes from the recliner across the room makes an intricate counterpoint to the eclectic mix of my Youtube autopy. And the browser window on my ptop promised to fill in the one thing missing from the scene.

  “How’s your homework going?” Liah asked, reaching for the cup emanating the rexing blend of vender and chamomile as she stretched. It had been a long day, with my work schedule making it necessary for her to make her own way home. Whatever magic makes it possible to travel the distance from school doesn’t seem too tiring for her, but pulling yourself out of work or a book can be just as tiring.

  “Fairly well.” I replied as I tabbed away from the local SPCA website. “I’m still not sure if I want to do my paper on the Arnolfini Marriage, but it’d be the best option for getting up to the required word-count. I love art and find the symbolism used to be fascinating, but dragging out a paper on it to ten pages can be a chore.” Her eyes are glowing with the intensity of a hunter seeing its prey get stolen out from under it. Odd, Van Eyk may be a contentious subject from an academic sense but nothing worth this level of reaction.

  “I know there’s a sizable group that feel the painting doesn’t actually depict a marriage, or that the marriage has darker undertones. I guess the art history world can be surprisingly contentious.” Probing her views might be the best way forward. I don’t want to accidentally set off a ndmine when discussing schoolwork. But enough about fabric merchants, let’s get back to kittens. The local shelter is big, and there’s a ton of options. Oodles of them.

  “The painting?” Her tone isn’t quite fitting with the plushness of the chair or the smooth scent of her tea. The edge seemed a bit much even for a debate on the intricacies of symbolism used in the early northern renaissance. I have no issues with debate, but it’d kill the good mood from looking at cats up for adoption. I mean, they even got a full kindle of kittens ready for adoption. I can already think of names for them. Mackey could be a fun one. And Archibald Henderson is a mouthful but the contrast with an adorable ball of fluff is delicious. Or…Kate? Kate the kitten! Perfect. Though I’ll probably go with Archibald. Ethics of the Seminole wars aside, you do have to admire him for how long he was Commandant. But Kate though…young Angelina Jolie was great in that movie even if the plot was a bit corny.

  “Hmph.” Liah’s sketchbook closed with a snap, with a louder sm as it was unceremoniously dropped on the side table. “It’s getting te and we have css tomorrow as well. Goodnight.” In the blink of an eye she switched from human to cat, pointedly curling up in the nook between the chair’s arm and back.

  Bemused by this, I decided my research would best be finished in my room.

  Once again, I find myself puzzled. On the mat leading out of my kitchen to the back patio, there’s a mouse. Dead. Now this is better than a live mouse, leaving droppings everywhere and ruining food in the pantry, but that leads to the question of how it got here. I haven’t had a mouse problem before. No boxes chewed through, no flour strewn everywhere with those disgusting bck specs throughout. This is the first time I’ve even seen a mouse in here, outside of the cat toys I had excitedly bought a while back.

  Cat toys? Maybe I’m half away, maybe this is just… nope, it’s real. A real dead mouse, in my kitchen. Why did it choose this spot specifically to die? It didn’t, it clearly had its neck broken against its will, no conscious choice on the part of the mouse. I had a full-on mouse murder case on my hands, with a very limited pool of suspects.

  Could this be a closed circle? If so that would be very troubling. The circle is rather small if so. Suspect One: me. Motive: unknown. There are lots of reasons why I might be the suspect. I might have a grudge against the deceased. It could have been a crime of passion to avenge my pantry, or I could even be suspected of murdering the little beast to complete a dark magical ritual. The average mystery writer would scoff at having a witch as the culprit but well, it could happen. Although as I know I was in my bedroom all night the only way it would have been possible is through some sort of supernatural act and that’s very frowned upon in this genre, practically Rule Number 2.

  This is all absurd though, since as the detective I can’t be the culprit. Which leads to suspect Number Two: Liah. At first it might seem like common sense. The Motive is simple: Cats hunt Mice. But that’s too simple. Having such a sketchy, obvious culprit would be crass. The shifty-eyed stereotype is even worse than having a magical answer to the mystery. Rule Five in detective stories if I remember right. A bck cat figuring into a tale of murder most foul would be something you’d expect from Poe. But those are the only two possible culprits in this closed circle. Unless someone came in from outside.

  Secret passages are also anathema, but the cat door on the back kitchen door isn’t much of a secret. But a culprit coming in from outside, a mysterious third person, is frowned upon as well. Meaning the culprit has to be one of two people. No, one person. This whole time I’ve been refusing to see the truth, refusing to believe that the one responsible is…

  “What are you being so loud in here for?” The culprit wandered in, not a care in the world. Maybe one care. She, bleary-eyed, stumbled her way to the coffee grinder in a desperate fight to sate her caffeine addiction.

  “Liah, did you…” I refused to believe it.

  “Did I what?” She asked with the slurred voice of one who had stayed up te hunting or doing other sorts of work.

  “This mouse…” It’s useless, it can’t be.

  “Oh, look at that. At least it’s only the one that got left here. I can only imagine how much we’d end up with if there was ‘a full kindle of kittens’ running around.” It was practically a confession. But maybe there was a clue I overlooked. “We don’t need any more cats here. You wouldn’t want to have to deal with more ‘gifts’ from them, would you?”

  Rather unambiguous. But that just leads to the question, how did she even know I had wanted to adopt a cat? And isn’t she acting a bit territorial?