I drag, painstakingly, a spool of steel wool all the way from the quincaillerie back to Madame’s Mansion. It makes the most awful sound grating the cobblestone! A spectacle it must be, a mouse carrying the supplies for his own eviction…

Alas, they leave me no choice. It’s become the case that my flat in the baseboard is the only refuge I have from total feline chaos. To think…less than one square foot of an entire estate remains hospitable for a mouse who has lived there all his life.

Arriving home, I attempt to reach my room unnoticed. The steel wool scrapes dreadfully along the wooden steps, but it shan’t be any worse property damage than the cats manage daily…suddenly, I feel a sharp prick on my tail. Zut! I look up to see Peppo leering at me from behind his faux-distressed fedora.

“Désolé, Rocker-fort!”

In real distress, I pick up my tail and continue on my way. Rocker Fort, he is keen to call me. I chuckle to myself—a rube like him having never tasted the piquant delight from which my name derives! I’m nearly to asylum when I’m struck by the smarmy address of Thomas O’Malley.

“Bonsoir, Roquefort.”

“O’Malley.” I tip my snout.

“What’s this? A little home improvement project?” He gestures his paw to the steel wool. A large, powerful paw, I can’t help but notice. Home improvement. He is eager to share with me his tomcat expertise.

“One could say,” I snicker.

I think it’s best to be discreet about my fortification plan. I attempt to continue my path, but the wool is caught: causing a humiliating, bungee-like effect. I turn round, bashfully, to find the wool has been snagged by O’Malley, gazing at me mischievously.

“Steel wool—isn’t that what they use to keep mice out? You’re expelling yourself from The Foundation?”

The Foundation! This is Madame Bonfamille’s Mansion, and rightful home of me, Duchess, and the beloved kittens. This recent infestation of street urchins does not a Foundation make. “The Thomas O’Malley Home for All the Alley Cats,” he calls it. How humble! Not to mention ineloquent…at once, I’m flush with anger. I take a deep breath to steady my voice, which I now fear will come out in a squeak.

“Excuse me, O’Malley, but The Mansion has been my home since I was just a pinky. It’s not me who requires expulsion. I am simply building a barrier between myself and the ne’er-do-wells that now run rampant in these halls!”

I put the spool of steel wool on my back (which nearly crushes me, to my great embarrassment) and skitter to my soon-to-be enclosure.

Straight away I begin aligning the wool with the punctured baseboard, closing the gap with great satisfaction at first, but start to worry that my spoolage approximation was scant. The coils stretch, revealing Swiss cheese-like perforations. The yellow light from the room spills through, casting refractions into my den and diffusing luminescently across my personal effects. Nothing has ever been more beautiful to me…peace and privacy at last.

For the first time since the introduction of the Alley Cats, the sound of unending free jazz fades away. My room within the baseboard is dim and still. Threat and imposition by way of cats recedes. Everybody Wants to Be A Cat…Everybody Wants…I collapse onto my lint mattress. My eyelids are heavy. An image surfaces in my weary mind: Thomas’s claw looped gracefully through the steel wool. His powerful paw. Now the thought of Thomas doing home improvement. Home improvement for me. The sleekness of his tail and the way he uses it to accentuate his words. His sensuous words. Thomas…I accidentally say aloud, before drifting into sleep.