“Rowww.” Moishe gave a plaintive meow and brushed up against her ankles.

“Okay. You can have more. Hold on a second and I’ll fill it up.” Hannah unlocked the door to the broom closet and came back with a scoop of dry cat food. She retraced her footsteps four times until the food tube on the Kitty Valet was full. “There it is,” she said, clamping the lid on tightly. “I just wish I knew where you were…the camera!”

The minute she thought of it, Hannah reached up to flick off the red switch on the camera. She pushed the button that extracted the tape and retrieved the carrier that Mike had left on the kitchen counter. Her next stop was the living room. Hannah slipped the tape and carrier into her VCR, set it to rewind, and headed toward her bedroom. She’d get out of her soaked exercise outfit, take a lightning fast shower, put on the warmest clothes she owned, grab a fresh cup of coffee from the pot she’d put on when she’d arrived home, and settle down on the couch with the remote control to see where Moishe was hiding his kitty crunchies.

Fifteen minutes later, Hannah was still in the dark. The surveillance camera must have failed somehow, because there were only two shots of Moishe leaving the kitchen. In the first shot, he’d entered the living room and jumped up to the back of the couch to take a nap. At least Hannah assumed he’d been napping. The camera had clicked off. When it reactivated, it caught Moishe in the act of jumping down from the back of the couch and padding into the kitchen again. The third shot showed Moishe leaving the kitchen and heading off toward the laundry room, presumably to use his litter box. And that was all. The rest of the tape was blank.

Hannah removed the tape from her VCR, popped it out of the carrier, and took it back to the kitchen. She’d return it to the camera and run a little test. She’d turn on the camera and leave the kitchen a prescribed number of times. Then she’d turn off the camera and watch the tape to see whether it had activated correctly.

Hannah had just reinserted the tape when her cell phone rang. Since it was in her purse on the counter within easy reach, she answered it.

“Hello? This is Hannah.”

“Hi, Hannah. It’s Mike. Where are you?”

“I’m home. Why didn’t you call me here?”

“Because I didn’t know you’d be home this early.”

Hannah was puzzled. “You’re not calling me from home, are you?”

“Of course not. They might check my phone records. I picked up one of those disposable cell phones with the minutes already loaded.”