I stalk around the house. The cord floats behind me. It is sagging and gray today, which seems appropriate. You can’t eat it. I’ve tried. I have eaten everything there is to eat in this place. I even knocked the lid off the trash can, but there were only dirty tissues in there. Since the Bad Dinner, Ted takes out the trash twice a day. Anyway, I ate the tissues.

I patrol the house, scenting for blood. I even go to the basement workshop, which I don’t like too much because it has no windows. The engine sits like a shining sea creature on the workbench, under the spotlight. Boxes line the walls. I climb over them and into them. They are mostly empty, or filled with old parts. Even in my anxious state, the cardboard makes me purr a little. I have to make a big effort not to settle down for a comfortable doze.

I creep under the couch and peer behind radiators. I go under Ted’s bed where beer cans roll about among the dust bunnies. I pull open his drawers and dig through his socks and boxers and undershirts. I scrabble about in the back of the closet. I don’t find anything. No blood, and not even the scent of Lauren.

I stop before the attic door, my tail straight and scared. There is no sound. I force myself to come closer. I put my delicate velvet nose to the crack under the door and I breathe. Dust, dust and nothing. I listen, but all is quiet. I picture the still air, the thick beams sighing, abandoned objects spilling out of boxes. I shiver. There’s something horrible about the thought of an empty room, in the dark. OOoooeeeeeee, goes the singing in my brain. If the LORD has a purpose for this almost constant noise, I wish he would reveal it pretty darn quick.

I realize I haven’t looked under the refrigerator. Sure enough after a couple of tries I hook out a stale cracker with a claw. Ugh. Soft.

I am chewing when I glimpse something else in the dusty dark. I gently slide my paw, delicately extend my claws to their full length and reach in among the bottle caps and soft gray fluff. I sink a claw into the thing. It is a yielding surface, the claw goes right through. A little body, is my first thought. A mouse? Ooh … But it’s not flesh, something thinner and more porous. I pull the thing into the light. It’s a child’s white flip-flop. It must be one of Lauren’s. Lauren can’t walk but she likes to wear shoes sometimes anyway.