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Inside, a wall-to-wall row of screens showed us every part of the house. Apparently Flake had installed it a long time ago, as a parallel system to the official security setup. It was a fairly small space, and probably had to be, or else people would notice this architectural funny business. The state-of-the-art surveillance equipment could take a peek inside every corner of the chateau. Flake had cameras in every room, even the bathrooms, and according to Pussy the designer had spent hours in there, spying on guests and associates.

He liked to organize weekend getaways for the company’s upper crust, and spy on them while they held secret meetings in their rooms, gossiping about Flake, or plotting against him. Many an executive had been given the boot after such a weekend, for scheming against the boss. It had been a way for the designer to keep his fingers in every possible pie, and hold the company reins firmly in hand. According to Pussy all of his other houses were equipped with the same setup, and even the company headquarters in Paris.

With another flick of the paw, Pussy booted up the system, and all the screens flickered to life—in black and white, of course. She handled the joystick with remarkable ease, and brought up one screen in particular: the main meeting room in the basement, where the conference was about to begin.

She flicked a button and now we had sound, too. She hopped down from the console and moved swiftly to the door.“Watch and learn, you guys.”

“Maybe you should stay,” I suggested.

“I told you, Max—I can’t,” she said, with the same pained look she’d displayed before. The loss of her human had hit her hard, that much was obvious, but the uncertainty about her future was even harder to bear.

“We’ll tell you everything you need to know,” Dooley promised.

She smiled.“You’re good cats, both of you. Never change, will you?” And with these words she left the room, and allowed the hidden panel to swing back into place. Now we were effectively cut off from the rest of the house.

“Never change?” said Dooley. “What does she mean, Max?”

“I have no idea,” I said, jumping up onto Flake’s chair—the one where he spent all those hours spying on his own people—hunting down the plotters.

“Because we do change, don’t we? I noticed this morning that a black hair is growing out of my left ear. And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t there yesterday.”

“A lot of hair grows out of your ears, Dooley. It’s because you’re a cat.”

“Yeah, but like I said, this particular hair wasn’t there before. And I know this because it’s black, and I don’t have black hairs growing out of my ears.”

I wasn’t going to discuss the color of the hairs in Dooley’s ears, for judging from the buzz sounding from the speakers, the meeting was about to start. And since I didn’t want to miss a thing—for Pussy’s sake—focus was key.

“I could always pull out the hair, of course,” Dooley went on. “But I’m not sure if that’s the way to go. They do say that when you pull out a hair it only grows back thicker and more horrible than before. Or I could cut it. Maybe cutting a hair doesn’t alter its shape and thickness? What do you think, Max?”

“I think I don’t really care about a single hair in those hairy ears of yours, Dooley,” I said as I watched the screen intently.

“Ouch. That’s a mean thing to say, Max.”

“It’s one hair! Who cares?!”

“Well, I care. If hairs are going to start growing indiscriminately without my permission, what’s next? I might turn into the hairiest cat alive if this keeps up.”

“Lady cats love hair on a male cat,” I said, in a bid to get him to shut up.

“They do? I didn’t know that,” he said, perking up.

“Oh, yeah. The hairier the merrier. Mark my words, the more hair you grow, the more attention you’ll start getting from the ladies.”

“Oh,” he said. “I never looked at it that way.”

He lapsed into silence, and I got ready to learn what I could about Pussy’s fate. Then, suddenly, from the corner of my eye, I saw that Dooley was performing a peculiar ritual. I turned to him, and saw he was biting himself!

“Dooley! What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to pull out more hair,” he said between two nips into his fur.

“But why?”

“You said it yourself, Max. The hairier the merrier. So I figure if I pull out all of my hair, it will only grow back thicker and shinier, and it will increase my appeal with a factor of at least twelve.”

“Dooley, that whole spiel about hair growing back thicker is only a myth. It grows back, but not thicker than before.”

“It doesn’t?” he said, a tuft of gray hair between his lips.

“It doesn’t. So please stop pulling out your hair and start watching the meeting with me, will you? We owe it to Pussy to do this right.”

“Okay,” he said, and spat out his hair, which fluttered to the concrete floor of Flake’s secret control room.