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I woke up from my cat nap when someone danced on my stomach. From time to time I like to rest on my back, my head slumped to the side. You might think this is an uncomfortable position but it’s not. At least not for me. Today, though, it was particularly uncomfortable because, as I said, someone was using my belly for ballroom dancing practice. And even before I opened my eyes I knew exactly who that someone was.

“Bom,” I grunted. “Can you please not do that? Ooph,” I added when he landed on my stomach and then tumbled off and fell to the floor next to the couch.

Worried, I glanced over, only to find the little furball scrambling around on the carpet, a little dazed but otherwise still in one piece.

“There must be a guardian angel for kittens,” I muttered.

“Oh, yes, there is,” said Dooley as he, too, was contending with a kitten using him as an inflatable bouncy castle. In his case it was Bam. The little kitten was giggling as he playfully slapped at Dooley’s face, the gray cat languidly allowing this abuse to continue.

“You know? I’m actually starting to like the little ones,” I said.

“Me, too,” Dooley admitted as he gave Bam a good-natured slap back and the kitten immediately engaged into a slapfest with the much bigger cat.

“I never thought I’d say this,” I continued, “but they’re pretty darn cute, aren’t they?”

Only now did I notice that instead of three kittens, there were only two present and accounted for. I could see Bom, making valiant attempts to climb back on the couch and failing, and Bam, sitting on top of Dooley’s head, with Dooley giggling as loudly as the kitten.

“Where is Bim?” I asked, suddenly worried.

“Oh, she’s probably around,” said Dooley, rolling over and pinning the tiny cat underneath his paw, before allowing him to escape again and climb his back.

“Yeah, but I don’t see her anywhere,” I said, getting up and glancing around.

Odelia and Chase were getting ready for work and paid us no mind, and of Harriet and Brutus there was no trace.

I jumped from the couch—or rather allowed my weight to drop me down, and went in search of the absent Bim. That was the trouble with kittens: you had to watch them like a hawk or else they snuck off and got themselves into all kinds of trouble.

I quickly trod up the stairs and searched the bedroom, then the guest bedroom, which had once been Gran’s, but found no trace of the red-and-white kitten. The bathroom was devoid of life, too, and so was the landing.

Huh. Where could little Bim be?

I plonked down the stairs again, and bleated,“Biiiiiiim! Where are you?!”

I looked around the living room, the salon, the kitchen, and the small storage room off the kitchen, where Odelia keeps the washer and dryer and whatever junk she can’t fit into the rest of the house. And then my eye fell on the pet flap.

Oh, no. Had Bim gone outside when no one was looking?

Had she ventured out into that big scary world and gotten into trouble?

The thought scared me half to death. I immediately wormed myself through the cat flap—it had been custom-made for me but it must have shrunk since then because I was finding it harder and harder to slip through.

“Bim!” I yelled once I was out in the backyard. “Where are youuuuuu?!”

Could she have gone out into the street? I didn’t dare think such a horrible thought. The street was full of cars, and those drivers rarely bothered to stop when a little ball of fluff suddenly rolled in front of their tires. For all I knew Bim had been flattened by one of those giant steel monsters.

“Biiiiiim!” I repeated.

My eye fell on the garden shed. The door to the modest wooden structure was ajar. I ventured thither and squeezed myself through the door to take a look inside. It was pretty dark in there, tools neatly dangling from pegboards on the wall, the lawnmower resting in a corner, and a workbench set up where Chase liked to mess around with stuff. Right now he was fixing up his bike, which was hanging from two hooks attached to the ceiling.

There was no sign of Bim there either, though.

Suddenly, a sound came from outside.

“Max? Is that you?” asked the voice.

I quickly emerged from the darkness of the shed. Brutus was lying underneath the hedge that divides Odelia’s backyard from Tex and Marge’s.

“Brutus? What are you doing there?” I asked.

Brutus looked distinctly ill at ease. He then opened his paws. And there, safe in the crook of his front legs, was Bim, sleeping peacefully, a smile on her funny little face.

“Don’t tell Harriet,” said Brutus hoarsely. “But I’ve been here since she fell asleep last night.”

I smiled at the sight of the unlikely twosome. The butch cat, and the tiny fuzzball.

“I take it they’ve gotten to you, too, huh?”

“They’re so cute,” said Brutus warmly.

“They are, aren’t they?”

“The thing is, Max, I know I’m, you know, fixed…”

“Yeah, me too.”

We both gulped uncomfortably at the thought.

“So I’ve never given much thought to, you know, offspring and all that stuff.”

“Me neither.”