
Alice returned to her cabin, tired from the day’s lab work. One soil sample was encouraging with small microbes, long since died as fossils. She let Frederick out of his cage and stripped down in the cold room quickly to take her shower of a small amount of moisture and drying off with ultraV light shining around her slim form. The dust in the tunnels seemed to be everywhere and in every pore of her once smooth skin. Watching, the cat wondered why humans can’t just lick themselves clean. Getting bored he jumped down to the twenty-four inch air vent screen to bat his toy about. The toy still would not release from the screw from which it hung. Every time Frederick pawed at the small object, the screen screw of the vent loosened, and then suddenly it popped off onto the floor.
Frederick bent down to smell the small screw, and finding it not edible, he turned his attention toward the air vent. As he began to pull the aluminum screen toward him, it easily bent, leaving a small opening where he could hear voices. ‘Maybe there is food down there,’ he thought. Luckily his mistress had removed his body weight, leaving the small ankle weights on. His bulky size almost didn’t fit, but cats with their limber spine are able to rotate until… he vanished down the ventilation shaft!
“Ah that feels so much better,” Alice said aloud not realizing no one including Frederick had heard her. She dressed in her padded black slacks and wrap around green tunic that she wanted to wear to dinner. Getting out some canned cat food, she popped the lid and started to spoon it out into Frederick’s food bowl.
“OK, Freddy, here you go,” she announced as she began to place the bowl on the floor by the bed. “Frederick? Freddy, where are you?” She exclaimed looking everywhere a cat could possibly hide in this small room. Looking under the nightstand, she saw the vent with its screen pulled out.
“Oh, no!” She cried.
Dropping the cat’s food dish recklessly onto the floor, she ran out into the hallway, still trying to get her second boot on. Just in time she saw Mike Carone walking by in the hallway.