The Cat's Bell

Based on a fable by Aesop

- Cressida Blake Roe

In a hole in the Great Green House lived a royal mouse family known as the Top-Right- Cabinet branch of the House of Cheddar, or the TRCHOC. (When any mice tried to pronounce the abbreviation, they were kindly asked to “repeat that, and don’t cough this time!”)

Colby was the youngest of the TRCHOC family. He was very smart and liked to build things out of the odds and ends that found their way into the Top-Right Cabinet. His favorite was a little round bell he’d fashioned out of an apple seed and a piece of scrap metal. He carried it everywhere he went. He loved tugging the bell on its thin thread and hearing it ring as it bumped along beside him.

Then, one day, the cat came.

The humans who owned the Great Green House cared nothing about mice royalty or the TRCHOC. A mouse was just a mouse as long as it made unwanted raids on the fruit bowl. Because the mice had become clever at avoiding traps, the owners brought home a ginger-tabby tomcat with moonlike eyes that seemed to swallow up its face.

The mouse families from all over the Great Green House were thrown into an uproar. They called a meeting at Nook- Inside-Fireplace to figure out how to solve the calamity.

“This is an outrage!” yelled the delegate from Spare Bedroom.