Sub­mit­ting this to the #tues­day­se­r­ial to see what hap­pens and in the hope it forces me to fin­ish the story . I'm leav­ing all the com­ments from the orig­i­nal sub­mis­sion waaay back in Octo­ber of last year (god, has it really been that long).

Wife edited and approved. Hope you have as much fun read­ing as I did writ­ing. Com­ments (even crit­i­cal) encouraged!

---

Tim­o­thy lay curled up in the big bay win­dow, his orange and white tail hang­ing casu­ally off the edge, swish­ing lazily back and forth while he ignored the seag­ull cir­cling overhead.

When the gull landed on the rail­ing out­side the win­dow he gave a big sigh but refused to oth­er­wise move.

"Hey youse guys," shouted the gull.

'Seri­ously? A Boston accent?" replied Tim lift­ing his head.

"Hey, I'm a gull from Baw­ston, whadda want?"

"Char­lie, you live down the street, eat out of our trash and have vis­ited Boston once."

Tim put his head back down, hop­ing the gull would take the hint.

He didn't.

"Believes what youse want cat. Any­ways, I gotta case for youse guys."

Tim heaved another sigh, gave up on nap­ping, stood up and stretched.

"Okay fine. Whats the case?"

"This mook down the street was telling me his room­mate got cat snatched yes­ter­day. He's afraid it might be part of that there theft ring that's going around. He asked me for help and of course I sug­gest he hire the Pack."

Tim sat and started at the gull. He squinted his eyes. He swished his tail.

"Theft ring?"

"Yea, there's been a bunch of these ani­mal thefts in da neigh­bor­hood lately. Dogs, cats, even a cou­ple rabbits."

Tim swished his tail some more.

"I assume you men­tioned our rates?"

"For­getaboutit. He can't cover, I will. You know I'm good forit."

"Right, " Tim stared some more, "Bring your mook by this after­noon, I'll let Sam know to expect you."

"Fan­tas­tic."

"And Char­lie? Lose the accent."

**********

Sam sat on the blan­ket on the floor fac­ing the oth­ers with a small grey cat sit­ting ner­vously beside him. In front sat 3 other dogs and 3 cats includ­ing Tim. Sam had his black and grey tail curled up against his back while he waited for the oth­ers to set­tle down.

"Let me intro­duce every­one. The black and white cat is Mag­gie, the two orange tab­bies are Tim­o­thy and Sebas­t­ian, the white Schnoo­dle dog is Zena, the black and tan Ter­rier that can't stay still is Harley, and the black and grey Schnoo­dle is Wat­son. Every­one, this is Chester. He was brought to us by Charlie."

The lit­tle grey cat nod­ded to each ani­mal as they were intro­duce. Each dog bowed their head when their name was called, the cats merely swished their tail.

"Accord­ing to Chester here, there have been sev­eral cats and dogs taken from their homes in the area over the last few days. Yes­ter­day his house­mate Peri, who is a small grey Burmese like him­self dis­ap­peared. Chester is afraid Peri was taken by the thieves. All he knows is that Peri jumped into a win­dow late in the after­noon, a win­dow with a locked screen, and when Chester return from the lit­ter box Peri was gone and the screen was missing."

"Any infor­ma­tion on this sup­posed rash of thefts?" asked Watson.

"It's not 'sup­posed' replied Chester, I heard from Lula next door that the dog across the street was taken!"

"Relax Chester, I'm not doubt­ing you. We take every­thing as con­di­tional until proven. " Wat­son shifted slightly on the floor, "It helps if we don't go into things with our minds already set on cat­nap­ping. Might miss something."

Chester nod­ded. He was still ner­vous being sur­rounded by so many dogs. Char­lie hadn't men­tioned there would be so many. He licked his paw to help calm him­self and tried to relax a bit. It didn't work.

"Bas­tion, can you escort Chester and make sure he gets home safely?"

"Cer­taintly." Sebas­t­ian replied as he stood up and stretched, "Come on kid."

Sam nuz­zled Chester with his nose gen­tly to encour­age him along.

"You'll be safe with Sebas­t­ian, he might not look like much but he can be tough when he needs to."

Sebas­t­ian glanced at Sam, flicked his tail twice and headed out the door, Chester fol­lowed gin­gerly behind. After they had left the room Sam stood up and began to pace.

"Some­thing both­er­ing you?" asked Zena

"Yes. I've heard rumors about the rash of kid­nap­pings recently, but this doesn't feel like one and it's bug­ging me as to why."

Zena stretched out on the floor as Harley twitched around in a circle.

"You think­ing this wasn't a cat­nap­ping but a run away?" asked Harley

"It had occurred to me, but there is still too much we don't know. You and Wat­son inves­ti­gate Chesters house, focus on the out­side for now. See if you can find any evi­dence or clues that will give us a direc­tion. Zena, you can­vas the neigh­bor­hood. Talk to any dogs or cats or any­thing else that will talk to you about the thefts and see what you can find."

"What shall Tim­o­thy and I do?" asked Maggie.

"I need you two to go talk to Mal­com. See if he can arrange some aer­ial sur­veil­lance of the area. Maybe they can spot Peri or some kind of trail"

"And what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to try to talk to Gus­tav. If there is kind of ani­mal traf­fick­ing going on he will at least have heard about it."

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