Chapter OneMORTIMER
Mortimer waited on the cool stone basement floor in front of mouse door number four, his fluffy orange body covering as much territory as it could. His paws were spread in front of him, as if he were about to catch a watermelon.
Books, in Mortimer’s opinion, got it wrong about cats. In books, cats were usually stuck-up, sometimes even uncaring. As if cats had no feelings at all.
Cats had hearts, too.
Feelings, his heart said.
Mortimer had a lot of feelings. What he didn’t have were a lot of words.
Mice were better with words than he was. Mice talked a lot.
* * *
The bell on top of Martinville Town Hall began to ring, as it did at 6:00 P.M. every day. The scratching behind the door was getting louder. A mouse would be coming through any second now.
“Apples!” he heard a small voice say. “I smell apples!” And behind the voice there were murmurs of excitement.
Here they come, Mortimer thought. He put on what he hoped was a gentle smile just as the first of the mice emerged, shaking off little bits of dirt and sawdust and, as usual, talking.
“Is that a … cat?”
A second mouse appeared. “What sort of terrible place is this, with a heartless cat standing by the door? This must be a bad dream!”
A third mouse popped through the hole. Mice, Mortimer knew, rarely traveled alone.
“Welcome!” Mortimer said. He glanced nervously at the potato bin. Last week, a mouse had managed to jump into it. Mortimer had had to wait for him, remaining perfectly still under the stairs, for almost three hours.
“Please follow me, mice.” Mortimer tried to sound cheerful. “This way to outside!”
“But we just got inside!” one of them whined.
Using his outstretched arms like windshield wipers, Mortimer herded them to a small mouse hole in another corner of the basement (also known as mouse door number three). Mice, he’d learned, never liked to go out the same way they had come in.
“That horrible cat has six-toed feet! How terrifying!”
“Wait a minute. Could this cat be the Six-Toed Grouch?”
The exit, which was not far from the old library book cart, led outdoors, away from Ms. Scoggin, the apples, and Mr. Brock’s cheese. And the potato bin.
“And now I suppose we are expected to go straight out into the cold again?”
In fact, seeing Mortimer and his sizable paws, the three of them were already crowding around the mouse hole, trying to leave.
“Not cold,” Mortimer said. “It’s summertime. Be careful, though—there’s a road on the other side of this door. Cars. But everything is fine!”
“Oh, great,” one of them said. “Thanks for nothing, Six-Toed Grouch.” And he disappeared through the hole.
“And by the way, everything is NOT fine,” the last mouse added. “I’m VERY hungry.” But, keeping her eyes on Mortimer’s paws (he actually did have six toes on each), the mouse squeezed herself through the hole, backward.
“Sorry,” Mortimer said. “Keep moving, please. Sorry!”
“Cats are never sorry,” said the mouse, just before vanishing into the night. “Everyone knows that cats have no feelings.”
Mortimer didn’t say anything. There was no point, because they were gone. He pressed his eye to the small hole, looking to see that they had made it safely across the road. “Goodbye,” he whispered. “Goodbye and good luck.”
Ms. Scoggin did not tolerate mice. By now, Mortimer knew that he couldn’t stop them from coming in through the mouse holes (he’d carefully numbered them, mouse doors one through five). The mice had been coming for all the years he’d lived in the house, and there wasn’t much he could do about it, other than gently guide them back outside again. He’d learned to hear their scritching and scratching and was always ready to meet them at a door and point them to the nearest exit.
Mortimer did not think of himself as good with words, but his hearing was excellent.
* * *
He tried to straighten up the basement. As usual, rushing around the way they did, the mice had banged into things. Tonight, three apples had fallen from a tall wobbly shelf. Even with twenty-four toes, Mortimer could not pick up apples. But he could roll them to a spot near the stairs, where Al would be sure to see them right away. He lined them up for her.
Maybe they were not too bruised. Or she could make applesauce. Again.
Copyright © 2023 by Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass
