Their eyes met. It was clear that they had to kill her. It was also clear that they would tell nobody about it. They didn't need words to communicate, they had known each other for too long. He had sent a questioning look into her direction and she had bent her head almost unnoticeably. Still, he had seen it, maybe sensed it.

It would not be easy. She seemed to be clever. But she was also very nosy and they would use her curiosity to get hold of her. They would build a trap for her. As nobody was allowed to know about their plan everything had to be done secretly, silently, efficiently.

When she had suddenly appeared in the neighborhood it was clear to them that she did not fit into the area. Nobody had seen one of her kind for years. This was a very clean part of the city and no-one like her had been allowed access to it for a long period of time. What made it all the more astonishing was that - apart from them - apparently nobody had taken notice of her. How could this be? They had realized it the very first moment they had seen her. First they had tried to chase her away. And with some amusement they had noticed that they had unwittingly gained help from the neighbor's dog. They didn't like him; he was a pretty vicious one, always barking, often for no reason at all. But of course they didn't mind his bad behavior towards her. It hadn't helped. Nothing had worked so far: telling her to leave, playing nasty tricks on her home, even chasing her. She was still around and was still nosy. Too nosy for their taste. They had been discussing it for days now and the only possible solution they had come up with was to kill her. They didn't like the idea very much but knew it was inevitable. Day by day they worked through their plan always hoping that in the meantime she might disappear but - no - she was still around. Finally, everything was fixed and settled. One last time they promised each other to keep this dark secret to themselves for the rest of their lives.

All went well. The killing was easier than imagined and feared, now all they had to do was to deal with the corpse. The plan said to bring her into the garden in the dead of the night and bury her in her earthen grave. There would have been other possibilities but this had looked like the least dangerous one to them. They counted to three: she opened the door with her back-side, while he held the body which was quite light and no big problem to carry. Only when a horrible scream touched their ears did they realize that something had gone terribly wrong. He opened his mouth and the body fell to the ground. How could this have happened, he wondered? They had forgotten their master's garden party! They turned around and chased towards the house. The last they heard was: Your cats have killed this mouse.

^