Chapter 1:

In which we meet our heroes

It was a quiet day in an office in downtown Singapore. A ceiling fan circulated the air a bit. Behind a desk in the middle of the room sat Mopsy “Stinky” Mittens, a cat detective.

The door swung open and in marched Flopsy “Fatsy” Tickels, also a cat detective.

“What do you have in that desk?” demanded Flopsy. “Are you hiding something from me.”

“No,” said Mopsy, shutting the drawer. “I was just cleaning out the drawer. There are no snacks here.”

“Aha!” said Flopsy. “You’re hiding snacks! I knew it.”

“I am not hiding snacks,” said Mopsy. “If I had a snack, I would eat it. You are confused.”

Flopsy did not buy this at all. She went around the side of the desk, trying to see what might be in the drawer.

“Did you put up any signs?” asked Mopsy. Flopsy was holding a pile of white pieces of paper. “I don’t know how anyone will manage to find us if we don’t have any advertising. Then we’ll have to give up this office and go back to being jungle cats.”

Flopsy was easily distracted.

“I don’t want to be a jungle cat again! That was terrible.”

“Did you put up the signs?”

“I put up some of them,” said Flopsy.

“How many?” asked Mopsy.

“Three?”

“Just three?”

“I had to come back. I didn’t have enough tape.”

“Whose fault is that?” asked Mopsy.

“Yours, because you don’t let me in the desk drawer!” And Flopsy made a dash for the drawer, opening it before Mopsy could do anything.

Inside there was a dead bird.

“A bird! You caught a bird and didn’t tell me!”

Mopsy was embarrassed. “It’s not what it looks like.”

Flopsy looked closely at the bird. The bird was rotten and smelly. Its tongue was sticking out and it looked like it has been poisoned.

“That’s a garbage bird! You didn’t catch that bird, you found it in the garbage!”

Mopsy would have turned red, but he was a dark cat, and if he did turn red it was under his fur.

“I told you not to take birds out of the garbage! Somebody probably poisoned that bird and if you eat it you’ll get poisoned too! You are the dumbest cat I ever met.”

“But what’s poisonous for birds might not be poisonous for cats?”

“Mopsy, I am surprised at you. You should know better than that. You can’t just eat dead birds you find in the city. You are not in the jungle any more. It is astonishing that someone as dumb as you is still alive. You would have eaten that bird if I hadn’t come in, wouldn’t you?”

“I was just looking at it.”

“You were going to eat it. It’s a good thing I came back here to get more tape, you would be dead. Give me that thing.”

And Flopsy took the dead bird out of the desk and flung it out the front door, where it promptly hit an animal they didn’t recognize in the face.