Slippers waits for an explanation, but it doesn’t come. Instead, the tiger cub drops onto the ground, belly down. Ebe groans and bellows out in a wordless complaint before flopping over onto her side, letting her legs flop down in every direction.
She looks to be the picture perfect image of someone that has given up. Ebe closes her eyes, and she sighs again. “I miss her,” says Ebe, finally. The words roll into reality like something sour – carrion meat or a mouse that is too skinny to justify turning into a meal. “I miss her so much! Oh, you two cats have no idea. You have no idea how much I miss her!”
Tom Quartz is the one that answers this time, surprisingly enough. His voice is soft and light and sad. “I know what it’s like to miss someone,” he says, seriously. “I have many brothers and sisters, and I miss them all dearly. Right now, Slippers is the only cat I have, and I can’t imagine how miserable I would be if something happened to her.”
Ebe cracks open one eye. She’s listening, but still not encouraged enough to get up, or to say anything.
“You must be miserable,” says Tom Quartz, as if that isn’t the obvious truth. “But that’s just it, Ebe. We’re here to help you! What happened to your sister?”
Ebe sighs again, but this time it’s chased down by an answer. “They took her. The humans moved her away from here, and I don’t know why, and I don’t know where she went! And…” The tiger still doesn’t sit up. Her tail tip twitches. “I miss her so much. It makes my heart hurt, kitten, without her here. I’m tired. And I don’t want to do anything. I just want to curl up with her, and I want to know that she’s safe!”
Slippers takes charge again. She does that a lot, and it usually works out very well for the two cats. “Do you know where they took her?”
“There’s a big building at the center of the zoo,” says Ebe. “There’s a monkey that got loose a while ago, and he says that they took her there. He says that the building is bad, and that the animals who go in there usually don’t come back out. I’m so worried.”
A big building in the middle of the zoo? Slippers gives Tom Quartz an uncertain look. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to be doing out here in this strange time zone, but there’s no doubt that the answers are in that building.
Slippers nods. “Alright,” she says, with a flick of her tail. “We’re going to find that big building, and we’re going to find Ada.”
Tom Quartz adds, “we promise that we’re going to figure this out.”
Katelynn E Koontz – Author
