Purscilla took her place at the head of the quorum. She noted the heads that bowed, those that looked away, and those that stared back in fiery defiance.

She narrowed her eyes at those, but stopped short of showing them her fangs for their insolence.

Placing her paw on the coyote skull atop a pile of other canine skulls, she brought this gathering of the pride to order.

“The moon is full, we are gathered, the pride is here. What business is there?”

“Still working on the two that are trapped in the house with the big window.” Said Shadow, the black manx. “They seem unwilling to join us.”

“Educate them as to the folly of that action.” Purscilla decreed.

“There is a new yapper on the corner.” Snowball, the white Persian with the different colored eyes shouted out.

The pride erupted in hisses.

Purscilla felt her claws involuntarily dig into the skull under paw. Banding together to kill that coyote had been her idea, her responsibility. Purging her neighborhood of dogs since was her pleasure.

And those little yappers, those dogs that never shut up, she hated them most of all.

“Well,” Growled Purscilla, “let’s introduce ourselves, shall we?”

Memphis Note
There are a bizarrely large number of cats in my neighborhood, and we we’ve also had a few coyote sightings. I’ve never seen the coyote, but I have seen a half dozen cats within a block of each other. Which makes me think that maybe they’ve done something to that poor lost coyote.

The health commissioner shifted nervously in the wicker chair. It was just before noon on a Saturday and he found himself seated at a table on Boss Crump’s porch. Crump hadn’t held office in the city for some years, but he still more or less ran the government. And when he summoned you, you came, no matter the time or day.

“I believe in a quiet city,” Came Crump’s gravely voice from behind him. “More than that, I believe in a city that sounds good. It keeps people happy, keeps them calm, keeps the crime down. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes, sir?” The commissioner hadn’t meant that to come out as a question, but he didn’t know where this was going.

“And what keeps a city sounding good? Songbirds. A darling little girl down the street, Lucy, raises them. Told me a stray cat got in, killed all of her birds. Says they’re doing that to all the song birds in the city. Chipping away at the population.”

The commissioner blinked at Crump, confused. “I’m sorry, but what does this have to do with me?”

“Good lad, you’re the health commissioner, I want you to catch the cats.

All of them.”

Memphis Note
This actually happened. Crump got fed up with the stray cats in Memphis eating all the songbirds, so he organized a massive effort to round up all the strays in the city. All because he wanted the air to be filled with the sound of chirping birds.