The title of “worst Monday ever” meant something. It held significance when considering its competition was every other Monday in one's life. The “Worst Tuesday ever” on the other hand held less significance. It wasn’t the depressing day following the weekend, it wasn’t the middle-of-the-week hopelessness, and it wasn’t part of the latter-of-the-week hopefuls. It was Tuesday.

If described within one word, the small house best fit “Tuesday”. The drawn curtains over the house's only window allowed in a Tuesday light. It illuminated the quaint if not drab room up to a certain point. The light did not hit the furthest wall where a certain assassin had hid at some point in time. It did cover all the furniture: a bed with the appearance of a nest and a single wooden chair. It also revealed all the dust and cat hair laying around.

What the smear covered window didn’t reveal, however, was any living inhabitants. The small cutout in the hill, identified only by a sign with the word “Form” on it and a door no taller than one foot, housed nothing and nobody. This was true before and after the house’s icebox rattled open. It stopped before picking up again harder. This time the lid swung open, allowing the frosty air out. A giant ball of fur rolled out and onto the dirt floor. It coughed up a ball of hair and promptly shook itself off.

Waking up in an icebox was certainly better than waking up buried alive or trapped at the bottom of the ocean. That said, it didn’t feel nice at all.

After sufficiently adapting to no longer being frozen, Mr. Fluffington stood up and furiously glared around.

He glared at the walls, he glared at the ceiling, and he glared out the window. Then, he turned around and glared into the icebox where he had been rudely stuffed. All the food was gone and it was replaced by a single bloody arrow. He stretched a paw over to feel his back and found a wound. It was already mended and quickly healing.

He pulled out the arrow to inspect it. It was an inch long but weighed heavier than a rock five times its size. There were no markings along its shaft and nothing special about the point. He let it drop to the floor, kicked the icebox closed, and then adjusted his bow tie. It was his only item of clothing, but that was still more than most animals wore. His attire needed to be proper so that he could begin investigating his own house. Fortunately, it only consisted of one large room. “Large” was overselling it.

He went from one end to the other, sniffed everything, doubled back, and then peered outside the window. It was daytime. His lawn was all dirt similar to the interior of his home, but thirty feet out there was a field of tall grass currently bending to the wind. There were trees beyond those where anything could have been hiding. Before he could let his mind run wild, he turned to look at the clock on the wall by the door and then remembered it was broken. It had been repeatedly going tick, tick, tick which caused the noise to fade into the background.

He peered outside one last time, mainly attempting to find hidden stalkers. There weren’t any in sight, meaning they were probably doing a good job. Deciding there wasn’t anything else outside of note, he went back to the center of the room to recollect the facts.

The murder weapon had been an arrow: the killer wasn’t physically strong enough to use their natural strength.

The arrow had been an inch long: the killer was small but large enough to carry the weight of the weapon and the weight of him into the icebox; to his casual dismay he had to rule out all birds.

The intruder had no easily traceable scent: there were very few animals that didn’t immediately give themselves away with hair or odor. The room smelled like dog, it smelled like rat, but it also smelled like cat.

Hmm.

He let the clock’s tick, ticks fill the space before deciding to inspect the corner from where the intruder presumably shot him. It had to come from there because he remembered sleeping with his back against that direction.

The corner itself wasn’t anything special. The light never hit it, largely because he never opened the curtains at all. They were only open then because someone had opened them… either because they couldn’t see well in the dark or because they were currently watching him from outside…

Without thinking about doing it, he slunk towards the wall and then lay as flat as possible.

Tick, tick.

There were no other sounds aside from his own breathing. Outside, there were distant animal shouts, squawks, or barks, but they were too far away to matter.

A knock came from the door.

His eyes widened and his fur stood on end. His heart thrummed louder than the ticking sounds. His mind formed images of the unknown assailant standing outside, waiting to finish the job. He knew he didn’t have lives to spare. He knew he wasn’t going to gain the upper hand in his current state.

A few seconds passed. Mr. Fluffington foolishly hoped that the killer would get impatient and leave for no reason.

They knocked again, this time louder.

Fed up with the suspense, his failure to enact revenge, and the unfairness of it all, he charged the door. He wasn’t thinking while he did it or as he forced it open, but he did it anyway. The supposed killer ended up being a small white mouse.

“Hi, Fluffy, I came to see if ya' wanted the paper now.”

Cattrap looked up into his eyes and smiled. He let go of his breath and unleashed a heavy sigh. If she had been any closer, it might’ve blown her back.

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“Oh, Cattrap, it’s you," he said.

He glanced around in case there was another guest of actual, real nefarious purpose. Maybe the two were in cahoots and maybe she was the Trojan Mouse, luring him to his final death. But no, he saw the bundled papers she waved in her paws and which of course were way too big for an animal like her to carry but way too small for an animal larger than a dog to read. She really only wanted to sell her papers.

“Ya' said to come back later, so I did,” she said, oblivious to the fact that he looked like an unwashed goblin.

He shut the door in her face.

He heard a muffled “Hey!” from behind the door and, because he felt bad, he opened it up one more time.

“Look, you’re going to need to leave,” he said.

“C’mon, Fluffy. How about just one paper? Looks like ya're having a rough time, but the news might brighten ya' up.”

“I died, Cattrap,” he blurted out. “Someone broke into my home and killed me, and I just came back from the dead, and I have no idea who did it, and I don’t have any more lives to spare, and the first thing I see when I’m investigating the murder site is you trying to sell me papers after I had explicitly told you I did not want any more papers. So, please, please help me out by going as far as you can away.”

To his surprise, his story wiped away her little mousey smile. Her paw gripping the bundle of papers loosened a bit and then he saw her visibly try looking past him and into his house.

“Died?” she said after a while. “So it’s true?”

He sighed again. “Yes. It is.”

Cats traditionally did not go around telling everyone that they had nine lives. It spoiled the surprise and often sent the wrong signal: ‘hey, I’m a cat, and it is totally fine that you are swinging that sharp knife awfully close to my face’. Mr. Fluffington, however, did not care. He was at the end of his extra lives. The small mouse in front of him probably didn’t understand anything besides selling papers, and so he figured it was extra alright to tell her. What he did not expect was her reaction.

“Can I help?”

She continued stretching and moving to get a better angle of the crime scene through the doorway.

“Help how?”

“I can investigate the crime for ya'.”

He thought about shutting the door in her face again but stopped himself. At that point, it couldn’t hurt trying.

“Fine.”

He let her in. Cattrap put her papers down by the door and then tippy-toed in order to look up at the cat-sized furniture scattered around. She quickly took to sniffing the ground and running up and down his house as if he hadn’t already done that.

“Male,” she said without stopping.

Mr. Fluffington stood and watched her zip around.

“Between two inches and five. Rodent… no, canine, no… feline? Last here, Monday.”

She then took a gander at the arrow resting on the ground beside the icebox.

“It was a crossbow, probably a pawbow. One shot in stock. It went out four feet from that corner. They was shorter, except not when ya' lied down. The bolt penetrated on contact. Death was probably instant. Around three o’ clock yesterday, yeah?”

“Um, yes.”

He watched her walk towards the icebox and sniff the door, but before he could offer to open it, she scrambled towards the wall with the broken clock. It was a square wooden box filled with clockwork gears. It had two sticks on the outside to represent minute and hour hands.

“The clock doesn’t work?” she said.

“No.”

“Then why does it still tick?”

When he didn’t respond, she turned around and looked at him again. Her shortsightedness caused her to look slightly left, but it had the same effect nonetheless.

Tick, tick, tick.

Mr. Fluffington let his ears absorb the sound. He had been so caught up in his little forensics that he’d missed the fact that the ticking didn’t come from the clock. It sounded very similar to when it was still working, except that it hadn’t worked in weeks. The sound actually came from the cabinet beside the icebox. He usually kept miscellaneous items in there: loose change, snacks not fit for the icebox, and interesting trinkets. It did not contain any of those things when he proceeded to reveal its contents by opening the cabinet for his audience of an equally bewildered, and somehow recently competent, mouse.

There was a box and a slip of paper neatly propped up against it. He sat down in order to free his shaking paws for picking up the paper.

It read: “Equl Rits, Equl Livs”.

“Equal rights, equal lives,” he read aloud.

There was nothing else on the sheet of paper so his eyes naturally moved to the box.

“Cattrap, I think you should leave.”

“If you think so.” She picked up her papers on the way out.

Mr. Fluffington started pulling the box when he realized how heavy it was.

Tick, tick, tick.

The ticking was getting on his nerves but so was the mystery surrounding the box. There were no buttons, no wires, and no circuits visible on the front side. The contraption certainly wasn’t his, meaning that there was only one possibility. He picked up the slip of paper and then quickly left his own house. Cattrap waited for him outside with a worried expression.

“I’m going to get someone to check it out,” he told her.

“I’ll put this in the paper,” said Cattrap, testing the waters by dipping into her regular personality. “I will include the equal rights part too, and, and―ooh!―I’ll write a wanted poster for a mysterious rat―dog―cat―mouse.”

“I think those last two are us.”

“Maybe, maybe, but just in case, ya' know?”

The window glass shattered, the door flap flew off its hinges, and a giant shock wave expanded from inside the house. Dirt sprayed everywhere and smoke consumed everything. The noise temporarily deafened everyone in a fifty foot radius. It must’ve been fifteen seconds before the disorientation wore off and another thirty before Mr. Fluffington found Cattrap. Her fur was gray, as was his. The Equl Rits, Equl Livs slip, her papers, and all of his belongings were subsequently destroyed.

The two animals stared. His slitted pupils looked into her beady pink eyes. She shook wholly, and he didn’t know it, but so did he. The smoke around them was settling, slowly revealing what was now nothing more than a deflated mound.

“Cattrap.” He exhaled. “Get that paper out there now.”

“Yes, sir.”

Neither of them moved for a little while longer. The green sky above showed full daylight, nothing more and nothing less. Somewhere out there in the Forest, someone wanted Mr. Fluffington dead. Their identity, intentions, and next move were all entirely unknown. The poor gray cat had died and lost his home; and it was only Tuesday.

The only possible thing worse than a “worst Monday ever” was an even worse Tuesday.