WHEN WAS I GOING TO START FEELING right? Would I ever feel right again? What a horrid thought! I’d felt right all my life, so right that I didn’t even know I was feeling right. I just assumed that was what being Queenie felt like. Was I still even Queenie if I went on feeling like this, so bad? And if I wasn’t Queenie, who was I?

I curled up. For a while I’d been on the move. This was in the trunk of a car. It hadn’t taken me long to figure that out. Then the trunk had popped open and I’d sprung—

But no. Before I could actually get started—me! Who had never even had to think of getting started!—a black cloud was thrown over me, and strong hands wrapped me up tight in the black cloud and carried me away. I struggled inside the cloud—not a cloud, I soon realized, but some sort of blanket, as I could tell from the woolly smell and the scratchy feel—and tried to claw and bite.

That brought an angry grunt from whoever had me, and then I felt another of those sharp pokes. I became part of the black cloud and stayed in the cloud for a long time. Finally the cloud turned wispy and vanished. My eyes opened, and I found myself where I am now.

How to describe this place? Is it a closet? Maybe. It has shelves, although with nothing on them, and the kind of louvered door you sometimes see on closets, where light comes slanting in through the slats. Mom’s a big believer in louvered doors, especially for the closets where the guest room bedding gets stored. I’m also a big believer in them. Back at the inn, if I happen to find one of those doors open, I almost always slip in for a little lie down. Once someone passing by closed the door, trapping me inside. Later that day a search started up. “Queenie! Queenie! Where are you?”

All I had to do was meow, but I took my sweet time. It was nice to have everyone searching for me. Goes without saying, really.

Was anyone searching for me now? I listened my very hardest. Silence, as far as my ears could hear. But were my ears at their best? Probably not. My head was all fuzzy inside. I climbed up to the top shelf in the closet and lay down. Perhaps I was too tired to reach the top shelf but I did manage to reach one of the shelves. My eyes closed.

A phone buzzed.

“Yeah?” said a man, so near that the fur on the back of my neck stood straight up.

I heard, very faintly, the voice of the person calling on the other end. A woman? I thought so, but wasn’t sure. I knew the man, this very bad man who sometimes spoke as an old man, sometimes as a younger one, and sometimes—and those were the scariest—like one of my kind. Right now, he was speaking in the young man voice. Not a real young man, more like a man Big Fred’s age, for example. Oh, how wonderful if Big Fred came strolling in!

But he did not. Instead my enemy—because surely that was what he was—said, “When’s his flight? What? Not till then? Why?”

He listened. “The price? He’s dickering about the price? It was set!”

On the other end, the woman’s voice rose, but I still couldn’t make out the words.

The man’s voice rose, too. “Hasn’t he seen the photo? The tip of the tail doesn’t show? That’s crazy! I made sure—”

The woman’s voice rose some more. She was very angry. I thought I recognized her voice but couldn’t quite place it. Maybe if she’d been less angry, I would have. Most humans, in my experience, don’t sound like themselves when they’re angry.

The man spoke more quietly, like he was giving in. “Just let me know.”

No more talk after that. I heard him moving around, heard a bottle cap getting snapped off a bottle, even heard the fizzing of whatever was in the bottle. Then things grew silent again.

A ray of sunlight shone through the slats, dust motes swirling in it, dust motes that turned gold in the sunlight. Had there been mention of a tail in the phone conversation? My tail?

I didn’t know. But I felt the need for a little comforting, and what was more comforting than the sight of my golden-tipped tail? Just imagine how you’d feel if you had one.

I shifted my position slightly, bringing my tail into view. And oh, the shock! The horrific, dreadful, sickening shock! My golden tuft, the gorgeous glittering tip of my proud and lovely tail, was gone! I don’t mean the tuft itself was gone. Maybe I’m not describing this too well. Please forgive me. It’s the best I can do at the moment. What I’m trying to get across is that while my tuft was still there, it was no longer golden, but white, just like the rest of me.

And not even just like the rest of me. There was something off about this whiteness, something strange. My poor little heart began pounding in my chest, like … like it wanted to get out. To get out and find the real Queenie. Oh, what was happening to me? I had to do something, but what?

With a quick flick of my tail I got the tuft in my mouth. What was my plan? To bite it off? I really hope not. And in the end I merely nibbled a bit.

How odd. My tail tuft didn’t taste like me at all. Not only that, but it didn’t taste like cat or any other living thing. It tasted like … paint. A flake lodged on my tongue. I stuck my tongue out, uncurled it, and the flake dropped onto the wooden shelf beside me.

A tiny white fleck of white paint. I peered at my tuft. Almost all of it was this new strange white, except for one tiny patch of gold. My first thought: That was all that was left of Queenie, one tiny patch of gold you could hardly see. A very sad thought, but somehow I felt a little better.