Vince’s knack for ferreting out lost Teslanoid objects had nothing to do with the fact that his unwanted childhood nickname was “The Ferret.” The name originated solely from the unfortunate combination of how skinny he was, and the fact that his front baby teeth had made him look somewhat rodent-like for a time. It was the beginning of his life as an outsider.

Even as an outsider, though, he had his own antisocial circle. It was from these shadowy friends that he got leads on the lost objects—because fringe folk loved nothing more than yakking about weird stuff, and weirder people.

He was hanging out at the skate park, watching wistfully as kids did tricks he could no longer attempt without the risk of losing battery power, when a fresh lead came his way.

“Dude,” said a skateboarder buddy with more scabs than flesh on his legs, “there’s this lady on my street with, like, cats coming out of her ears.”

“Literally, or figuratively?” Vince asked—because, considering the devices he was tracking, cats coming out of someone’s ears was not entirely out of the question.

His bud just looked at him, blinking, not quite getting the question. “Dude!” he said. “She’s got, like, a million of them in her house!”

Vince sighed. “Literally, or figuratively?” he asked again. “Do you actually mean a million, or just lots and lots?”

“Lots and lots,” the kid said. “But here’s the weird thing: they disappeared all of a sudden and now we’ve got, like, all these mice in the neighborhood.” Then he leaned in and whispered, “She’s still bringing cats to the house, though. The kitties go in, but they don’t come out.”

In spite of Vince’s burglarizing misadventure, this definitely warranted investigation—even though curiosity might kill him instead of the cats.

The house in question was on a street that had seen better days. Even the trees were leaning away from the homes as if they wished to have nothing to do with them. As he approached the residence, he heard the cats. Faint. Distant. But it was more than that. The sound of their meows seemed fundamentally changed, although he couldn’t quite say how.

Vince had discovered that when it came to Tesla’s objects and their owners, front-door entries were to be avoided. Instead he went around the side and found a convenient doggy door, which was obviously not for dogs. It had been duct-taped from the outside, as if someone wanted to make sure that the critters within could no longer get out. He peeled away the duct tape, and being ferret-slim, was able to shimmy partway through.

The first thing he noticed was the mice.

They were all around him! He couldn’t go backward through the tiny door, so he had no choice but to squeeze all the way inside. The mice scattered, hissing. He stood up and found himself face-to-face with a woman in the kitchen.

Big, fluffy pink slippers. Straggly hair, and a faraway look in her eyes. She was the very definition of “Crazy Cat Lady.” She wielded a Swiffer floor mop as a weapon.

“Who are you? Get out of my house! Get out!”

She swung it at him, cutting a wide arc, which he was easily able to avoid.

The woman had mice clinging to her woolen sweater. But the noise these mice were making was wrong. They were mewling, like…like…

All at once Vince knew he was in the right place.

“Wow,” he said, “I love your miniature cats!”

She hesitated before swinging the mop again, suspicious. “You do?”

“Of course I do! Who wouldn’t? My friends told me you had miniature cats, and I just wanted to see for myself. May I?”

The woman still looked at him suspiciously, then pulled one from her blouse. It was a palm-size tabby, and very cute, if you liked that sort of thing. She held it out to him and Vince reached for it, but the tiny cat hissed at him.

“Maybe I’ll just look.”

“The health inspector said I can’t have so many cats. But if they’re small…”

As Vince took in the surroundings of the untidy kitchen, he could see that his friend’s exaggeration wasn’t all that far off. There were hundreds upon hundreds of miniature cats.

“How do you do it?” Vince asked, and the woman, thrilled to have someone more interested than appalled, was happy to talk.

“Shelters,” she said. “I get ’em from shelters. You’d be surprised how many cats nobody wants. I save ’em from gettin’ put to sleep and I bring ’em here. Of course, until a few weeks ago I couldn’t bring ’em all—but now there ain’t no limit!”

“But…how do you do it?” Vince asked again.

The woman gave him a smile that was missing some key teeth. “I’ll show you, but you can’t tell no one!”

Clearly she’d been itching to tell someone about it.

Vince followed the woman into her laundry room, where there was plenty of dirty laundry, but none of it looked like it had any intention of getting into a washing machine. A full-size cat was sitting on the pile. The cat lady grabbed it and, holding it tight, put it in the sink and turned on the faucet.

“No, don’t!” Vince said reflexively.

“Don’t worry,” the woman said. “I ain’t gonna hurt it. I just gotta get it wet. It won’t work unless it’s wet.”

As cats don’t like water, it did its best to squirm away, but she held it tight until its fur was soggy. Then she opened the door of an exceptionally old dryer with her free hand. “In ya go!” she said cheerfully.

“No!” said Vince again.

“You’re a nervous type, ain’t ya?” she said.

She shut the dryer and turned it on. It rumbled and grumbled, but as Vince looked in the glass door, he could see that the drum wasn’t turning. Something else was going on inside, though, because the cat was glowing.

“This is one a’ them ‘do not try this at home’ kind of things,” the crazy lady said. She shut the machine off after ten seconds, and when she opened the door, the cat was entirely dry. And the size of a hamster.

“I got the thing at a garage sale,” she told him, which he already knew. “First time I used it to dry my clothes, everything shrunk to doll size. In one of the pockets I found a dollar bill the size of a cookie fortune. When I realized it wasn’t just the clothes that had shrunk, I got to thinking…”

The tiny cat jumped up onto her sweater and climbed to her shoulder to nestle with a host of others. “It’s a dream come true,” she said. “Finally, after all these years, I have enough cats.”

And that line, Vince realized, was his in. He had discovered that for each of the items he had recovered, the object in question had fulfilled a need, or had slapped the person around enough to impart a valuable lesson. She might always be a crazy cat lady, but at least now she no longer had the insatiable desire to acquire more cats.

“I could use this,” Vince said, “to save the puppies…”

The woman was so moved, she gave it to him for free.