— 9 —

“WOW, I HAD THE WEIRDEST dream last night,” Madison said to Mrs. Food at breakfast the next morning. Five sets of eyes slowly turned to look at her. “I was in the living room, right? And there was a ghost cat and a tiny little sailor, who I think was a mouse or something? Maybe a squirrel? And all the pets were there, and they were just staring at me. Kind of like…” Madison trailed off as she looked into the living room. “… that.”

Butterbean was listening so intently that she had forgotten to chew and had kibble dribbling out of her mouth. Walt had paused midlick with one paw extended. Marco and Polo had their faces pressed up to the side of their cage (with unintentionally hilarious results). Oscar was frozen with one foot hovering over his food dish.

When they noticed Madison noticing them, they immediately unfroze and pretended to be engrossed in their activities. (Marco and Polo didn’t really have any activity to pretend to do, so they just inspected the side of their cage thoughtfully.)

“Huh.” Madison frowned. Then she turned back to Mrs. Food. “But then I was in the kitchen and—”

There was a knock at the front door.

“Did they say anything? The animals?” Mrs. Food took a piece of toast as Madison jumped up from the table.

“I don’t think so. But it was so real! And oh! There was an octopus!” Madison opened the front door. Bob the maintenance man was standing in the doorway holding a clipboard.

“Oh, hi,” Madison said. “Mrs. Fudeker? It’s Bob.” Madison smiled quickly at Bob and then stepped back so he could come inside.

Butterbean stopped eating again, dribbling more kibble. Too many interesting things were happening. There was no way she could concentrate on food.

Bob pretty much ran things at the Strathmore Building. He had a history with Butterbean and Walt. He’d always been more than a little suspicious of their activities, but he’d never found any concrete evidence to hold against them. (Butterbean had concrete reasons for being suspicious of Bob, but she kept them to herself.)

“Sorry to bother you all so early,” Bob said, clearing his throat. “So. It looks like we’ve had an incident down in the storage room. A lady on the sixth floor has made a complaint.”

“Probably Mrs. Hates Dogs on Six,” Butterbean whispered darkly. “She complains about EVERYTHING.”

Bob consulted his clipboard. “She says the valuables in her storage unit have been ransacked, and some things are missing. We’re planning to set up additional cameras, but in the meantime, you might want to check and see if you’re missing any items.”

“Wow, that’s terrible!” Madison said.

“Yes, terrible.” Mrs. Food looked concerned. “We’ll go down today and take a look. Make sure everything’s there.”

“Good, good.” Bob made a check mark on his clipboard. “Hopefully it’s just some kind of mistake.”

“A mistaken ransacking?” Madison wrinkled her nose. “Does that ever happen?”

Bob shrugged. “No, but who knows. Just between us, this lady? She complains a lot.”

“I knew it!” Butterbean barked. “Mrs. Hates Dogs on Six! It has to be!”

“Butterbean! Shh!” Mrs. Food frowned at Butterbean. “Thanks for telling us. We’ll let you know if we spot any problems.”

“Gotcha. Thanks. I’ll let myself out.” Bob turned and left, shooting Butterbean a sharp look as he closed the door. Butterbean ignored it.

“Madison, would you mind going down after school and taking a look? Just see if anything looks out of place,” Mrs. Food said, sitting back down and examining her cold toast before finally rejecting it.

“Sure,” Madison said, grabbing her book bag. “But like Bob said, hopefully it’s nothing. See you later!” She swung the backpack over her shoulders and hurried out.

“Well, it’s not nothing,” Oscar said, watching as Mrs. Food put the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher and headed down the hallway to her office. “It’s those raccoons.”

“You can say that again, buster,” Dunkin the loading dock rat said as he sauntered into the living room.

“DUNKIN?” Kibble bounced onto the floor at Butterbean’s feet. It was not turning out to be a successful breakfast time.

“What are you doing here? You can’t be here!” Polo climbed up onto the water bottle to survey the room. “This is Mrs. Food’s apartment!”

Dunkin put his hands on his hips as he looked around the room. “We’re your clients, right? Well, we need a place to stay, and I have to say, this looks pretty good.” Dunkin clapped his hands loudly. “It’s okay, make yourselves at home, guys.”

A small group of rats peeked out from behind the couch. They watched for a few seconds, assessing the situation, and then scattered, scurrying to various locations around the room.

“WHAT? What’s HAPPENING?” Polo squealed as a rat shimmied up the side of her cage and hopped into a pile of cedar chips next to her.

“Mind if I help myself?” A small brown rat sidled up to Butterbean and scooped up three stray kibbles. “Can’t resist these. They’re crazy good.”

Butterbean looked at the rat in amazement. “But who are you? Are you a rat from last night? Pizza? Snapple? Mike or Ike?”

The rat snorted. “Pizza? What kind of name is that? No, I’m Lego. But you can call me roomie.” He nudged Butterbean in the leg with his elbow.

“ROOMIE?” Butterbean gasped and whipped her head around to look at Oscar. But Oscar looked as horrified as Butterbean felt.

Walt stood up. “Sorry to disappoint you, rats, but no. This is not happening. We’re not going to be roomies. You’re going to have to stay somewhere else.”

“Au contraire, mon frère, we’re staying right here.” Dunkin folded his arms. “We had a deal.”

Walt snorted. “Hardly. I don’t think—”

“OSCARRRRRR! WALLLLLLLTTT!” A voice came echoing from the vents. A few seconds later an enraged Wallace popped out from behind the sofa. He was dragging another rat behind him. A rat wearing a sailor shirt.

“LOOK!” Wallace made elaborate arm motions to show off the rat offender. “You’ll never BELIEVE what I just found IN MY NEW APARTMENT!”

“Is it a rat?” Butterbean said. “I bet it’s a rat.”

“IT’S A RAT!” Wallace shrieked.

“See, I told you,” Butterbean said proudly.

Wallace pushed the rat in the sailor shirt forward, like he was Exhibit A. “See? I found THIS GUY! Wearing MY CLOTHES! IN MY APARTMENT!”

Dunkin waved at the sailor-suit rat. “Hey, Ken.”

Ken gave a short wave. “Hey.”

“Wait, your clothes?” Marco said, frowning. “I’m pretty sure you were just borrowing those, right?”

“THAT’S NOT THE POINT,” Wallace fumed. “I woke up to find THIS GUY…”

“Ken,” Dunkin said.

“KEN!” Wallace corrected himself. “Trying on Mrs. Power Walker’s tiny outfits. She almost WALKED IN ON HIM.”

“Embarrassing,” Dunkin smirked.

“You know it,” Ken said.

“That’s not the point.” Wallace practically had smoke coming out of his ears. “Dunkin, are you TRYING to get us all kicked out? Because that’s what’s going to happen if they see you! And at this rate THEY’RE GOING TO SEE YOU!”

Dunkin shrugged. “Then I guess you’ll have to work fast. Get us the loading dock back. Like you promised.”

“We were supposed to start our annual bottle-cap shuffleboard tournament this week, but because of you guys, it’s canceled,” Lego said, nibbling on one of Butterbean’s kibbles. “CANCELED. I was a top seed this year.”

“Because of the raccoons, you mean,” Marco said. “It’s the raccoons’ fault, not ours.”

Dunkin shrugged. “Same difference.” He strolled toward the kitchen. “Got any snacks?” He had made it as far as the dining room table when Mrs. Food’s office door opened down the hall.

Oscar looked up at the clock. Mrs. Food was right on schedule. “SECOND CUP OF COFFEE!” Oscar crowed, jumping from one end of the perch to the other.

Wallace grabbed Ken by the shirtsleeve and shoved him behind the couch. Butterbean considered her options and then flopped down onto the rat named Lego. She was glad she had long hair. It made it harder to see his little arms sticking out from under her tummy.

Walt stalked slowly over to where Dunkin was standing, keeping her eyes on the approaching Mrs. Food.

“Don’t move a muscle. You move, and it’s all over,” Walt hissed at him.

“Oh yeah? What’ll you do?” Dunkin scoffed. “Turn me in?”

“No,” Walt said, sitting down so that she loomed over him. “I’ll catch you and give you to Mrs. Food as a gift. How does that sound?”

Dunkin went pale.

“That’s what I thought,” Walt said. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure she was blocking Dunkin from view, and then turned back and smiled down at him, displaying all of her teeth.

Dunkin didn’t move.

Mrs. Food padded past them in her sock feet, humming as she went. The animals watched without moving as she poured herself another cup of coffee, and then padded back down the hallway to her office.

No one said a word until her office door had shut behind her again.

Then they sagged in relief.

“What are we going to do, Oscar?” Butterbean asked, standing up and helping a semi-squashed and disgruntled Lego to his feet.

“Emergency meeting.” Oscar jumped to the end of his perch. “Rats, OUT. NOW. Stay in the vents if you have to, but no apartments. Apartments are OFF LIMITS. We’ll be in touch soon.” He pointed at the vent opening and kept pointing until the grumbling loading dock rats had all left the room.

Then he opened his cage door and landed in the middle of the floor. “Okay, first things first. Wallace, we need to get that sailor shirt back before Mrs. Power Walker notices it’s missing. Marco and Polo, we’ll need to get Biscuit an update. As for the rest of us… whatever we have to do to keep those rats from being discovered, we do it. But first, we can forget about retirement. Officially.”

“WHOOHOOO!” Marco jumped up doing a fist pump.

“So we’re officially spies now? Officially official?” Polo clasped her hands together.

“Officially official,” Oscar said grimly. “There’s no going back now. Get ready for Operation Raccoon.”