Nails bent over the kill tearing off a piece of flesh. Bloody rancid meat hung from her jaws as she looked around. Lips was over near the rump of the beasts gorging himself as she was, and the little ones, Snatch and Bite were wrestling on the ground full and happy as little ones who never knew hunger could be.
"Did you hear it?" Lips asked her then. His eyes rolling towards the crack in the walls?
"Mind your vittles," Nails murmered to him, chewing all the while. " I heard nothing other than the clack of big 'uns walking by."
"I heard it Papa" Bite said. He had stopped in the middle of play with his sister and was listening to the talk of the grown.
"Hush now, and mind your teeth." Nails looked sharply at him and then at Lips for starting this nonsense talk about sounds again.
"It sounds like angels singing," Bite persisted. " I can still hear it!"

Nails swatted him aside for the moment and reached with her mouth to rip off another piece of glorious food. It hadn't been too long that their lives were much rougher than this. Food was scarce then, and the world full of dangers and death from everywhere you looked. There was a time when even food couldn't be trusted. She had seen her kind stiffen and die just when they had thought they found enough nurishment to get them through another night. Her memory was broken then as she went for her next bite and Lips hissed at her, swatting her away from the piece he had already claimed. She thought briefly about fighting him for it, but with food in such abundence she gave him what he wanted and moved to another section of the beast. Biting and chewing then she spat out a piece of fur that was stuck in her mouth.

"I hear it again," Lips said suddenly. He dropped the meat that was haning out of his jaws and moved to the crack in the wall. As if he was in a trance he started to go outside to follow whatever it was he thought he heard.

Nails Grabbed for him then, raking her claws across his face and neck. "There is nothing you old fool," she snapped at him and raked him again to make sure he wasn't going anywhere.

"There is something," he said sullenly." I can hear the sweetest sounds, and I was just going for a peak to see what was making them." He looked at her wildly for a moment ready to bolt, then calming. Together they gathered up Snatch and Bite and the four of them made their way to the sleeping place.

After the little ones were asleep Lips tried to mount her. Nails hissed fiercely and turned her hear to bite him sharply. She was too full of that evenings kill and still angery at him over the crazy look he had given her. After trying a few more times and being attacked by Nails, Lips backed off, farted at her and lay down to sleep. Nails stayed awake until the small hours in the morning wodering about the good fortune that they had been enjoying recently. It seemed much too good to be true, and she was waiting for someone to spring the trap. Her whole life had been spent avoiding one trap or another. Someone trying to poison her, step on her, kill her or capture, but that was the life of all of them. At least until the last few weeks. She drifted then, with her belly still full.

"PAPA!" a squealing voice pricked her awake. It was Snatch, screatching at the top of her lungs. "Oh papa, it's so beautiful." Nails looked over at Lips and saw that not only was he wide awake, but he, like the others was poised for flight. Before she could say anything He murmered, "Cheese. It smells like cheese." and off he went scurrying out the hile and into the street. Bite and Snatch followed closely behind them and Bite again said something about angels. while snatch breathing quickly said something about no cats. Nails shook her head to clear it and followed them out. The streets were teeming. Everyone she knew was running towards the edge of town and there in the sunlight she saw. There was something leading them. As they rushed past here, she heard again about cheese, meat, cats, every possible dream they had ever had was coming true so they said, but she heard nothing.

Just then another wave came by and caught her up, stck now between a huge press of bodies she found her voice. "It's a trap!" she screamed it over and over as she tried to get free. "What ever you hear it isn't real!" No one listened to her though they just kept pushing and pulling her closer eand closer to the man up front. The leader, she saw was playing a fife of some kind, dancing and smiling down on all of them. She managed then to break free of the push and duck around a small bend in the road. As she did this she saw where he was leading them all. To the seaside cliff, hundreds of feet above smashing rocks. They were pouring after him, not knowing where he was leading them and not caring. She screamed again and tried to warn them, to find her little ones among the throng, but they were lost in the crushing bodies. Then as she fought her way out again she fell. She rolled aways down the hill they had been climbing and it took her a moment to catch herself and run back to where everyone had been.

Not one of them was in sight. No one, but the man standing with that strange grin on his face, clasping the flute in his hand. She scurried back down the hill before he could spot her and it was then she heard the clang crash bang of the church bells. She couldn't tell if it was time for mass, or was it chiming the hours. She never had been able to tell the difference. It was something she had been born with. That all sounds made one note to her. A dull tuneless echo was all she ever heard. She wondered if things had been different if she would have dissapeared with the rest. She crawled back into the hole that she had shared with Lips and the children and wrapped herself with her tail. Her whiskers quivered as she thought and wished. She wished she had let Lips mount her last night. She wished she hadn't been so sharp with Bite and Snatch, and she most of all wished she was not alone in the cold now. Soon she slept, as dusk settled over the town of Hamlin.