TIME FOR MAGIC
Patch knew there was something wrong with her friend. Her whisker’s twitched, but her super-sensitive nose couldn’t find anything wrong with Greyling’s scent.
“What is it, Grey?” she asked as she put her tiny pink front paws on the glass wall of her aquarium home. “You look… I guess you look… Worried?” The truth was, Greyling looked frightened.
Grey matched Patch’s mouse hands with her own. “I am!” Grey said and her tail began to shake.
“What is it?” Patch started to run back and forth, squeaking such high-pitched squeaks that only another mouse could hear her. “What is it? What is it?” She didn’t know what else to say; she had never been really frightened.
“It’s a…” Greyling took a deep breath. “It’s a cat!”
Patch stopped running. She had heard of cats in a scary-story sort of way, but she had never been sure they really existed. “A cat? A real cat? Here?”
“Yes! The people here just adopted one. The little girl thinks it’s pretty. So do her parents, but they also like that the cat is a good mouser!”
Patch sat and rubbed her paws over her whiskers. The little girl, Sherri, was her human. Why would Sherri want another pet? Patch felt a little jealous. Sherri had been promising to adopt another mouse to keep Patch company. Had they adopted a cat instead?
“Maybe a mouser is a cat who likes mice?” she said.
“Ugh!” Grey said. “Don’t pet mice know anything? A mouser is a cat that’s good at hunting mice. Hunting ME!” She looked around like the cat might be listening. “Your humans hate me. They put out traps for me and things that look like food but are really dangerous to eat. I know how to look out for those things, but now they have a cat!”
“You never told me about traps or food that makes you sick.”
Grey pushed up close to the glass and wrapped her tail around her body. “I know you love Sherri. I didn’t want you to be upset.”
“Well,” Patch said, “I’m upset now, but the important thing is – what are we going to do?”
“I guess I have to move. I always felt safer here than outside. There are no snakes or owls in here, but now there’s a cat. A cat looking for me every day, maybe every minute.”
A noise at the door sent Grey scampering for cover. It was Sherri, and yes, she was carrying a real, live, orange and white cat. Patch stared at the huge creature and the cat stared back. It did not look like it wanted to be friends.
“Look Patch, this is Marmalade. Isn’t she pretty?
Patch ran to her plastic nest house at the far side of the aquarium and hid inside.
“It’s okay, Patch,” Sherri said. “Marmalade won’t bother you. She’s not going to come in my room ever, just to be sure.” She carried the cat to the bedroom door, set her down in the hall and closed the door. “There. See? Mom said we can get a special lock that will make sure the cover of your aquarium won’t come off even if Marmalade sneaks in. And know what’s even better?”
Patch peeked out of her nest house.
“There you are!” Sherri laughed. “They didn’t have any mice at the shelter so Mom said we could go to the pet store tomorrow and pick out a mouse friend for you when we buy the lock. Isn’t that great?”
Patch ran out, sat up and waved her paws in the air. Most days, she would have been so happy she would have run around and around in her exercise wheel, but today, she was too worried about the friend she already had.
Sherri’s mom called her for dinner.
“Love you, Patch,” Sherri said, and being very sure that Marmalade was not waiting in the hall, closed the door behind her.
Grey popped out of her hiding place. “Now you’ve seen the monster for yourself.”
“We have to do something,” Patch said. “You can’t live in the house anymore, and you can’t go out where there are owls and snakes.”
Grey looked sad. “That leaves no choices.”
“Hmm…” When Patch was thinking hard, her voice dropped down to a squeak even a human could hear. “I have an idea.”
Grey’s ears wiggled. “I need a really good idea and you’re a very smart mouse.”
“Well,” Patch said, ”this isn’t about being smart; this is something different.”
“What, what, what?”
“You’ll think I’m crazy.”
Grey drummed her front paws on the table. “Tell me. I’ll decide. I’ll try anything!
Patch sighed. “Would you want to live in here, with me?”
“That’s a wonderful idea! What’s crazy about that?”
Wait!” Patch held up both paws. “You’re a wild mouse. Wild mice aren’t happy boxed into a small space like this. And, it would mean, um, changing you.”
“I think I can get used to your space; I don’t run around as much as I used to.” She tipped her head. What do you mean ‘change” me?”
“You’re a wild mouse. You look like a wild mouse. Even if you could find a way to climb in here, Sherri’s mother would never let you stay. Remember the traps and the bad food and…“
“Marmalade!” Gray said and shivered. “They love you, they hate me. I don’t understand humans.”
“I don’t think they like wild things living in their houses.”
“Never mind then. I have to risk moving outside. I can’t change the way I look.”
Patch’s voice was so quiet Grey could hardly hear it. “I can.”
“How?”
Mmm… Magic.”
“Magic?”
“I told you you’d think I was crazy.”
“I believe in magic! My grandmother told me about it, but she said wild mice didn’t have time to practice.”
“Pet mice have lots of time.”
Grey spun in a circle and sat down again. ”Will it hurt?”
“I don’t think so; it’s just your fur. Humans won’t notice other little differences.”
“Do it!”
“I’ve never done this before.”
“No other choices, remember?”
Patch nodded, curled up in a tight ball and closed her eyes.
Grey felt like her skin was wiggling all by itself. Patch was right. It didn’t hurt, but it felt really strange.
Patch uncurled and opened her eyes. “Wow!” she said. “Go look at yourself in Sherri’s mirror.”
“Squeak!” Grey was so surprised she almost fell off the tissue box she used to reach the mirror. “I look like you!”
“That was the easy part,” Patch said. “Now hide until tomorrow. I need to get a lot of rest.”
The next afternoon, Sherri came into the room carrying a colorful box. “Patch! She said, “your new friend is here.”
Patch ran out of her little house to say hello to Sherri, then ran back in. She needed to curl up in a ball again and really concentrate.
First, in a high mouse-ears-only voice, she talked to the mouse in the box. Then she told Grey to be ready for a big jolt of magic.
Everything was ready. The timing had to be perfect.
Patch used every bit of magic she had.
Sherri couldn’t see or hear anything happening, but Patch could hear excited mouse chatter from inside the box.
Sherri took the cover off of Patch’s aquarium, carefully lowered the box inside and opened the top.
Four bright black eyes looked up at her.
“Mom!”
Her mom was there in just a minute. “I’m sure we bought just one mouse,“ she said. “I wonder how this happened. I’m going to call the store.”
A few minutes later, Mom said “Thank you” and hung up. “The manager of the store can’t understand it either, but she said we can keep the extra mouse if we want to.”
“Oh yes! What do you think, Patch?”
Patch was very tired, but she waved her paws to show how happy she was.
Sherri gently slid the new mice out onto the soft bedding.
“That was fun!” Grey said. “I was behind a curtain and then – just like that! – I was in the box. Patch, this is Coco. Coco, this is my magical friend Patch.”
Coco jumped up and down. “You do magic too?
“Hey!” Grey squeaked, “can you both teach me?”
“Why not?” Patch said. “You’re a pet mouse now. Lots of time for magic!”
They were all so excited they ran and fell over each other and squeaked mouse giggles.
Mom laughed and gave Sherri a hug. ”Looks like you’ve got a happy little family there,” she said. “Now, if Marmalade can scare away the wild mouse that’s been chewing on things in the kitchen, everything will be perfect in mouse land.”
Grey’s ears twitched and she laughed in a voice that humans couldn’t hear.
Everything was perfect right now.
