From Paragraph to Story

Yesterday I wrote a post about using Eve Bunting's words as a pattern for writing several paragraphs of my own. From those paragraphs, I let the words go where they wanted and grow into the beginning of a story. I'm thinking about a possible ending but I can always change my mind.

(I don't have a title yet)

      Once a small brown mouse got into the basement and couldn’t get out. It scurried into a corner, hopping and clawing at the wall. It found the shabby sofa, got a grip on the upholstery, and climbed to the arm, where it perched. Waiting. Nose twitching.

      “Don’t stop running,” I told it silently. “Don’t! You can outsmart Roxy the cat!”

      For days the mouse scuttled around, successfully hiding from Roxy. And then, thwack went the trap! I feared the worst. In an instant I saw a flash of brown run under the sofa. The mouse was okay.

      “Run mouse,” I whispered. “You are indeed brave.” Though I couldn’t see it, I know it was hiding, twitching, waiting to respond to the next hazard.

I don't yet have a name for my  
basement cat character.

       I had been living in the Tackett’s basement for about a year when the mouse appeared. But before that, before Roxy that is, I had the run of the house. One week after the Tackett’s brought Roxy home, I started marking my territory upstairs, occasionally spraying the living room drapes or flooding the corner by the litter box. I don’t know why I did it. It just seemed like the thing to do. Roxy had invaded my home, taken over my people, and my litter box. At first, I felt sorry for Roxy. She had spent her life caged up at the Humane Society shelter.  Although she had been fed well and her cage kept clean, she was only periodically petted. Roxy had spent her life sleeping, grooming, and watching other cats sleeping and grooming.  Her life at the shelter had been, well . . . sheltered.  She'd never experienced watching the birds from the dining room window or taking a nap in a sun patch on the red chair in the living room. Roxy had never slept snuggled in blankets on Michael’s bed in the winter. Poor thing. Pathetic kitty. Pitiable youth. My sympathy for Miss Roxy, queen of the house, changed to jealousy within days of her arrival.

       The tubby calico ate a lot and as a result pooped a lot. And she was a slob. Half the time, she backed up too far to do her business and missed the litter box entirely. Her deposits ended up on the floor or balanced on the edge of the box. The Tackett’s tried to remedy Roxy’s toileting challenges by providing a bigger wider litter pan. She still somehow managed to unload on the floor. As you can imagine, it didn’t smell too sweet. I had no choice but to relieve myself in the corner. There was no way I was going to try to tiptoe around her turds to use the facilities. The Tackett’s placed a second receptacle, right by the first one and Roxy the cat-pig somehow managed to spoil them both. This did not make Michael’s parents happy. But evidently, my urine was deemed more objectionable than Roxy’s turds and I ended up in the basement, with my own litter box.