Mice in Council

A moonlit pantry becomes the Athenian agora for a beleaguered congress of mice, their whiskers trembling beneath the shadow of a merciless house-cat whose velvet paws strike like the Fates’ shears. In hushed squeaks they convene: the elders, gray as dust motes; the fire-eyed juveniles still tasting sour milk on their tongues; a lone scarred veteran missing half his tail—each fur-twitch a ballot, every sniff a filibuster. Proposals ricochet: bell the predator, migrate to the root-cellar, summon the barn-owl as dubious ally. Oratory blooms, wild as rosemary in cracked terracotta; rhetoric sours into squealed recriminations. Meanwhile the cat—sleek Caligula—stalks beyond the wainscot, pupils dilated moons, indifferent to democracy. When dawn’s first blade of sun pierces the lattice, the council disperses, plans stillborn, leaving only a breadcrumb tracery of their futile polis—an epitaph written in nibble-prints across the flagstones.