We have killed all your children and your siblings and your parents. You are the last scamperer, secretly gnawing on dry pasta packets and inexplicably draining every single Taco Bell sauce packet in the junk drawer. Even the hottest ones, you freak. You have outsmarted every single live trap, refusing to be repatriated. You have outlasted the master killer cat who took out your family and friends. He proudly tasted blood of your kind just days before his long illness finally took him. We never see you, only hear your constantly gnawing teeth. The new cats are spoiled babies. For now. They hunt toy mice, not real mice. They know you exist, smell you, but consider you a half-interesting distraction. A t.v. show in which they quickly lose interest because there are no pictures, only smells and sounds. They don’t know how to lie in wait like the patient old cat. REQUIES CAT IN PACE. So these are your salad days. You thrive and enjoy the warm kitchen. When L. put the snap trap in the drawer, at first I said “yes,” then “no” minutes later. I had made him run out to pick up the death traps. I couldn’t bear to think of it not striking your neck just right. I couldn’t bear to think of you squirming in agony. He was furious. He triggered the little executioner’s copper wire on the trap with a pen and threw it in the trash. I wasted money on death. (Wouldn’t be the first time.) I rebaited the pathetic live traps. Surely some bait will work. I hate your little turds. I hate finding them in the bottoms of book boxes. You shit on our literature. I pray that you die of old age, without producing a hundred more children. We know how your kind is. Stay invisible. Keep your poop in some tiny corner of dust if you can’t go outside like respectful animals do. Yet it’s cold as the grave out there, plunging towards zero. Food so hard to find. And you crazily think this is your home. Just please stay invisible or die, and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.