Murder seethed as he floated, staring at the other tank. This isn’t fair. I'll find a way. I'll kill them all for taking what’s mine, thought Murder.

  Then Murder devised a plan. He would practice his leaping until he could make it the distance between the pools, then he would eat every one of them, and every one of their young, until their tank was a wasteland. That meant he had to cover a distance of about three feet, and if he didn’t make it, he was dead. At his current strength he could almost get half of his body out of the water. He had a lot of work to do.

  For the rest of the day, and the day after that, the little fish ate greedily at every foot, and each time he did he felt just a little bit stronger. The memories came flooding in after each meal. Murder saw things he didn’t understand, learned skills he couldn’t use and slowly worked his way up the pecking order and down the foot, closer to the good stuff.

  By his third day, Murder was growing nicely. He was already bigger than Spots and could now jump about an inch out of the water. It angered him that he wasn’t growing faster. There would be twice as much to eat if the other tank weren’t there. That thought kept him focused on his goal.

  As he was practising his leaps after a particularly delicious case of xerosis, Murder spotted something most unusual: a furry ginger creature sat on one of the seats that lined the other tank. He leaped again and saw that the creature was swiping at the no-good blasphemers with massive claws. This is fantastic – their ruination is upon them, thought Murder. The universe must have bent at the power of his will. Murder watched in lurid ecstasy as the ginger cat caught one of the more curious fish and began to eat it, head first, right there on the seat.

  “Mr Whiskers no!” cried Sally, but it was too late. Mr Whiskers found that when John West wasn’t around, a quick raid on the fish tank would suffice. “Owww, Mr Whiskers, how many times have I told you not to do that,” said Sally as she approached the cat.

  Murder was captivated by the scene. He wanted to meet this Mr Whiskers, who was truly a being of great and malevolent power, but before he could introduce himself to the magnificent beast, Sally scooped up the cat and brought it back to the reception area, where she tried to discipline it, even as it ate the last of its catch.

  “Mr Whiskers! You know how much trouble I’ll get in to if the other girls see you doing that?” said Sally in a voice that might sound stern to a four-year-old. “If Deborah sees you doing that and tells her mum, it’ll mean no more expensive treats for you, and maybe no food for me at all.”

  The door jingled, and Sally turned to see Karen Smithe walk in like she owned the place. She did, in fact, own the place, but that was no excuse to go walking around like that. The woman, with a bad case of resting Karen face, looked straight at the ginger cat sitting on the floor and licking fresh fish blood off its paws.

  “What’s that cat doing?” snapped Karen.

  Sally stood up straight and was obviously on her very best behaviour. “Just preening,” replied Sally. “Cats are very clean creatures, and the customers love Mr Whiskers. We’ve got a few regulars who only come in on days they know he’ll be here.”

  The cat coughed and threw up an unchewed tail. Thinking quickly, Sally quickly stood on the fish tail, hiding their little secret.

  “Just keep it off the surfaces and don’t let it anywhere near the fish,” said Karen. “Why hasn’t Deborah been given more shifts? I need her out of my hair for a few hours next Thursday when her father is out of town.”

  There was an awkward silence that gave Sally time to process what Karen had just said to her. Sally felt one of her eyebrows slowly raising itself in an act of near suicidal curiosity, but the older woman’s gaze only intensified.

  Mr Whiskers chose that moment to stand up and begin walking towards the nearest fish tank. With one foot still concealing the fish tail, Sally expertly used her other leg as a moving barricade to stop Mr Whiskers from trying to walk away.

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  Sally was the first to break the silence. “No problem Mrs Smithe. I could use the help on Thursday nights – like I'’ve been saying, we get quite busy.”

  “Good,” said Karen as she casually pushed past Sally and opened the till, taking all of the notes. “Keep her here until closing, even if you’re not busy. Ta ta, got to run.” And then she left the shop as quickly as she had come.

  Sally sighed. In the thirty seconds Karen had been in the store, she had almost caught Mr Whiskers snacking, completely ruined her Thursday night and now made it impossible to do the books properly tonight. Sally’s barricade relented and Mr Whiskers immediately jumped onto one of the seats that flanked one side of Murder’s tank.

  Mr Whiskers watched the slightly odd fish with curiosity. While most of the fish had swam towards the cat and circled in his shadow with reckless disregard for their own safety, one little fish was treading water, head held out of the tank with its gaze fixed on Sally.

  “Would you like me to kill her, high priestess Sally?” asked Murder at the top of his gills, but Sally didn't respond.

  “And how would a little fish kill a full-grown person?” asked the cat. “You haven’t even got teeth. What could you possibly do? You may as well attack a windmill with a sword.” The cat lowered its head and raised its tail, either leaning in to hear what the fish had to say or getting ready to catch a snack.

  “You may rise, Mr Whiskers,” said Murder without a hint of sarcasm. “You have proven yourself as an honorable ally and a defiler of the cursed tank, but you mistake me for a mad man with a sword.”

  “No, I see you as an inconsequential little fish. A snack maybe. You have not risen past the rank of an hors d’oeuvre in my book. Being as ineffectual as a mad man with a sword would be a vast improvement on the current state of affairs, and since we are talking about Mrs Smithe, it’s only fitting that we are discussing affairs.”

  “Me-oww,” interjected Spots, who had swum over to see what Murder was up to.

  “Indeed,” replied Mr Whiskers with naked contempt. “I’m no mad man with a sword. I am the engineer with a hammer and chisel. My tools may be small, but the right tool, expertly applied, can turn even the largest of structures into dust.”

  “A moot point,” said the cat. “The fact remains that you have no hammer, you have no chisel, and you have no hands even if you did. When I see windmills fall, you’ll have my respect. Until then, you’re just lunch with flavor text.”

  “Tell you what,” said Murder. “I’ll bring you a tasty lunch, and then you can watch me kill the biggest fish in the pool while you eat. Would that impress you?”

  The cat didn’t say anything. He just sat there with his head close to the water’s surface and his tail in the air. Undaunted, Murder swam away in search of Thrasher, the large fish who had dared to claim perpetual ownership of every left heel in the world.

  He found the fish leisurely resting underneath the tank’s plastic bridge in the city, his gnawed tail sticking out one side.

  Murder approached the much larger fish. “Remember me?”

  “No. Why should I? You’re just small fry. I don’t pay attention to small fry unless I’ve not had a good heel for a day or two. Then I pays them the kind of attention they don’t much like, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do,” said Murder, then he darted around the fish and bit his tail again.

  Thrasher bubbled with rage and chased after the little fish who was swimming away as quickly as he could in the direction of the cat.

  Swimming faster than he ever had before, Murder jumped out of the water, right in front of Mr Whiskers’ nose, then everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Mr Whiskers lurched back, then swatted out with a massive clawed paw. Murder’s leap was by far the largest he had ever done. He flew through the air, straight past the cat’s mouth, which bore large fangs as he drew near. Murder looked down to see that Thrasher had followed him out of the water, leaping just a fraction of a second after him. His trajectory was lower, and slower, but it looked like Thrasher would intercept him right as he landed; if the cat didn’t kill him, Thrasher would. Then, right as Murder’s majestic leap reached the top of its arc, he heard a wet slap as one of the cat’s claws connected with something coming out of the water below him.

  The cat deftly plucked Thrasher out of the air mid leap. He was four inches long – probably the biggest fish in the tank and certainly the fattest. Murder just swam there, treading water, insofar as a fish can tread, right in front of the cat and smiled as the feline ate its fill.

  “Don’t look so pleased with yourself,” said Mr Whiskers through a mouth full of fish guts.

  “Mr Whiskers no!” cried Sally, plucking the cat from the seat beside the pool and giving it three firm taps on the nose. “I told—you not—to do that!”

  “Sometimes the right tool for the job is a ginger cat,” said Murder.