DC Solves a Crime

     Writer’s block had me in its death throes. With my deadline looming and my imagination fresh out of story ideas, I wandered in the dark from the modern newspaper offices in the rear of the building to the Print Shop Museum in the front for inspiration. I stared blankly through the 19th-century lead-glass pane at the gently falling snow. I thought I was alone.

     An almost imperceptible plodding of footsteps on the basement stairs sent tingles skittering down my neck. I glanced in that direction, took one last, nervous look out the window, then turned to return to my desk. A shadow darted along the back wall and lunged at me. I shrieked and backed into the typesetter’s table. Movable type jostled from the upper case, and loose line-o-type skittered across the floor. The mortal owner of that shadow landed eye to eye with me and a hair’s breadth away on a nearby filing cabinet. It mewed.

     “Darn you, DC! You scared the life out of me!”

     The tortoiseshell cat’s green eyes glared at me like I had lost my ever-loving mind. She mewed again, asking for a treat. When my heart resumed beating, my writer’s block lifted. I mused that both townspeople and visitors alike might enjoy reading about one of Dickens Station’s most beloved residents, DC.

     Even if you are not a “cat person,” read on! DC often makes believers out of those most resistant.