My invitation was lost in the mail. (Kealey)

The poor dear.

Her room in the Mansion was empty—cleared out, though fairly recently. He had knocked, but no one had answered; he had tried the knob, and it had been unlocked. The bed had been made up in the standard white sheets, waiting for a new occupant. No one new had moved in yet. Her smell still lingered.

How very dreadful.

The male’s room had been empty, too, in much the same way. He had checked by way of confirmation: it wasn’t as if he cared about that one. Pfft. But he had caught a whiff of something most unpleasant, while he was investigating.

She needed rescuing.

Dog. Husky. Young, though full grown. Dog fur still wantonly strewn over the carpeting, as if the beast hadn’t given a thought to the proper targeting of clothing and pillows; the faint acidic smell of unsanitary accidents when it had been smaller and perhaps deemed cuter. Dogs. They lacked in the basic instincts of hygiene; it was not their fault they needed to learn to pee in appropriate places; that they had to be given baths.

Alone with a human male and a canine. It was tragic beyond measure. She was a better person than that: she deserved better. She deserved an animal with a built-in wash cycle; she deserved a courtly creature who would wake her every morning with an affectionately snuggling belly over her mouth and nose.

Ms. Kealey deserved a cat on her window sill, imperiously mewing to be let in. A little white cat with black spots here and there, to be exact. She might recall it. It was a fine and unique specimen of its race, after all.

And it smelled several orders of magnitude better than the other males she was living with.