Continuation of Isabella the Mouse/A freewrite challenge: What Will We Eat?

Here are the beginning parts of the story of Isabella the Mouse:

• Part 1 by @freedomtowrite
• Part 2 by @snook
• Part 3 by @eroticabian
• Part 4 by @simgirl
• Part 5 by @byn

For tomorrow, I nominate, @wonderwop

“You need to learn through observation the habits and mealtimes of the humans, so that we can continue to eat like the refined mice we were born to be.”

“But, I don’t wanna,” Max groaned.

Isabella explained to Max that they’d had the meal schedule and comings of going of the human’s down pretty well over the course of one year, but that had recently all changed since a very over-weight man the humans called uncle Norman had moved in after a divorce and nervous break-down.

Max asked Isabella what that meant and she merely shrugged explaining the mice weren’t quite sure either, but it had wreaked havoc on their regular pilfering as he never seemed to leave the kitchen even after his plate was clean.

Normally, the mice waited until husband and kids had eaten their fill and run out of the house to scale the impossible slippery table legs in order to get bits of cheesecake, thimbles of wine, entire ends of baguette’s while the dish washing mother took her customary half hour or so of time reading while she let her meal settle before rinsing, scrapping the plates, condensing leftovers into smaller bowls, putting on lids and loading the dishwasher. But, now, Norman sat at the table eating whatever was left on plates, even pinching or pushing his fat pointer into the last cake crumbs and licking them away so that the mice were now lucky to find a single salt crystal.

“Listen, Max, you need to stop complaining! Look at all we’ve done for you and how well you’ve eaten and slept since arriving at my doorstep!”

Isabella pinched at her center showing Max how she’d lost weight since Norman’s arrival and pointed at her own shelf where her remaining saved stores of exotic food included only one black gumdrop and a smear of peanut-butter. She didn’t exactly want to be chasing grasshoppers for supper like the rest of the riffraff.

She shoved the regular mealtimes she’d written neatly on a scarp of pink paper into Max’s chest,

“I’m counting on you, Max!”

Photo credit: Lana Abie/unsplash