Before even opening his eyes, Kevin recognized that he was in his own bed, but he grimaced as he remembered he wasn’t “home.” The sounds surrounding him were unfamiliar. Water swooshing through pipes coming from directions and with a tonality that were not what he’d been used to hearing at home. He’d never paid deliberate attention to such things, but his subconscious mind recognized that it was somehow…different. So were the smells.

The thwump of a heavy Sunday newspaper hitting the floor outside his apartment door as the delivery person’s rattling 2-wheeler proceeded down the outer hallway had been the clincher.

No. He blinked a few times and rubbed the sleep from his eyes before focusing on the unfamiliar ceiling fixture. This was home now. Then again, maybe he would forever refer to his parents’ house as “home” in that casual way people did. When someone said, “I’m going home for Christmas,” everyone knew they weren’t referring to their own place of residence.

Even the scritch, scritch coming from the mouse cages sounded different. Poor Corky and Isabelle; their habitat’s screen had been damaged in the move. He really should have finished that repair before going to bed, exhaustion be damned. But he hadn’t wanted his final safety check of the elaborate structure to be made while he was having trouble focusing. Still, he hated that “his girls” had spent the night in their little traveling cages.

The angle of the light slanting through the blinds told him it was still early, but the tightness in his belly told him it was time to get up anyway. “Hang in there, girls,” he sing-songed in a manner that should be familiar and comforting to them. “You’ll be back home in no time.”

Their home—habitat—would be the same, but they’d probably be able to pick up on the fact that their world had moved for the same reasons Kevin had when he’d awaken. He rolled out of bed. They’d be hungry, too, and there was no sense disrupting their routine any more than necessary.

Kevin washed up, then fed and watered his mice. He’d shred some carrot for them later as a treat to help offset the disruption in their lives.

A grin spread across his face when he opened the refrigerator. His mom had bought groceries, making sure to pick up the ingredients for his favorite casseroles, the recipes for which she’d left in a neat stack on the countertop.

Yeah, her fabulous breakfast casserole was just what he needed to chase away that touch of homesickness pulling at his heartstrings. Either that or it would exasperate it. Regardless, he was hungry, so he pulled out the eggs, sausage, hash browns, chives, and shredded cheese, and got to work.

Once that was in the oven, he rummaged through his toolbox for pliers and screws, then pulled his drill off the charger. Everything seemed so much easier this morning. It was amazing what a difference a good night’s sleep could make. In no time at all, the habitat was complete and secure to his satisfaction.

A noise out in the hall reminded him of his newspaper. It sounded like another door opening. A door just down the hall in the direction of the cute guy he’d noticed during a couple of his box-hauling trips. Maybe he could catch another glimpse and maybe sneak in a “hi” and a wave? The guy was flaming—obviously gay—which considering Kevin’s faulty gaydar, was points in the guy’s favor because after a bad experience with a straight guy who’d turned out to also be a raging homophobe, he was always reluctant to ask a guy out if he was unsure of his sexuality.

Kevin quickly opened his door to retrieve the newspaper. Something flashed in his peripheral vision, and he froze, then relaxed. No, it couldn’t be—

Kevin jumped when the man down the hall let out a high-pitched yelp. He looked up in time to see the man hop from foot to foot and shriek, “Rat!” as a pale streak detoured into the man’s apartment.

“Shit,” Kevin muttered. He spun to check the travel cages and his heart leapt into his throat. Corky’s door was ajar. He closed his apartment door and took off running down the hall.

To be continued…

Kevin skidded to a stop outside his new neighbor’s apartment just as the man inside—channeling Jennifer Beals frenetically dancing to “She’s a Maniac” in Flash-dance on a loveseat—shrieked “Get it, Pandy! Get it!”

Any instinctual etiquette rules that would have kept him from dashing into a stranger’s open apartment door flew out the window as a cat—Pandy, apparently—bounded after poor Corky.

“No!” Kevin shouted as he rushed into the apartment. He put up a hand and added, “Sorry, sorry.” Because some conventions were just too deeply seated to suppress altogether regardless of the seriousness of the situation. “I’ll take care of it.”

Kevin dashed after the cat, which zipped after Corky as she darted under an unmade bed. His baseball diving-slide skills came in handy as he lunged after the animals and flailed his arms around like Kermit the frog doing…well…whatever it was that caused Kermit to do his arm flail thing. Hell if he could remember.

Point being, he didn’t want to hurt the cat, it was just doing what cats instinctively did. He just didn’t want it to get to Corky.

Corky scurried behind a shoebox, and the cat pounced. Kevin frantically slapped the box away as Corky bolted, this time trying to make an end run around Kevin’s arm, darn it, letting terror overtake her. His own fear wasn’t helping. No doubt she could sense it. And that incessant tea kettle whistling in the background wasn’t helping anything.

At this point, attempting to grab Corky would probably be counter-productive. She was in full on panic mode and would probably be best off in any enclosed safe space where she could calm down enough to trust him to carry her back to safety.

The mouse made it around him, and Kevin scrambled out faster than…well…a cat on a mouse, managing to block the cat in the process. A closet door was cracked open, and Corky dashed toward it, leaping over a blur of stuff he’d sent flying out of that shoe box. And was Cute Neighbor Guy deaf? Because damn, that freaking tea kettle was getting on his last—

Kevin gasped when the cat bounced itself off the back wall and tore out from under the bed, and he snapped back into action in time to grab it mid-pounce as Corky sprinted the final stretch into the open closet. He shoved the door closed and collapsed against it as he caught his breath.

He stared up at Cute Neighbor Guy who was still quivering on the love seat, but instead of looking relieved, the guy seemed…upset?

“She almost had it!” Cute Neighbor Guy wailed. “Now that rat’s infecting my…” He flinched and finished the sentence with a warbled, “Stuff.”

Rat? Seriously? Kevin sighed and petted the cat, Pandy. “She’s not a rat.”

The guy opened his mouth as if he was going to argue that point. Honestly, was he blind as well as deaf?

Kevin blinked and turned to see what was making that buzzing and thumping noise competing with the shrieking tea kettle. His eyes bugged. Was that a dildo cartwheeling across the floor? Living in his parents’ house he’d obviously had no opportunity to become a dildo expert, but still, he’d never heard of one that moved with that kind of thrusting motion.

To be continued…