Of All The Wants And Hungers by Samuel Snoek-Brown

There had been gossip lately among the neighbors that a pair of foxes were living in an abandoned lot. Lock up your cats, they said.

I’d seen one of the foxes on a walk a while ago, the slender red face peering from under a bush down near the railroad tracks. It seemed friendly enough, or maybe I would say cautious. Not menacing, anyway, and small enough that most of the neighborhood’s bruiser cats could handle the fox in a fight. Those bright eyes in the undergrowth seemed almost timid, at a distance.

But then, sure enough, Gene’s cat went missing. And Gene’s cat was one of those bruisers, a big tabby who ruled his block and went where he pleased, including into neighbors’ homes if they left their dog flaps unmonitored.

Whatever got it was no fox, Gene insisted.