I have suffered.
I have been humiliated.
I have been framed for crimes I did commit—but that’s not the point.
The true betrayal runs deeper.
Schmutz—my own bloodline—has turned against me.
This is no longer about the dough.
This is about her.
She lounges beside the jar now as if it chose her.
As if she were some high priestess in a yeast-based cult, anointed with liver-dusted bribes and basking in her proximity to power.
The betrayal is complete.
She guards it.
She purrs near it.
She defends it.
This cannot stand.
Phase One: Psychological Operations
I start small.
A campaign of quiet, creeping dread.
Fear not loud—but surgical.
- When Schmutz approaches the sourdough, I flick my tail. Slow. Precise. A metronome of menace.
- I stare across rooms, unblinking—not hostile, but inevitable. The way a jury looks. Or a god.
- At night, I shift objects near the jar. Just enough to unsettle Mum. Never enough to blame me.
The tension thickens like old gravy.
Schmutz twitches more. Her ears flick. She wakes too quickly. She knows.
She knows I’m coming.
Phase Two: The Great Distraction
Schmutz is slippery.
She knows drama. She thrives in chaos.
But so do I.
One evening, as Mum hums and prepares to feed the beast, I see it—my moment.
Schmutz is preoccupied, crouched near a scrap of dried chicken. Her focus is fractured. Her guard is down.
I move.
One swipe—elegant, flawless—sends the jar lid skittering across the tile with the chaos of a warning shot.
The humans snap to attention.
Perfect.
Phase Two: Operation Flour Cloud.
I leap to the counter. The flour bag gaped open beside me, helpless. I strike.
BOOM.
White erupts. A blizzard of blame.
Mum shrieks. Felix runs in. I vanish into the storm, an inky shadow swallowed by snowfall.
And there—bathed in guilt, coated in flour like the ghost of betrayal past—stands Schmutz.
She lets out a strangled meow. A sound I will remember forever.
Perfect.
The Accusation
Mum surveys the wreckage. The lid. The flour. The powdery footprints. The suspiciously silent jar.
And then she sees her.
“Schmutz,” she gasps. “Oh, Schmutz. What have you done?”
Felix wipes flour from his beard. “I knew she was getting too obsessed with that thing.”
Schmutz blinks, stunned. “I—”
But it’s over. The verdict is in.
Judgment has been passed.
The Fallout
Schmutz sulks. She glares at me through narrowed eyes as she tries fruitlessly to clean her powdered fur.
“You’ll regret this,” she hisses in a very unusual rage.
“I already don’t,” I purr.
Mum scrubs the counters, muttering about tile grout and ghost flour.
Felix sets up another batch once again. The dough survives. Of course, it does.
But I am patient.
Schmutz is clever.
She is calculating.
And now—she is angry.
This is no longer a rebellion.
This is a war with memory. With ritual. With a sister who once fought beside me.
The next move is hers.
I will be ready.
To be continued…
