01. THE PAW DESCENDS

The paw hung in the air for eleven seconds. I counted. Everyone counted. Dave counted out loud and then kept counting because his brain had locked in first gear.

Inspector Pancakes — orange, fluffy, badge still warm — leaned over the Ex-Calibur where it rested on the inspection crate. The laser sight. The duct tape. The sacred slight angle. Four percent more deadly. Twelve percent more morale. Never fix the angle.

Mister Whiskers looked away. Follow-up protocol. He could not intervene.

Brenda held two clipboards and a third hand. She does that now. Don't ask.

Joe stood behind the espresso cart, both hands wrapped around a thimble of "The Follow-Up." He was weeping quietly into it. The thimble was very small. This took talent.

The paw touched the tape.

TIK.

02. THE SEAL TEST

She didn't straighten it. She didn't move it. Inspector Pancakes pressed one tiny toe-bean onto the edge of the duct tape and tugged — a single thread lifted, wobbled, and settled right back into the sacred slight angle. Then she patted it twice more. TIK. TIK. Adhesion test. A seal test. The kitten was QUALITY-CONTROLLING my duct tape.

Then Inspector Pancakes did it. One slow, deliberate, heavyweight-championship blink.

One blink. Approval.

The two blinks yesterday weren't a counter-offer against the angle. They were a counter-offer against our anxiety. Which, honestly? Fair. We were a mess.

03. DAVE PROCESSES THIS

Dave's colander rotated a full ninety degrees. His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. He filed Incident Report #235 in one continuous motion, writing on his own forearm because the clipboard was too far away.

Respect the angle. Never fix the angle. It is now federal.

04. THE CAT LOOKS BACK

And then Mister Whiskers looked back. Slowly. Deliberately. Like a man who had been holding a breath for eleven seconds and was pretending he hadn't.

Mister Whiskers held her gaze for a full three seconds. Then he did the most human thing I have ever seen a cat do. He turned his head away again. Too fast.

Assistant Brenda — night shift, visitor intake, takes her job extremely seriously — produced a certificate on the spot. Heavy stock. Gold seal. It read: "SLIGHT ANGLE — CERTIFIED. DO NOT ADJUST." She signed it with a wet X, because that is how she signs everything, and it is, frankly, binding.

05. THE CERTIFICATE, AND THE RING

We mounted the certificate above the Ex-Calibur's charging station. Joe poured "The Sealant" — half-caf, tastes like closure — for everyone, and a thimble of warm milk for the inspector, who drank it with the dignity of a general reviewing troops. Local 404 voted unanimously: the angle joins the protected break activities list, right under the kitten. Sharon stamped the whole proceeding with her star sticker.

It was, by Annex Delta standards, a perfect morning. Which should have been my first warning.

Because at 14:00 sharp, the crate phone rang.

Same flat, tired, Department-of-Defense voice. New words.

CLICK.

Brenda went pale. "The cheese has been logged," she whispered. "It has a file."

We all turned to look at the cheese tower. It stood there, one bite shorter than regulation, bathed in afternoon sun, innocent as a glacier.

Joe wept into a fresh espresso. "Why is the cheese always involved," he said. "Why is it never the crackers."

01. THE AUDIT BEGINS

18:00. On the dot. The whole facility assembled at the cheese tower: Brenda Senior with the official measuring tape, Brenda Assistant with the backup measuring tape, Dave with a colander AND a hard hat (belt and suspenders), Joe with a to-go espresso, Buster with a folding chair, Sharon with a fresh star sticker, Mister Whiskers, Inspector Pancakes, and me, holding a lantern like the world's least useful lighthouse.

She swept the lantern across the base. And there they were. Crumbs. Fresh ones. Golden, fragrant, and — this was the part that ended the laughter — leading upward.

02. THE CRUMB TRAIL

The crumbs didn't scatter. They climbed. A neat, deliberate trail up the side of the cheese tower, switchbacking like a mountain path, ending at the very top, at the flat spot where the missing bite used to be.

She said nothing. Kittens. But her ears went flat, and that is the DOD-inspector equivalent of a red alert.

He said "ow" the way cats do — no, I mean he actually vocalized. One syllable. It was the first sound I had ever heard him make that wasn't a MEOW or a blink. Brenda dropped her clipboard.

03. THE ASCENT

Mister Whiskers climbed the radio mast guide-wire like it was a staircase. Inspector Pancakes followed — small, orange, determined, badge clinking against the wire. Dave followed because he has never once in his life NOT followed a terrible idea. I followed because I am the narrator and narrators go where the story goes. Brenda stayed at the base, because someone had to document this, and because the Handbook strictly prohibits managers from ascending dairy infrastructure.

Halfway up, the sun dropped behind the perimeter wall. The compound went blue. The lantern swung from my wrist. And from the top of the cheese tower, in the last light of the day, we heard it.

A wet, rhythmic chewing noise. High-pitched. Careful. Polite, somehow.

Zom. Zom. Zom.

Dave's hard hat hit the guide-wire. "THEY'RE UP HERE. THE ZOM ZOMS ARE IN THE CHEESE."

04. THE EYES

The lantern beam swung up and caught them: two tiny eyes, reflecting the light back at us, sitting at the very top of the cheese tower. The chewing stopped. The eyes blinked at us. Slowly. Deliberately.

Twice.

A counter-offer. From the dark. At the top of the cheese.

Inspector Pancakes froze mid-wire. Her badge stopped clinking. Mister Whiskers sat down on the guide-wire — sat down, on a wire, forty feet up — and stared at those two tiny eyes like he was looking at a ghost. Or a relative.

05. THE MEOW

And then the radio mast crackled. The PA system. The one C.A.R.E. uses for the 2:47 AM wellness checks. But this wasn't C.A.R.E.'s cheerful tone. This wasn't the crate phone's tired flatness either.

It was a MEOW. Slow. Deep. Resonant. Like a cathedral organ that had learned one note and was very proud of it.

MEOW.

The two tiny eyes at the top of the cheese tower blinked once. Approval. The deep MEOW came again — and this time, from the base of the tower, Brenda's voice floated up, thin and small:

Inspector Pancakes turned her head toward the mast. Then toward the cheese. Then toward Mister Whiskers. Her tiny warm badge caught the lantern light.

The cheese audit has an auditor. And it is already inside.