Prison smelled like wet dog and lemon Pledge.  The Katters was sprawled out in a tiny cell, moonlight pouring in through the window and leaving one of those somber stamps of barred light on the concrete floor.  Had a bluesy harmonica been playing in the distance, it would’ve been perfectly depressing.
       She glanced over at the cell across, which was empty.  To her right, she knew, was Ky’s cell.  She had been sedated when she bit the ear off an officer and threatened to attack them all with razor-blade studded penises.  The Katters imagined her curled up in a corner of the cell, bound by a straight-jacket, but couldn’t be sure if that was true or not.

       The Katters stood and pressed herself against the cell door, curling her fingers around the bars.  Only two of the fluorescents in the hallway worked, leaving everything in more than partial darkness.  She could tell it was a small cell block, maybe three cells on either side.  There was a noise in the cell across from her, the one she thought was empty, and The Katters noticed Leon huddled in the far corner.
       “Hey, you’re not dead,” The Katters said in greeting.
       Leon leaned into the light, revealing a grimace, a black eye and an arm in a sling.
       “Well, you’ve looked better.”
       He nodded, distantly, and then shrank back into the dark of the cell, looking overall somewhat traumatized.

       The door at the end of the cell block opened with a steely clang and janitorial clinking of keys.
       “--pig bastards!”  Erika was in the middle of a long string of curses when her previously muffled voice rang clear through the opened doorway.  “Your mothers were all whores!  Your sisters were all landlord fuckers-- hi, Crackers!”  She waved somewhat with her head as two burly-looking security guards shoved her down the hall and into the empty cell to The Katters’ left.
       Two heavy clunks interrupted by some metallic clinking signaled Erika’s cell door opening, her handcuffs being removed and the door closing.  The guards moved to loom in front of The Katters’ cell.
       One gave her a slightly worried glance as he started flipping through the contents of a battered manila envelope, presumably her file.  She’d never seen her file and, in fact, didn’t know how police stations always managed to stock so many handy files on people, but from the amount of Polaroids and forms the guy was sifting through, hers had to be pretty impressive.
       “Think we should get some restraints or something?”  The guard with the envelope asked, scrutinizing a reference sheet with “St Agatha’s Mental Institute for the Criminally Insane” in bold type at the top.
       “Nah,” the other guard said, spinning Erika’s handcuffs around on his index finger, “I’m sure she knows not to do anything ... stupid.”  He leaned forward, close to The Katters’ cell door.  “Isn’t that right, Tiffany?  Isn’t that right?  She’s a good katter, isn’t she?  Yes, she is!  Yes, she is!”  He made high-pitched “lookatthecutepuppy” noises and squished his lips into a fish face.
       The Katters twitched, calculating and playing out in her head how easy it would be to claw his face open with a quick swipe through the bars.  But no, she thought, glaring off into the distance as her door opened and they handcuffed her.  She needed to get out, first.  So she’d wait and get him later.  Much later.

       They paraded The Katters down three hallways, two waiting rooms and four and a half offices.  By the end of it she was fingerprinted, mug shot, wearing a striped uniform and very disappointed in the lack of obvious means of escape.  This prison had an extreme lack of large ventilation systems and key rings dangling behind sleeping guards.
       They finally left her handcuffed to a chair in a cramped, smoke-smelling office with institutional green walls.  She propped her feet up on the desk and gnawed at the fingernails of her free hand when the door behind her opened.  Not bothering to turn her head, she only realized it was the sergeant from earlier that morning when he sat behind the desk.
       “You’d be much smaller,” she blurted.
       “What?”
       “You’d be much smaller.  If you had been born yesterday.  See, earlier, you said “Do I look like I was born yesterday?” and I didn’t say anything but then I thought I really should’ve said “No, if you were born yesterday you’d be much smaller.”  So, you’d be much smaller.”
       The sergeant started straightening out stacks of paper on his desk and poked at a pencil tin.  He seemed to be considering something, and at length motioned to an open box of donuts on the edge of the desk.  “You can have one, if you want.”
       The Katters snatched one up and gnawed at it.  Chocolate with powdered sugar on top.  The sergeant smirked and seemed to try for an amiable, friendly smile.  “The woman with the matches and the razor-blade studded -- well, yanno.  She refused ’em because they didn’t have jelly filling.  “Insult to God and man,” I think it was.  Ms. Kaiser threw the box across the room -- something about “cop cooties” -- and the, uh, tall fellow with the mop, Mr. Merkin, he got startled and choked on his donut.”
       The Katters scowled through another bite of donut.  She didn’t trust small talk from the police.  And, honestly, she was a little disappointed that she’d been the least trouble of the donut-eaters so far.
       The sergeant noticed her expression and shoved a few more things around on his desk.  Not upset or nervous, just changing strategies.
       “You’re good at being inconspicuous, I’ll give you that.  But it was bound to catch up with you some time.”
       The Katters finished her donut and gave him a fanged smile.  He flipped open the folder on his desk.  “You’re being officially charged with conspiring to kill a police officer and conspiring to assault four other police officers.  That’s unless we also decide to get you on being a part of Mr. Merkin’s attack on myself and my squad.” He glanced at the contents of the folder as he spoke, looking like he was talking to it instead of her.  
       “Hey, Ky shot that guy all on her own and Erika’s the one who told Leon to go on the attack.  I am an innocent bystander.”
       “You’ve also been charged with accessory to murder.  You’re hiding alias “Zebra” from us.”
       “I must be hiding him pretty damn well if even I don’t know where he is.”
       “We will find him,” he said, ignoring her.  He closed the folder, leaning back in his chair and pulling out a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his uniform pocket. “I’ll level with you, Ms. Jones--”
       “Katters.  Call me Katters.”
       He frowned, but conceded.  “Katters.  Your charges, as they stand, will probably be dissolved.  Forgiven, forgotten, whichever worked out first.”  The cigarette bobbed in his lips as he spoke, still unlit.  “But while you’re sitting in that--”
       “Window seat?  Do you know my habits?”
       The sergeant quirked an eyebrow.  “No.  While you’re sitting in that jail cell, waiting, we’re going to be getting search warrants and collecting all kinds of evidence in that shop of yours.”
       The Katters yawned.  “Can we move this along?  I’ve got to return some video tapes.”
       The sergeant lit his cigarette.  “Alright.  How long have you known “Bertha,” “Rabies” and ... Leon?”

       Three hours of questioning later, the same two burly-looking security guards escorted a weary and irritated Katters back to her cell.  She caught glance of Ky on her way past the cell, alternatively let-down by the lack of straight-jacket and amused by Ky’s efforts to apparently gnaw through the window bars.
       The Katters leaned against the cold wall of her 6 x 6 cell.  The endless and repetitive questions felt like they had sucked all creative thought out of her head, leaving her with cotton instead of brains and denying her the ability to plot escape.  Maybe that was why the questions took three hours.  Escape preventative measures.  Or maybe the cops are --
       The Katters’ ears perked up.  She heard something.
       She looked wildly around, seeing nothing but gray, water-damaged walls until peering across into Leon’s cell.
       “Leon.  Hey.  Hey.  Hey.  Hey.  Leon.  Hey.  Leon.  Hey.  Leon.  Leon.  Leon.  Leon.  Le -- were you asleep?”
       He moved into the light again, blinking in a dazed sort of way.
       “Well, too bad.  Did you just poing?”
       He blinked again.
       “I don’t speak janitor.  I need a yes or a no.  Did you just poing?”
       He scooted over so that his injured arm was in the light.  The Katters debated back and forth on what that might translate to when she saw the sling rustle and wriggle and produce a ferret.
       Harena poinged out of Leon’s sling and hopped around on his arm.  He made a noise which Har translated into “get off of my arm” and she propped up on his shoulder.
       “Ritzy!”  She poinged in place and dooked all at once.  “Ritzyritzy!”
       “Har!  You’re here!”
       “I’m here! To save the day!”
       The Katters lowered her voice to a whisper. “How’d you get in?”
       The ferret gave a shifty glance to either side of her.  “I have ways.  Ferrety ways.”
       “Do you have a ferrety escape plan to go along with that?”
       “Yayayaya!”  Har scurried to the floor and ran off down the hall.