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Both Fish and I gasp with delight. I may have also drooled a little. I’m not ashamed.

Fish’s tail starts twitching. You know what this means, don’t you?

Snack time? I suggest.

No, Chip. Well, yes. But also—we have a civic duty to clean up this park. For Josie. For public health. For the greater good of Halloween season.

And for our stomachs, I add.

Obviously for our stomachs, Fish agrees. Listen up, cute kitties. I propose Operation Cleanup Crew. We systematically patrol Huckleberry Lane and consume every last scrap of dropped food. No mouse will get a free meal on our watch. No hooman will slip on a discarded hot dog. We will restore order through tactical consumption!

Shadow nods silently because of that whole ninja thing he has going on.

Patches grins wider. I call first dibs on anything cheese-related.

I want the meat products, Whiskerface announces. Where’s the beef? He gets a faraway look in his cloudy eyes. In my day, we worked for our scraps. Chased down every mouse ourselves, uphill, in the snow. This is a golden age.

Carbs are mine, declares a fluffy Persian named Marshmallow.

Wait, wait, wait, I interrupt. What about me? What do I get?

Fish sighs. Chip, you get everything we can’t finish. Which, knowing this group, will still be a mountain of food.

That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, I say, genuinely touched.

It wasn’t a compliment.

I’m taking it as one!

And just like that, Operation Cleanup Crew is underway.

We spread out along Huckleberry Lane like a furry tactical unit. Patches takes the ice cream parlor area where someone dropped an entire cone. Strawberry, her favorite. The universe provides. Shadow vanishes into the shadows near the bakery where mysterious bread products await. Whiskerface claims the pizza zone. Marshmallow heads for the funnel cake situation.

And me? I’m a fluffy orange vacuum cleaner with enthusiasm settings the manufacturer never intended. (Josie told me that once.)

First, I find a barely touched corn dog. Score! Then three pieces of popcorn. A bite of churro. Half a soft pretzel someone left behind. A piece of candied bacon so good I finally understand why hoomans write poetry. Nacho cheese from who-knows-where. A fragment of pumpkin cookie. Turkey leg scraps. More popcorn. Something that might be caramel apple but could also be sticky trash. I eat it anyway because I’m committed to the mission. Also because it might be caramel.

Somewhere between the pretzel and the bacon, I wonder what Cupcake would say if she could see my haul. Probably something like, sugar, you look like a corn dog that won an eating contest against itself. From her, that’s basically a love sonnet.

Chip! Fish calls from near the carousel. I found an entire hot dog bun! Just the bun! Why would someone eat the hot dog but leave the best part?

Hoomans are idiots, Patches contributes from her position near the ice cream parlor where she’s discovered spilled rainbow sprinkles.

We work our way down the lane, consuming everything edible and some things that are questionable, but we eat them anyway because waste not, want not. It’s in the fine print of the operation.

I trot past a bench and catch Fish face-first in a bag of caramel corn. Are you eating or investigating? I ask.

It’s called destroying the evidence before it destroys me, she says without looking up. Her whiskers are dusted white. Her self-respect is somewhere back by the carousel. I file the image away, because blackmail material this good only comes along once in a cat’s nine lives.

Mittens finds a plate of cheese fries behind a bench. The cat crew swarms it like piranhas in fur coats.

Boots discovers a half-eaten candy apple. We take turns licking it. Democracy in action.

Shadow, silent and mysterious as ever, somehow produces an entire slice of pizza from parts unknown. No one asks questions. We just accept that ninja cats have pizza-finding abilities beyond our understanding.

I’m in heaven. Absolute food heaven. My belly is getting fuller and fuller, expanding like a Thanksgiving parade float. But I can’t stop. There’s still food out here! Still snacks to rescue! Still culinary-based civic duties to perform!

Chip, Fish says, waddling over to me with her own impressively round belly, I think we might have overdone it.