"Trina!" Trina ignored her mother. "Trina!"

"What?!" Trina yelled back.

"Stop singing with the movie," her mom told her.

Trina obliged her only because the movie was at a part without any singing, promptly bursting into song when the movie did, "Jellicle Cats come out to-nite."

"Tri-na!" Trina's mom warned, to be satisfied with silence from her daughter's room except for the movie still playing. "Thank you," when she was answered by silence from her daughter, she became worried. "Trina?" still no answer. "Trina? What are you doing?" she walked down the hall to her daughter's bedroom and pushed the door open to find it empty, CATS playing on the television set. "Trina?" with a shrug, she stopped the movie and turned off the TV before heading back to her home office.

"I don't know what you mean," a white queen with orange, pale gray and tan stripes answered as she scurried past, "but it's almost time for the Ball to begin. C'mon, Jestana."

Puzzled, she looked down at herself and was surprised to find herself covered with thick silver-blue fur. "Wait, I don't understand," she scurried after the other queen. "Could you please explain what's going on?"

"You know, Jestana," the queen answered. "If you don't remember, it'll come back to you in time."

Jestana sighed in frustration as the queen climbed up on top of an oven with a hole in the back of it. Curious, she crawled into the oven and looked out in time to see a black, gold and white queen get caught in a set of headlights sweeping across the clearing. Enchanted, she watched as a silver tabby tom appeared on top of the car trunk. Other cats appeared around the clearing, including the first queen, who'd hidden in a pipe. After she crawled out, the silver tabby crawled off the car trunk and magically stood on his hind legs, singing, "Are you blind when you're born?"

The black, gold and white queen continued with, "Can you see in the dark?"

Then a marmalade tabby tom sang from his spot next to the tire, "Can you look at a king?"

A light brown tom with darker brown stripes popped up between the tire and the car trunk, singing, "Would you sit on his throne?"

On the opposite side of the clearing from Jestana, a black tom with leopard-spotted paws, chest patch, golden-brown head and mane and brown and balck tail sang, "Can you say of your bite that it's worse than your bark?"

A white tom with black patches, one of which was over his left eye, had climbed onto the trunk while the previous tom sang his line and now sang, "Are you cock of the walk?"

"When you're walking alone?" Jestana had popped out of the oven without realizing it and stared, wide-eyed, as the others continued, unconsciously joining in. The rest of the Ball was a colorful whirl of singing and dancing as she gave herself up to the joy of being a Jellicle Cat. Each time Grizabella had come, she'd reached out to her, only to be pulled away by one of the others. Tears had filled her eyes as the rest of the tribe accepted Grizabella. She sang her parts in 'The Journey to the Heaviside Layer' and 'The Ad-dressing of Cats' with a heart bursting with joy.

"We go home," a white queen answered and disappeared among the junkpiles.

"Home? Of course," Jestana smacked herself on the forehead. "Why didn't I think of that?" she thought for a moment. "Where is home?"

"Why are you asking me?" a maned tom asked as he passed by. "You should know already."

"Oh, right," she let her instincts lead her and she found herself in a heap on her bedroom floor.

"Trina!" Trina was engulfed in hug.

"Hi, Mom," Trina returned her mother's hug.

"Where have you been?" her mother demanded. "I've been turning the house upside-down looking for you."

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," she replied, then sniffed the air. "Is that dinner I smell? I'm starved."

Her mother laughed. "Yes, that's dinner. Let's go down and eat. Then you can tell me everything."