Little Widdershins, a grubby, down-at-heel, forgotten and forlorn dump of a town, where reality was considered more of a gentle suggestion than anything resembling a hard rule, was home to a cat named Spoons. Who paid taxes.

This alone was enough to make the local Revenue Imp, one Quentin J. Poppet, rather suspicious. After all, governments of every stamp had long since abandoned trying to tax cats, having discovered they were both untouchable in the legal sense and possessed of accountants more vicious than hedge fund managers with terminal toothache and a crippling lack of magic whizz powder to shove up there over-indulged noses.

And yet, each fiscal quarter, a neat little envelope would arrive at the town hall. It would be addressed in impeccable copperplate, lightly scented with sardines and menace, and contained exactly the right number of bent sixpences, ha’pennies, and one pre-decimal coin, which may have once been a florin.

Quentin had never met Spoons, of course, but he’d seen the name on the paperwork, and once, on a warm Wednesday morning, had heard the soft _plomp_ of the envelope landing on his desk and the sound of meowing receding into the distance.

Ever the tax imp, Quentin, almost without thinking about it at all, began to investigate the underlying income streams that produced this, somewhat meagre tax revenue.

This, it turned out, wasn’t easy, because cats don’t have permanent addresses, and Spoons least of all. He lived everywhere and nowhere. He often slept in the town baker’s warm proving drawer when he felt like it. For fun he sometimes haunted the roof of the antique shop, and once spent a fortnight posing as a cushion in the mayor’s office. He was just that sort of cat.

He was, by all accounts, a very ordinary-looking tabby. Except for his eyes, which glowed faintly in the dark and generally gave you the feeling that he had the disconcerting ability to know exactly how much money you owed the milkman.

The townsfolk had long accepted Spoons as part of the town’s minor oddities, like the postbox that walked about and positioned itself wherever it felt a need, or the streetlamp that, quite rightly, flickered Morse code insults at people wearing sandals with socks.

But Quentin was not a imp to let things lie. He’d once audited an invisible man’s expenses claim and probably won. Probably being the operative word here, since nobody actually knew if the invisible man was an entity at all, largely because no-one had ever seen him.

He followed the trail of paperwork, watched rooftops through binoculars, and even disguised himself behind a large tin of tuna. It took a long time and Quentin, a lifelong Vegan, became more than a little sensitive to the whiff of fish. Biliousness in public office is not a pretty sight.

Eventually, Quentin cornered Spoons in the back garden of Miss Clogchops, the retired spellwright who had once hexed the local grocery shop as a protest against the outrageous price of teabags. She was sipping tea and munching a bullace jam encrusted tea-cake and watching with amusement.

“So,” Quentin said, tapping his ledger, “Explain yourself. You’re a cat.”

Spoons blinked at him with infinite disdain and licked a paw.

“You pay taxes.”

The cat rolled onto his side and gave a small, precisely calculated purr.

“It is _unprecedented_. It is _unnatural_. People don’t give money to the tax man that they don’t have to - it’s probably _fraudulent_.”

Miss Clogchops chuckled and said, “Oh, don’t you count your florins too soon young Quentin, he pays in magic.”

“_What?_”

“Tax is belief, dear. The kingdom runs on it. People believe in roads, schools, and the right to argue about bin collection rotas. Spoons pays in certainty. In little coins of probability. You’d be surprised how valuable that is. Just ask the Phantom Ministry of Wishful Infrastructure.”

Quentin opened his mouth to argue, then paused.

There _had_ been a strangely high number of working zebra crossings in Little Widdershins. And the library’s leaky roof had mysteriously mended itself after Spoons spent a night curled up on the returns desk. Also, it had been several hours since he’d heard a politician lying; he’d assumed they’d all gone on holiday again, but suddenly, he wasn’t so certain.

Spoons yawned. Magic swirled out in a sort purply. Floaty, wafting ooffle dust sort of way and settled on the roses, which bloomed politely.

“But… he’s a _cat_!”

“Yes,” said Miss Clogchops, “and you’ll find they’ve always ruled the world. They just got bored and left it to us for a while. They like a challenge. Anyway, he’s only paying his due.”

Quentin stared at the cat.

The cat blinked slowly and deposited a single gold coin at his feet by way of an example of magic probability.

Stamped upon it were the words: _“In Purr We Trust.”_

By the time Quentin looked up, the cat was gone.

And the next day, the three seven-foot deep potholes on Mulberry Lane healed with a sound like a satisfied sigh.