Cats Triumphant! — Jody Lynn Nye

Cats Triumphant! presents eleven short stories of mystery, fantasy and imagination in which cats play major roles, ranging from not-quite-so-helpless victim to hero, but they are always clever and inventive, and so is Jody Lynn Nye's writing.
As Aesop knew, animals are a perfect storytelling vehicle for addressing the best and worst of humanity. Mahatma Gandhi remarked, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” And Jody does indeed know and love every twitch of the feline psyche and tail.
In “Purr Power,” the ancient Egyptian cat-goddess, Bastet, observes: “All humans fall into the service of the She-Cat sooner or later. There are simply those who recognize it from the first, and those who do not.”
Those who do not in Jody's stories pay dearly.
There is the hostile alien space fleet that is making hash out of the good guys' vessel . . . until the ship's cat decides to play its own game of cat-and-mouse.
There is the unfortunate human cat burglar who encounters pampered household residents Pretty Kitty and Sweetie Baby, to his eternal regret.
And there is the fantasy-world village that shows scant care for its abused, hard-working mousers which must answer to a visiting woman warrior-mercenary turned Pied Piper.