Tom adjusted the dial on his worn leather wristband, the familiar hum of temporal displacement vibrating through his bones. The air shimmered, and the gritty smell of 1970s New York replaced the sterile odor of his own time. His mission file, a single sheet of impossibly thin metal, glowed softly in his pocket: *Locate and retrieve asset "Elvis." Species: Felis catus. Primary identifier: A perfect black pompadour of fur between the ears.* He found the first clue in a Greenwich Village alley—a scratched LP of "Hound Dog" leaning against a trash can, a single black whisker resting on the vinyl. The trail led him through decades: a sighting at a 1956 Memphis radio station, a blurry photograph from a 1984 Las Vegas wedding chapel, a persistent rumor among stray cats in 2013 Tokyo about a feline who sang a mean blues riff. The paradoxes were the real problem. Saving a kitten from a tree in 1962 might erase a crucial witness from 1999. Every step required calculation, a balancing act on the tightrope of cause and effect. He wasn't just looking for a cat; he was preserving the delicate thread of reality that the creature's unexplained existence seemed to weave through history. Finally, the chrono-tracker spiked in a quiet suburban living room, 1978. There, sprawled on a shag carpet in a sunbeam, was a large tabby. And right on top of its head, defying all feline gravity, was that iconic, sleek black swirl. Elvis opened one green eye, looked directly at Tom, and let out a slow, deliberate *meow* that sounded suspiciously like the opening note of "Love Me Tender." Tom smiled, a time-weary but genuine expression. He reached into his coat, not for a weapon, but for a small pouch of premium catnip from the 22nd century. "Found you," he whispered. The mission was always about the retrieval. But as he observed the cat, a living anomaly peacefully napping across time, the real question settled in his mind: Should he? The cat purred, a deep, spacetime-rumble. The answer, it seemed, was far more complex than a simple yes or no.