As the fourth day of Chef Tab Tricolore’s absence brings no clues as to his whereabouts, many have begun asking what might in the past have been a forbidden question: is it possible that Tricolore’s “tabbiness” is somehow connected to his abrupt disappearance?

The celebrated chef and award-winning author went missing on December 2, after he left The Park to source ingredients for that night’s service at his fine dining restaurant, Klo.

There are few who have seen him since and yesterday’s update from Park Police left much to be desired. They are at a loss, it seems, to understand what might have happened to him or where he might be.

Increasingly, though, there have been whispers about a theory that is at once unpalatable and believable. Could it be, as many Park Animals are beginning to wonder, that Tricolore is the victim of anti-stripe prejudice?

“The timing makes me suspicious,” says Blandine Okapi. Okapi, who recently resigned from the Archon Transition Team, is acting president of Sisters and Brothers of the Narrow Band, a Park organization that offers assistance to striped Animals.

“After all, wasn’t it just the day before his disappearance that [Rodent Commoner reporter Gunnar Espen} Rotte published that despicable editorial?”

Rotte’s article expressed his lack of sympathy with striped and spotted Animals and the difficulties they encounter.

“I come from a species that is universally hated,” he wrote, implying that striped and spotted Animals were not the only ones who suffer prejudice.

Okapi is one of many who say they are worried that some Park Animals such as Rotte may have ties to anti-stripe “elements” outside The Park.

“It’s possible that some Animals who feel the same way as he does may have called in a few favours,” she says.

Park Police, however, say they have no evidence of such a situation.

“At this time, we have no reason to suspect any Park Animal of any wrongdoing,” says Chief Inspector Maurice Addax of the Park Police’s Specist and Hate Crimes Unit (SHCU).