A Fur-midable Encounter [Feral]

The layout of this new territory was clearly designed with humans in mind, not cats. The spacing between buildings was downright rude, the density of people to mess with was depressing, and there weren’t nearly enough easy routes in and over and around the buildings. There were frustratingly few holes, whether rotted out or never repaired, fewer mice, and a chaotic horde of cats who didn’t know the first thing about street life.

Crow, on the other hand, knew all about taking care of himself, and had been doing so all of his life! In association with his adopted human, who wasn’t nearly as uncatlike as most humans and therefore tolerable. Plus she could tell the difference between a request for canned tuna and one for canned salmon. That was especially rare. That was why he kept her around!

The black cat stared up at the cat-width space far enough overhead to warrant special consideration. He kept Feral around, but now she was off doing some dumb human thing that he forgot two seconds before she told him because that was how little he cared and he was bored, so he was going to jump... up.....

There! He wiggled onto the balcony and took a moment to adjust his fur. He had excellent fur, flowy and glossy black but not so voluminous as to be difficult to maintain. There, a few licks and a shake and he was back in perfect form. Oh, there was a dent in his tail. Much better. Very evenly fluffy. Crow stretched, flexing each forepaw claw individually, gave his back legs a briefer stretch, and then pranced into a room that looked like Feral’s his, but clearly smelled like a different one.

A... fishy one.

Mmm, fish. WAIT WHAT WAS MOVING the cat flattened against the floor, silent as an owl come hunting for stray kittens in a park, and stared up at the bed. There it was again. It MOVED.

His tail was already wiggling. And his hips. He had acceptable grip. He had the angle and distance. It was an easy jump. Kitten’s play. Not even a challenge. Less of a challenge than the balcony. He took the leap!

And then bolted the instant he made full-force, four-footed contact with the flip-flopping tie.

If asked, by someone he would even bother hearing, Crow would not be able to explain why he had immediately bolted after pouncing. The first complication was that he was a cat.

At any rate, this cat now found himself in a cool, slippery place. Now that he was here, though, it really didn’t provide much cover. He barely fit, was entirely exposed from above to anything in the same room, and the surface was the complete opposite of his fur, other than both being respectably shiny. Still, it was smooth and comfy and smelled more like water than anything else. He crouched in the shallow hole and peered over the porcelain edge and out to the room he had just left. The fish-smell mingled with human-smell and clearly came from the large, fleshy, clothing-wearing creature flailing around on the ground. Obviously not a predator. Too big to bother with as prey. Hm. Food. It had been ages since he’d eaten. He should tell Feral that. Make her feed him. That was a good plan.

Flop.

Crow stared at the bit of fabric. It was moving again. The fish-person-whoever-didn’t-matter was moving it. The movement was... mesmerizing. Tempting. So tempting. He could already feel his claws sinking into the material, his teeth meeting through its thread-flesh, the thorough dead-ness that would result from his inevitable capture of the thing. He stretched forward, head sliding entirely out of the sink basin. If it kept moving so enticingly, it wouldn’t be long before he could no longer resist.

Unfortunately for Crow, the sink provided much less traction than the floor, and his leap was further complicated by the fluff between his toe beans. His feet slid out from beneath him as he jumped, turning it into a flop that barely cleared the counter. But he was a fast cat, and had most excellent reflexes! So he landed properly, on all four feet, and immediately sprinted past the tie, swiping at it with an agile clawed paw, and on toward the dark space under the bed.

There in the dark, Crow was confident in his ability to blend into the shadows, perhaps just a sleeker bit of dark. Deeper pitch in the black that was impervious to human eyes, and undoubtedly fish eyes too. He was probably quite visible, in all honesty, but he was nothing if not confident. So he watched, and he waited, and the fish-person moved but did not attempt to touch him. Clearly she was unable to see him in his excellent hiding place. The only question was when she would resume the -

Crackle.. ”Oi!”. The voice hissing from Crow’s collar was soft, female, and not quite yet annoyed.

... she didn’t really need him right now. He could still bat at the fabric some more.

”Now.”

Ugh, FINE. Crow stretched and popped out from under the bed like it was entirely his idea. He paused to let his tail swish along the mattress, eyeing the tie and its enticing temptation, but she was insistent. No, she could wait long enough for one more swipe. The cat pounced on the tie with a head-flail that struck fear into the heart of many a rodent, and must surely do the same to this fabric! But the very pointed cough from his collar carried plenty of warning itself, and Crow dismissed the toy as quickly as he had attacked, strolling off to sit by the hallway door expectantly, casting eye at the fish-person if she took too long to let him out or otherwise interfere with Feral’s request.

Fish-person was very slow. Irresponsibly slow. A muttering mrow beneath his breath served to inform Feral that the delay was not his fault. He’d get there when he got there.

Crow did neglect to inform his associated human that there might be a fish-person following him when he did get to Feral’s room, or wherever it was that she was by the time the fish-person finished doing whatever (Crow did not care about the precise details) it was she was dong with the weird cloth things humans insisted on wrapping themselves in. Making up for a lack of majestic fur, no doubt. Whatever the reason, the fish-person took so long that Crow was stretched out on the ground alongside the door, absently trying to fit the tips of his paws beneath it. Maybe he could open it himself. He was brilliant and strong. He was a most excellent feline. He didn’t depend on anyone, even very tall fish-people who could reach those round knobby things that let humans pull doors open and closed without squishing their clawless toe beans.

When the fish-person fiiiiiinally opened the door, Crow sprang to his feet like he’d never been off them, and sauntered into the hallway. Which way from here? That way. He could smell Feral now, and the big dumb mutts whose presence he generally tolerated. The dogs hadn’t been through recently, but Feral had, and the scent was fresher on one side than the other. One side of hallways and alleys for coming in, the other side for coming out, in key areas outside their den. That was the easy way of indicating if someone was in or out. Feral was in, and really very close to fish-person’s room. The fish-person that Crow was apparently ignoring all the way to the unmarked door he sat in front of.

Just before the knob clicked and twisted, Crow curved his tail in a suspiciously beckoning gesture, and then innocently strolled through the open door and between the feet of a short, scrawny girl dressed in little more than a sleeveless, full-legged black leotard. Her ears were curved forward, beginning to straighten as she realized that there was someone in the hallway, and the bemused annoyance her face had offered the cat vanished in favour of gold-eyed neutrality.

An especially perceptive individual might notice that Crow’s tail was still in the doorway, preventing Feral from closing the door.

She wanted to close the door and not deal with this. She really did. Feral had had both a tutoring session and a horrific amount of homework the previous night, only to be interrupted by a late-evening text message from Blue Weaver about a visit over the weekend. Which meant that Feral had clawed her way through another six hours of numbers and logic and ethics and trying to memorize indicators of this, that, and those other things, at which point she had fallen asleep on her homework until Quick woke her up at dawn for a bathroom break.

She’d tried to finish the homework after that, but neither made progress nor slept any more. Food and a container of caffeine rivalling the size of her head had helped a bit, but then she’d found out that Blue Weaver wouldn’t be coming until the next day at the earliest. And now Crow had brought some... <fish-person>... to her door. And Crow was not letting her close the door.

Feral fought to neither yawn nor rub her eyes before this taller stranger. She nudged the cat with a bare toe, but he just twisted around to fix his fur. His tail was still in the way. She tried moving his tail directly. He put it back before she could start to close the door. She tried again. So did he.

Fine. Feral looked a bit more closely at the Crow-called fish-person. ”Um, hello?”. An astute observer might match her voice to that over the radio, though speakers never did justice to voices. ”Did Crow get into trouble?” Priorities first. And checking in about problems seemed to make people assume there wouldn’t be problems or something like that.

Good. Crow was generally the most troublesome of the lot, if his disregard for rules seemed to be more likely to go unnoticed than, say, if she behaved the way he did. Sure, there were plenty of dumb rules she didn’t want to follow, but, unlike Crow, she understood consequences. Like losing her place in this school. And her source of long-term income. And food. And shelter. She’d be back on the streets, only this time she would be the one in charge of protecting herself, as well as her pack. She wouldn’t be alone, but she would be on her own.

So to hear that the bratty cat had somehow saved someone with his brattiness, with the guts to meow his agreement, threw Feral for a bit of a loop. That it was from boredom escaped her, and she stared at the overly pleased feline. ”Crow saved you?” The cat in question sniffed at the blatant disbelief in Feral’s tone, ”How’d he do that? He hasn’t even been catching mice lately, much less anything dangerous. If there’s even anything dangerous here.”/

Besides the people with the power to take things away...

Or the people who made the food. Sources of food were very powerful, after all, and deserved at least momentary respect. Even if she pocketed food when she was sure enough that no one was watching or would notice. Her fingers were still light and quick, and loose overclothes could hide many things.

From... boredom.

Perhaps she should have been listening more, and in her own head less. It was so hard sometimes, continually paying attention to people who weren’t largely ignoring her. She was trying, though. Like right now, she could tell (once she had the clue of boredom) that this maybe-not-mammal girl was making a joke. Contrary to occasional belief, Feral did have a sense of humour. It was just often secondary to more important things. Right now, though, there wasn’t really anything more pressing than this conversation, odd though that was, now that Crow wasn’t unaccounted for.

So. Joke. Saved from boredom. Boredom as hunter for ignorant students. Boredom-hunter defeated by Crow.

She could continue this joke. She just had to -

The growing hint of amusement vanished far faster from Feral’s face than it had appeared, leaving her expression carefully neutral and professional. She knew the rules. She knew how she fit into the rules, how the rules applied to her and her situation. She knew she was not breaking the rules (at least, not in a way that she didn’t have permission to do, which didn’t exactly make it rule-breaking). But that didn’t make it easier to face questions from a new source. Or questions at all.

When Feral answered, it was when her voice was thoroughly controlled and not stressed. ”I have permission. My pack is part of my Quirk. The school knows about them.”. The air was cold in her lungs, but not on her skin. Not a change in the air itself, then. Just her. All internal. Stress. All caught up in her tail too, stiff enough to feel the ache in the clenched muscles at the base of her spine. She forced a wave through it, loosening the muscles bit by bit. It was just a question from someone who hadn’t heard about her or met her yet. This was the meeting part.

Feral let out the breath she’d ended up holding, softer than a sigh, and Crow finally deigned to accept the scratching, twisting to align the best part of his back with the offered fingers.