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There are days when I sit in my rocking chair in front of the fireplace, staring at the flames until I feel like they're burned into my eyes. I don't have energy, both physical and mental, to do anything else on those days, so I just curl up and sit still as a statue. If I stay quiet and motionless long enough, maybe I'll petrify and turn into stone, and then everything will be as it should be. That never happens, though.
It's one of those days when Buttercup starts to talk to me.
He sits on front of the fire, blocking my view and staring up into my face with his ugly eyes. Then he starts to meow, louder and louder until I'm covering my ears and yelling at him. “Shut up!”
I feed him something just so that his jaw is preoccupied, but then, he licks his haunches and stares at me. He almost has a kittenish expression on his ugly face, and then when he starts those annoyingly manipulative kitten mews, I know he's up to something.
I feed him everything Greasy Sae brings – bacon, sausages, liver spread. Those things never seem to satisfy him, though, and he keeps up those kitten meows for a few days. I try moving to another room, but he just keeps it up outside the door until I'm throwing it open and glaring at him. He makes me feed him again, but the noise doesn't ever stop.
Haymitch has a goose that escapes its coop a few days later. Buttercup brings it to my doorstep, its neck between his jaws. He drops it at my feet and meows loudly at me before he starts to bite off its feathers.
“Give me that,” I say, yanking the bird from him. “You're going to waste a perfectly good goose.”
I haven't hunted in weeks, maybe months, and cleaning the goose takes longer than I remember. But soon it's gutted and I'm feeding the entrails to Buttercup. Just like old times. He gives me an approving look, and I raise my eyebrow at him.
I skewer the goose with the metal spike that comes with the oven and stick it into the slot where it's supposed to go. Soon the bird is cooking, rotating slowly in the fire. The whole house smells delicious. I realize that this is the first day in a long series of days that I've done anything productive.
When the goose is cooked, I give Haymitch a portion. He doesn't even know that one of his geese escaped and goes to patch up the hole in the coop. Greasy Sae comes with him; that's good because I'm sure he can't fix anything with a glass of wine in one hand and a hammer in another.
Peeta also comes over to see what the delicious smell is, and I serve him some roasted goose. Buttercup sits beside him, and they seem to exchange a knowing look.
“This is really good, Katniss,” Peeta says after he's polished off a goose leg. “Where did you get the goose?”
“Buttercup brought it,” I say peevishly because I feel that Buttercup's telling Peeta something that he's trying to hide from me. “It escaped Haymitch's barn.”
“Really?” Peeta looks mildly surprised. “I thought this was your latest catch. I was starting to miss the squirrels, too . . .”
He stands up, rubs his stomach, and gives me a hug and a kiss good night before he goes. I watch him exit the house before I sit in the rocking chair, deep in thought.
Buttercup doesn't bother me until the next morning. I realize that I fell asleep in the chair. He meows for food and won't eat whatever Greasy Sae has brought. He normally doesn't mind her, but when she comes closer, he caterwauls and hides. He won't even eat the goose that I cooked last night.
“Stop being so wasteful,” I tell him, and he yowls loudly and won't stop. He doesn't shut up, running around until I follow him, intent on making him keep quiet somehow, when I find that he's perched himself on my father's old hunting jacket. Beside it is the bow and the quiver of arrows that I haven't used in so long.
I reach out to the jacket slowly. As if I've been waiting to do this, I slip it on and take the bow and arrows. “You're another mouth to feed, you know,” I tell him, and he actually stays quiet. I realize that this is his plan all along – playing the dependent, helpless cat, even when I know that he isn't, so that I'll come out of my stupor to feed him.
Just like I fed my mother. Just like I fed Prim.
I stare at him and he doesn't look away. He's allowing it to sink in. If I have no one or nothing to live for, I just won't, and this is what he's doing – giving me another reason. What a manipulative, evil cat.
“You're such a crazy cat,” I tell him, but I reach over and pet him. He looks pleased.
He comes down with me to the doorway. I know that I can simply buy food from the market and feed it to him myself, but he won't accept it – not until I start to do this again.
I open the door, and I'm surprised – Peeta has come to see me. He looks happy. In his arms is a squirming thing. It pokes its head out, and I realize that it's a cat. It's the most defeated cat I've seen after Buttercup. It has ticked brown and black fur, a missing eye, and a tail bent at an odd angle.
Peeta looks surprised, then even happier, when he sees what I'm wearing. “You're going hunting?”
I nod. “You got a cat?”
“Yeah,” Peeta says, holding it up for my inspection. “I'm calling her Coffee. I found her following Buttercup this morning, and she stopped in front of my house.”
“Coffee?” I pause. I suppose its fur looks like ground coffee. “That's yet another mouth to feed.”
Buttercup brushes against my leg. He's purring loudly. The cat in Peeta's arms is purring loudly too.
“You planned this,” I said to the cat weaving around my ankles. He doesn't answer. Okay, so maybe he did, and maybe he didn't. But I know what he wants me to do. “You sneaky cat.”
Peeta laughs, and I ignore him as I start my walk to the woods. It's a while before I notice that I'm actually smiling.