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George walked down the stairs into the kitchen and stopped.
There was a cat on the counter.
It had big, wide eyes, and greyish brown stripes. Its chest fur was white.
George did not own a cat.
It was staring at George with the same expression George thought he was probably staring at it with.
What are you doing here? they both thought.
“Get out,” George said loudly, and the cat sprinted out of the open window into the light drizzling rain.
Later that night, he and Clay were sitting on the roof, looking at the stars. They weren’t quite as vibrant as they were out in the wilds, but clear enough to be seen.
“There was a cat in the kitchen this morning,” George said conversationally.
“Really?” Clay said mildly.
“Yeah. No clue how it got in. I could have sworn I shut the window properly,” he said. He glanced over at Clay, but it was too dark to make out much of anything.
“Weird,” he said, looking back up at the stars.
He came down the next morning and the cat was back, window wide open and letting in the smell of wet grass.
They were entering the winter now, and had torrents of cold rain for the last several nights. He thought that was probably why the cat kept getting in. He was sure that he’d been shutting the windows properly though, so he wasn’t sure how something without opposable thumbs kept pushing the window open.
He looked down at it, its claws embedded in the already scratched-up leg of the dining table. The cat blinked up at him with big, wide eyes, frozen in place.
“What are you doing here?” George asked. The cat stared up at him, and slowly dragged its claws down the leg of the table, loudly scratching.
“Oi!” George said, and lunged for it. The cat shot away, jumping up onto the counter and knocking a jar of half-pickled rabbits feet over and smashing it on the ground. It bolted out the open window.
George groaned, gagging a little at the smell of vinegar and rabbit.
“George?” Clay called from the top of the stairs, “What’s up?”
“That stupid cat was back,” he said, getting out a mop. “Little devil. It’s like, wrecked the kitchen.”
He heard Clay stifling giggles from the top of the stairs and felt his mood sour a little more.
The thing was...
George woke up to an open window and a cat napping in the kitchen sink, getting hair everywhere.
George woke up to an open window and the cat meowing loudly. It had gotten its head stuck in an empty jar. George laughed for a bit and then freed it, sending it sprinting out of the window.
George woke up to no cat, but an open window and curtains that were now closer to thread than cloth.
When George came home that night, he did two things. The first was move all his jars to the highest shelves, to the point where it was inconvenient for him to reach any of them. The second was try and attach a more secure lock to their window.
Clay came home as he was in the middle of securing the latch.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“This window keeps blowing open or something and letting that cat in,” he said, tightening the last screw. He latched the window shut with some difficulty and shook the windows a little. They didn’t open. Satisfied with his work he hopped down from the counter. Clay was leaning on the wall watching him, mask still over his face.
“What’s up?” George asked.
“Nothing,” Clay said, taking off his mask and sticking it in his coat pocket. “Long day.”
George nodded, kneeling down to light the furnace. “Yeah. We’re really busy making medicine at the moment. We’re going into cold season. We had our first batch of sick kids come in today. One got snot all over the bench. It was super gross, but I made one of the teenagers clean it up, so it was fine.”
Clay laughed lowly. They fell into an easy silence as George lit and stocked the furnace.
“You’re not allergic to anything, right?”
“No.”
“Nice. Me neither,” Clay said.
George glanced over at him, standing up and shutting the furnace. Clay blinked at him, laughing nervously. “What?”
“Just kind of random to ask about allergies,” George said. Clay shrugged defensively.
“I was just asking.”
George let it drop.
A few days passed without George seeing the cat again, but he thought he saw evidence of its return now and then. He thought he saw claw marks on the countertop, bits of cat hair on the sofa. He told himself he was imagining it.
Then one morning, the rain falling heavily, he went down into the kitchen to see the window wide open.
The door to the pantry was wide open as well, and he heard gross chewing noises. He looked in and saw the cat with a huge cut of mutton in its mouth, chewing down as quick as it could.
“Hey!” George yelled, but the cat was unimpressed. It just blinked at him and kept chewing.
“Shoo, go on!” he tried. He clapped his hands loudly. The cat flinched backwards further into the pantry, dragging the cut of mutton with it.
He had to admit it was kind of funny.
“Come on, you little-“ he said, reaching in, and the cat swiped out and scratched him on the arm. It hurt a little, but George had been stabbed before, and in comparison it was nothing. He grabbed the cat under its arms, it trying to hiss around the mutton in its mouth. He scooped up the cat and carried it at arms length over to the window, setting it down on the sill and shutting it as quickly as he could. He locked it shut.
The cat just stared at him, getting wet. George felt a little mean.
The thing was, he didn’t hate cats. He quite liked them. They were funny and cute and had a lot of personality. This one was especially full of personality. If things had been different, he would have probably just let the cat do what it wanted.
But George was also a realist.
“-so I’m just like, ‘ugh fine, whatever’, and let it have the stupid mutton, and let it out,” George was saying one night as he cleaned the dishes, “and it just stared at me judgementally! It was like, ‘um, this is my house, how dare you.’”
Clay laughed.
“We should probably just let it live here at this point,” Clay said, sitting up on the counter. George laughed.
“It would probably be easier,” he said, “I can’t believe you haven’t seen it yet.”
Clay shrugged. “I wish. I love cats. They’re all like, soft, and little, and cute. Like-“
George threw the wet tea towel he’d been using as a drying cloth at his face. “Don’t even think about it.”
Clay laughed and threw the towel back at him. George ducked under it, anticipating Clay’s antics.
“Anyway, I think next time it shows up you should just let it stay,” he said, “since it seems so like, determined to live here.”
“Nah,” George said, “who would look after it?”
“Us!”
“We both have lives, Clay. We’re both at work from sunrise to sunset. We can’t look after a cat. It would just like, get lonely and destroy everything we own. And it would knock over all my brewing stuff. I've already lost two jars to its nonsense." He glanced over, and saw that Clay was looking a little downtrodden. "Besides," he said, drying off the last cup, "someone must be taking care of it. It looks really well fed.”
“Awww,” Clay said, pouting, “don’t call her fat!”
George flicked water at him. “Ugh, don’t make that face. You look like a melted puppet.”
It was the middle of another stormy night, and George jolted awake at the sound of a window slamming open downstairs. He sat up in bed and blinked blearily, trying to work out what had woken him up.
He heard voices in the kitchen and suddenly was much more awake. Silently, he crept out of bed, grabbing his crossbow from where it hung by his door, and smoothly walked down the stairs.
There was a light on in the kitchen, the door slightly ajar. A lamp was on, maybe, or a torch. Voices as well, too quiet for him to hear. He mounted his crossbow to his shoulder and kicked open the door.
Clay was standing there in his pyjama pants, protectively clutching a blanket to his chest. George just blinked at him for several long moments, lowering the crossbow.
“Clay? What on earth?” he said. He suddenly felt exhausted again.
“I was uh. Thirsty,” he said, and even in the low glow of the lantern light he knew he was lying. George looked over his shoulder at the window, wide open and letting the rain in. Clay glanced over his shoulder as well.
“Oh, yeah! Yeah, I heard it open. I saw the window open, and-“
Whatever excuse Clay had been trying to formulate was interrupted by a petulant meow. They both froze, and a little damp, grey face poked itself out from the blankets cradled against Clay’s chest. It looked at George and meowed again.
“Aww,” Clay cooed, gently scratching under its chin, and the cat shut its eyes in contentment, purring loud enough for George to hear several feet away.
“Have you been letting the cat in?” he asked. It was too early for this.
“No,” Clay said, and George knew he was lying again. He just kept looking at Clay. He raised a single eyebrow.
“Only when the weather’s bad! It feels mean to leave her out when it’s all windy and rainy and cold. Besides, look at that face,” he said, squishing the cat’s face a little. George just stared at him in disbelief.
The cat meowed again. George refused to admit that it was cute.
“Clay,” he said, “we can’t keep a cat. It's a menace. It would destroy our whole house. ”
“Patches wouldn’t break anything!” Clay said defensively, cuddling the cat closer.
“You named it?”
“I-“
“Oh my god, I’m going back to bed,” George said, turning and leaving, “just…send it on its way in the morning. We can’t keep it.”
He climbed the stairs and didn’t look back.
The next morning, the cat was gone, and Clay was sulking.
George tried to tell himself it was for the best.
A couple days later it poured with rain. When he went down to the kitchen in the morning expecting to find the cat with its head stuck in a jar.
The window was shut. No cat.
He tried not to feel too bad about it.
A few days after that, Clay stopped sulking. The window stayed firmly shut. The kitchen stayed quiet.
George told himself he didn’t miss it.
The day after that saw their first dusting of snow, and George had gotten caught out in it without a coat. He shuffled into the empty kitchen, shivering.
The cat was probably fine.
George was sick. Between getting caught out in bad weather and the various sick kids coming into the Cleric’s every day, it was really inevitable.
He wasn’t terribly sick, but his nose was congested, and he had a splitting headache, and he felt too hot and too cold all at once. His throat felt like someone had scraped it with sandpaper, and he couldn’t go an hour without coughing up phlegm.
He couldn’t go in to work. He was staying at home.
“I’m sure I could-“ Clay was saying, strapping on his equipment, but George waved him away.
“I can look after myself,” he said from his position on the couch. He was wrapped in a blanket from head to toe.
“Yeah, but-“
“Clay, seriously, don’t worry. It’s just a cold. I’m sure you’ll catch it in a week or so if we’re living together,” he said, burrowing further into the blankets. “Go. Tell the clerics I’m taking the day off. Tell Sapnap I said hi. Bring back some mutton and carrots or something for stew.”
Clay hovered by the door briefly, then shrugged on his bright yellow winter coat.
“Okay,” he said, putting on his boots. “Feel better soon. See you!”
“Bye,” George croaked. Clay waved goodbye and pulled the mask down over his face, shutting the door firmly behind him.
George coughed wetly and groaned.
This sucked.
He pulled a big pot of water over to the fire and waited for it to boil. He probably had something lying around that would make a decent tea, but eventually decided he couldn’t be bothered to go looking for it.
As he watched the pot, he noted the total silence of the house. Without Clay clomping around and getting up to mischief it was really kind of lonely.
George was used to being busy. He’d spent months doing nothing but walk, eat, and survive, and that had kept him busy. Then he’d spent his days here in and out of the Cleric’s, making potions, setting bones, organising supplies.
This was the first time he’d had nothing to do in a very long time.
He got bored very quickly.
Darryl had given him a book which he took out and read, getting through a handful of pages before giving up and deciding to stew in his own misery on the couch.
He was regretting telling Clay to go. At least that would have kept him entertained. Maybe a bit less lonely.
He glanced out the window and saw that it had started snowing. Something stirred in his chest.
He’d kind of been missing the cat. It was annoying, and kept eating their stuff, and their couch would never be the same.
But it had been cute.
And it had been kind of funny watching it get stuck in stuff it couldn’t get out of.
And he did feel bad about dooming it to a life outside. Especially now winter was here.
He heard a muffled meow and looked over to the window again.
Patches was back, sitting miserably on the window sill, staring in with her big, wide eyes. She was covered in snow. Behind her, lit by the glow of the fire, snow continued to fall, heavily, obscuringly.
They watched each other for a long while. Patches meowed again, pitifully, and George huffed a sigh.
“Okay,” he muttered. "Okay."
He wasn’t a monster.
He pulled himself to his feet and shuffled over to the window, opening it just enough for the cat to squeeze through.
It crawled in and hopped down off the counter, rubbing its face on the edges of their furniture, covering it with her scent. George shut the window again.
“Don’t be naughty,” he told her. She just meowed back at him.
George wandered back over to the couch, flopping down on it and wrapping himself back up in his blankets. Curled up in front of the fire, as snow drove against the window outside, he felt weirdly cozy.
He let out a long series of wet, hacking coughs and grimaced at the pain in his throat. Patches poked her head out from around the sofa, blinking up at him.
“I’m sick,” he told her. She didn’t respond. He laid down, curling up tighter in his blankets and watched the fire crackle, feeling sorry for himself.
Patches put her two front paws up on the sofa.
“No,” he said. Undeterred, she jumped up and rubbed her face against George’s, purring loudly.
He sat up, laughing, but she followed, putting her paws, claws slightly extended on George’s front, rubbing his face with her freezing cold, soaking wet one. Still laughing, he gingerly unhooked her claws from the front of his shirt, trying to set her down on the floor. She squirmed around, climbing back up onto the sofa, wiping her face on George’s shirt.
He laughed and lay back down, Patches curling up on the sofa near his face. He thought about how this was probably getting cat hair everywhere, but he didn’t have the energy to care too much anymore.
He stroked her gently, her fur soft and wet against his hand. She purred loudly, like a rumble of distant thunder. He laughed.
He unrolled himself from his blanket a little, settling some of it over Patches.
It was really cold outside, after all.
Clay trudged through the snow back home, feeling more and more worried with each step.
George was okay. He was tucked up in front of the fire with plenty of food and water and blankets. He wasn’t worried about George.
There was no way that Patches would be okay out here in this weather. She hadn’t been at any of her usual spots; the bridge he’d first found her, the hedges he usually left scraps for her in, the gutter outside Darryl’s house…
So she’d either found someone to take her in or-
He didn’t want to think about alternatives. He waded through the snow, doing his best to kick it out of his way and off the path, wiping it off his mask.
He pushed open the door to the living room and shuffled in, trying to knock the snow off his boots and shoulders as quietly as he could. He glanced around.
The room was illuminated by the low glow of a dying fire. That was a little concerning, but he could hear George gently wheezing on the sofa, under a pile of blankets. He smiled a little.
He set his bag of mutton, potatoes, and carrots on the counter and tried to quietly make his way over to the fire, setting a couple of logs on it and coaxing it back into a roaring, warm flame. He warmed his fingers by it for a few moments before he heard George stir behind him. He glanced over his shoulder to see George blinking blearily out at him from his nest of blankets. Clay took his mask off and pushed it into his pocket.
“Sorry,” he said quietly, “I didn’t mean to wake you up.” George just shook his head, starting to sit up.
“It’s fine,” he croaked, his voice hoarse and scratchy, “I’ve been napping all day anyway.”
As George sat up, the blankets slipped off a little curl of grey fur, and Clay felt his face light up.
“Patches!” he cooed involuntarily. The relief at seeing her safe and warm shot through his fingertips. The cat woke up and stretched, claws digging into the sofa, mouth wide open in a yawn. She jumped nimbly off the sofa and came to rub up against Clay, purring loudly. Clay petted her, feeling her soft fur against his calloused hands, muttering nonsense babytalk to her. He glanced over at George, who just coughed a little. Clay raised an eyebrow.
George crossed his arms. “She showed up at the window in the middle of a snowstorm,” he said, “it’s your fault for naming her and making me feel bad.”
Clay giggled, scooping up Patches and cradling her to his chest. George coughed again and Clay winced in sympathy.
“You want some stew?” he asked, setting the cat down. George nodded, settling back against the cushions. Patches wormed out of Clay’s grasp and hopped back up, situating herself next to George on the sofa.
George reached out and stroked her gently.
“So,” Clay said, turning away and adding another log to the fire, voice hopeful, teasing, cajoling, “we have a cat now?”
There were a couple of moments of silence.
“This is all your fault for naming her,” George griped, and Clay laughed.