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She's awoken by a subtle nudge at her legs, and then a firmer shake. "Ruby," Blake whispers, quiet in the darkness. She peers over the edge of her team mate's bunk, seeming oddly shy, though her voice shows no sign of wavering. "Wake up. Ruby."
She rolls over, still half asleep. "I'm up," she says, yawning. "I'm up, I'm up. What is it?"
Blake hesitates, drawing down a little so that only her eyes peek over the side of the mattress. "Um," she says. Thinks about it. Plows ahead. "…Do you want to see a six-toed cat?"
"Do I?" Yang answers from her bunk, whipping off her blankets. It startles Blake enough that she almost slips, her foot knocking against the bedframe and waking up Weiss as well.
So that was how the four of them broke curfew to sneak out of their dorms, Blake taking the lead.
Beacon feels like a different creature at night. During daylight hours, faculty and students and staff swarmed in a constant stream of energy, everyone busy, everyone on their way to something. Though they weren't doing anything wrong, Ruby still feels the thrill of danger as they sneak past late night security guards, hushing their giggles and finding the right building.
Blake climbs up the fire escape, gesturing for them to follow, and Ruby activates her semblance to leap two stories higher than her. Eager to get to what Blake had promised, she reaches the roof well before anyone else, her petals swarming around her before vanishing faster than a winter morning's breath. Immediately she notices a small dishbowl and a shabby cardboard box, stuffed with towels. Near it are three empty milk gallons, their tops split in half and filled with murky dirty water. The only other way to access this roof is through a single locked door, a little outcropping of building jutting up like a sore tooth.
"Where's the kitty?" she demands when Blake reaches her, having already searched the top of the roof twice.
Blake rolls her eyes, reaching into her backpack for a can of wet cat food. She brings it to the dish bowl, making sure to clatter it a few times. Like a shot, a little white shape darts out from who-knows-where, giving Blake a gurgly mew. Crouching down in front of it, Blake pets the cat while it eats. "Hey mama," she says softly. Her nails scratch behind its— her, Ruby corrects herself mentally— ears.
"Oh! It is a conch cat," Weiss says, impressed. "How cute."
Blake blinks up at her. "I always thought they were called Hemingway cats? Like the author?" Gently reaching around the cat's belly, Blake picks her up. The cat protests the interruption of her meal but doesn't bite or claw as Blake holds her upright on her hind paws. Hooking a thumb under one of her front paws, Blake displays the extra toe.
"Oh my god," Ruby says, desperately trying to maintain some sort of dignity and failing. "I'mgonnacry. Look at her little feet, Yang, they're like mittens, aaaaaaahh—"
Sitting on the floor next to Blake, Yang strokes the top of the cat's head, all the way down her spine. "Oooh Blake," she says, grinning wickedly. "You're being a bad girl. It's against school rules to own a pet, you know."
"It is?" Almost instinctively, Blake looks to Weiss again, setting down the cat with the guilt of a robber caught. If anyone was going to cause a fuss about the cat, it'd be her. "I don't really keep her. I just noticed her up here a lot, so I brought food." She pulls her knees to her chest, mumbling. "Cause she was so skinny…"
Weiss tsks, under her breath. "We need to get her fixed," is all she says. "That's the responsible thing to do with a cat we don't intend to keep indoors. The last thing we need is a big horde of kittens running around—"
"Too late," Blake says, petting the cat again.
Grinning with dawning delight, Ruby wiggles in place, her arms wrapped around herself to grab onto the edges of her cape. "No!" she says in disbelief.
"No," Weiss says, but with a completely different intonation.
Blake grins back at her. "Well, there's a reason I call her 'mama'…."
Ruby loves the stray cat more than any of them. It's not surprising— she has a lot of love to spare.
They all take care of the cat, whom they continue to affectionately dub "Mama". Though Blake had been sure to habitually feed her, and even went as far as to take her to the vet to be checked for heartworm and general health, it is Weiss who makes sure they kept her clean. And it's Yang who makes sure her water was always fresh. And it's Ruby who treats her like a pet.
She runs around the school, diving into the dumpsters behind the workshops where students trained in blacksmithing and design, taking out boards of wood and ripping apart pillows to construct a bonafide cathouse for Mama. After the first rainstorm leaves her worried sick, she makes sure it's waterproof. After Weiss points out it's too large and might attract attention, she redesigns it to be smaller and sleek without compromising on Mama's comfort.
For whatever reason, their rooftop secret is never discovered until the day Mama has her kittens.
It's early morning when Ruby and Blake go to visit her, they hear them squeaking in the cat house. Excitedly, Ruby eases off the detachable roof to look inside.
There are six, ranging from gray to black to white like Mama, and one creamy ginger with ghost marks on his face. They wriggle and whine like little aliens, their movements halting and unfamiliar as they learn the feel of their own limbs, and the world outside. All of them except the ginger are polydactyl.
A bit of time passes.
Blake wordlessly and tenderly bundles them up in a clean towel, pretending not to notice Ruby weeping on the other side of the rooftop, sitting near the edge with Mama and the last kitten on her lap. She had found her dead not too far from the other kittens, still straining to give birth to number seven. Number seven looks a lot like Mama, her white fur matted from afterbirth and dried blood.
It's been long enough, though, and Blake hates to do this, but she has to. "Ruby, I need help getting the kittens down. I only have two hands and I'm scared to… Ruby?" She looks over her shoulder, lips twisting as the remaining kittens begin mewling for attention.
She sniffs, wetly. "Yeah."
"I'm sorry, Ruby."
"Yeah. No, yeah." Clearing her throat, she hunches over, wiping her cheeks off on her shoulder before she learns it's not enough. She has to let go of the cats, put them down so she can pull up the hem of her blazer and dry her eyes. Once she's as composed as she can make herself she stands up and turns around, going to Blake and taking three of the kittens.
"Lookit 'em," she says later, in their dorm room. She holds one up to her red-rimmed eyes, scrutinizing it. Weiss is holding onto another, the rest of them squirming helplessly inside a shoebox. "They're still blind, even. Little fuzzy jellybeans."
Yang sits on the edge of Blake's bed, hands on her knees. "This sucks," she says, the only one not willing to touch them. They were too tiny, she said. Too fragile in her large hands. They make her nervous. "What are we gonna do? I was reading about kittens all week cause Mama looked like she was ready to pop, but I didn't think I'd actually have to do any of that stuff." A kitten screams again. "Like, listen to that. These little dudes need to eat."
Sounding tired, Weiss runs a slightly damp, warm towel over the kitten in her hands. "I already called all the shelters in the area," she says. "They're full to bursting with kittens this time of year. And they're all…" She looks uncomfortable, putting the kitten back with its siblings. "You know. They weren't very helpful."
"Well, then it's obvious." Getting up, Ruby holds the kitten close to her chest, heading out of the room without another word. The others exchange confused glances before Weiss gets up and says she'll go with Ruby, she was late for class anyway.
Ruby marches straight across campus, and if Weiss was about to ask what her plan was it died as soon as she noticed her destination: faculty offices. "Oh Ruby, you can't be serious." She has to jog a bit to keep up with their leader. "Pets aren't allowed on campus! What are you going to do, waltz in and ask permission? Like we'll be the exception if we're sad enough? As if our team doesn't have enough rumors about special treatment, between the girl accepted two years early and the one with the family connections! Are you listening?"
Ruby isn't listening.
She goes straight to Ozpin's office, knocking loudly, Weiss at her heels. When Ozpin says to enter she does, the kitten still tucked between her hands, close to her chest.
"Sir," she says, eyes sweeping over the room once in idle curiosity. She realizes this is the first time she's been in here. It's not as spacious or grand as she imagined, looking quite homely for the headmaster of such a prestigious academy. He sits behind his desk, the very picture of patience, and a small part of her is soothed by simply his presence. Ozpin had always been a guiding light to her during her stay at Beacon. "I'm sorry to bother you, but there's a problem with my team."
She shows him the kitten.
"Ah," he says.
Weiss nudges her in the ribs, terrified of scholastic repercussions but having her back regardless. Halting and stumbling over her words, Ruby tries to explain herself. "We called— I mean we checked— we found this kitten— and Ma— the mother's dead. And we'd give them to a shelter but there aren't any empty, but they told us how to take care of them ourselves and I think we can do it—" she sucks in a huge breath, closing her eyes and barreling forward. "Except kittens need to be fed and tended to really often so I'm not asking to break the rules, sir, I don't want to keep it, we just want to take care of it until we can safely send it somewhere else, and basically I'm asking can I take it to class as long as it's quiet and doesn't bother anyone?"
Ozpin waits to see if she is done.
She's done.
Stressed and starving, the kitten begins mewling again in earnest. He cries in between Ruby's hands, searching against her palms in an ancient instinct; searching for a place to latch his mouth onto. Ozpin's eyes flash with something unrecognizable as he reaches down to rummage around in his desk.
"So yes, sir," Ruby continues, throat dry as Ozpin apparently ignores her. "I just need permission to go to Vale to get some items and—?"
Ozpin pulls out a can of kitten formula and some droppers, setting them on his desk with an expectant air about him. He holds out one hand, palm up, fingers gesturing. Ruby still holds onto the kitten, not understanding until suddenly, she does.
"Oh!"
She hands him the kitten, trying not to stare.
"Thank you," he says, cracking open the can and pulling out a careful measure of formula with the dropper. Holding the kitten with extreme tenderness, he coaxes the animal to begin eating, looking as natural as if he did this every day.
"Uh," Weiss says. "What?"
Shrugging loosely, Ozpin sits back in his desk chair, still feeding the kitten. "We had a big stray problem not too long ago," he says. "Kids would feed them out of the kindness of their hearts, but obviously, we couldn't be known as a wild cat sanctuary. So we caught them, fixed them, and released them until they passed of old age." Looking down at the kitten in his hands, he smiles dryly. "I guess a few slipped through the cracks. …Breathe, little one," he adds, softer, addressing the kitten under his breath as he pulled the stopper back to refill it.
The main question still hasn't been answered, though. "So we can keep them?" Ruby asks, excitedly, before rectifying it with, "I mean, until they're old enough to get fixed and adopted and stuff?"
Ozpin's eyebrows furrow. "'Them'?"
"There are six, sir," Weiss explains.
He closes his eyes in exasperation, seeking patience. "…Of course there are."
"Six goddamn babies," Yang says, feeding one of the kittens with an unimpressed expression. They hadn't lost any of their charm or helpless fragility, but after the first two weeks of constant care on top of school and trying to maintain a social life, she is more than a little jaded by them. It might not have been so bad if she could have slapped a diaper on them and called it a day, but kittens are apparently too stupid to know when to pee and crap on their own, and needed stimulation from a wet cloth. It is a decidedly unglamorous care process. "Six. Mama cat, rest in peace, but why did you have to be such a slut? I'm too young to be a teen mother."
Lying on her back on their dorm room floor, with the other five kittens resting on her chest, Ruby tilts her head up to shoot Yang a dirty glare. "Yang! How could you talk about Mama that way?"
Wrapped up in her homework, Weiss still finds enough interest in the conversation to twist in her chair and add, "Yeah. Have a little respect for the dead, Yang."
Yang just rolls her eyes, cleaning some of the dribble from the kitten's mouth once she is done feeding him. "I'm not disrespecting," she says, idly planting a kiss on top of the kitten's head. It's the ginger one, the only one in the litter who didn't inherit Mama's polydactyl paws. "I got mad respect for a woman who manages to wrap three other kitty daddies around her extra pinkie. But I am allowed to complain that it sucks sometimes that we got saddled with them, all right?"
It also gets them a lot of attention, both good and bad. The first time Ruby tries to surreptitiously feed her cats in class, the ones not being fed at the time keep squalling until she has to run outside, red faced. She gets a stern talking to after she slinks back into class for disrupting lecture. And while everyone wants to pay attention to you when you pack three newborn kittens into your hood so your arms aren't laden with a shoebox as well as your textbooks, it doesn't last long. Others are jealous and wonder what makes Team RWBY special enough for the 'privilege' of owning a pet on campus. The bitterness has a way of sticking around a lot longer than the admiration.
She stops trying to explain that their ownership of the kittens is only temporary after a while, but Weiss still gets into bristling arguments with smart-mouthed students every other day.
"They're just cats," Blake mutters under her breath the first time someone tries to hassle over it. "Get a life." And somehow that is the extent of that for her.
There are four boys— a gray one, the ginger, a solid black one and one of the mixed kittens with white bellies and black backs. The other mixed cat is a girl, as is the creamy white one who almost looks like Mama, if it wasn't for the hint of tabby stripes on her legs and face. Ruby takes care of the mixed cats and the white one, while Weiss chose the little gray boy and Blake ironically was saddled with the solid black one.
For all her complaints, Yang adores the kitten she chose to take care of, the ginger with only five toes. She names him Nora Jr. at first before discovering his gender, at which point she is torn equally between "Spitfire" and "Aron"— Nora backwards. It tickles the original Nora to no end when she hears about it, and she's the one who unintentionally gives him his final name.
"Hi Junior," she croons to him every morning at breakfast. She sits next to Yang to link arms with her and rests her head on her taller friend's shoulder, watching him like they are his proud parents. Junior, for his part, wobbles around on the table and meows until someone holds him again. Yang develops the bad habit of just keeping him on her chest when she needs her hands free.
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Everyone begs Blake to name the black one after herself. Begs. She ignores them all, not wanting to name him anything yet, though she is partial to "Poe". That is, until the day she hears a shout from above as she hangs around her bunk, quietly reading. Yang has all the kittens on her mattress, also busy with a book, and doesn't notice "Poe" tumbling over the side until it's too late.
She shouts on instinct— "Mayday! Cat! Get the cat!" and Blake whips one hand out and catches him before his small body hits the ground and that's how Mayday gets his name.
Weiss immediately knows what to name her cat: Grau Schnee, of course. Ruby also has no trouble with her cats. The two black and white ones get named Tuxedo Mask and Oreo. The white one is Hemingway.
"Hemingway the Hemingway cat," Ruby says, grinning at her and holding her over her head.
Their ears twitch and begin to stand on their own. They open their eyes, foggy blue at first before settling into yellow and greens and blacks. They walk more, run more, play more, and develop personalities. Mayday grows strong enough to perch on Blake's shoulder on his own, and after that she no longer has to carry her shoebox around. His weight becomes natural, his quiet presence a constant comfort. Grau could always be seen tucked into Weiss' arm or in her purse, asleep or resting against her. Junior still has an unfortunate proclivity to rest on the boob shelf.
Three little heads poke out of Ruby's hood as she walks around campus, comfortable to remain as marsupials for now. They're getting almost too heavy for it, but Ruby doesn't mind.
It gets harder and harder to realize one day they're going to have to let them go.
A month passes.
"Hey fatty," Yang says to Junior, trying to keep him still as he crawls all over her. "It's lunch time, nerd, quit running around."
Ruby doesn't think Yang has much to complain about, what with the three of her cats vying for her attention, but she doesn't say anything. "Think we should start weaning them soon?"
Junior bites Yang right on the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. "Ah! Ow. Asshole." To Ruby, she adds, "Maybe? They seem almost ready." Toilet training isn't going very well. If they had an adult cat around to show the kittens how to behave, their job might be a little easier, but alas. "Wanna try?"
Ruby decides to start the process, putting the formula in a bowl instead of hand feeding them anymore. Tuxedo Mask gets it faster than the rest. The other two and Junior crowd around him at once until Ruby has to break them up again, putting out another bowl and monitoring them to make sure they stayed two per plate. "Cats are so dumb," she says, stroking Oreo along her spine. She crouches behind them, arms wrapped around her knees. She watches them lap at the bowl, with fondness and sadness.
Yang snorts. "Everybody's dumb when they're a baby, Ruby."
"Yeah," she says, "Well, cats are extra dumb." She lowers her head, sighing quietly. "Dumb, dumb, dumb…."
Resting her palm against her face, Ruby takes a deep breath. Tries to hold it in.
Lets it out, in sudden, physical pain.
"…Why'd she have to die like that, Yang?" she says at last, grinding the heel of her palm against her eyes. "Why'd she have to be so dumb? Blake told me she was probably too old to be having babies. Why'd she do it anyway? We should have kept her with us in the dorm room when we saw how pregnant she was. Or took her to a shelter. I should have taken better care of her."
She loses her balance, the world too heavy as Yang comes to sit beside her, holding her by her shoulders. Sitting down ungracefully, she tries not to cry any more than she already has. Not over this. Not over a cat. "I—it's all my fault. If I had been there…" she says, trying to laugh it off still, smiling through her tears, laughing helplessly. "If I wasn't too late— if I wasn't always too late—"
She isn't crying over the cat anymore. Yang wonders if she ever actually had been.
"Why'd she have to die like that, Yang?" she says again, shoulders shaking violent and hard.
"I dunno, baby," Yang murmurs, running her hands through her hair, across her face and neck and back, trying to touch more of her, like she could leech the pain away if she was there enough. "I dunno."
Hemingway puts her paws on her lap, crawling onto her and meowing for attention. Suddenly inspired, Yang yoinks her up, pressing her against Ruby's face, poor Hemingway being used as a tissue. It's so abrupt and strange that Ruby jerks back in surprise, shocked laughter hiccuping through the tears. "Aw, Yang! No, don't do that to Hemingway!"
Yang pulls Oreo away from her lunch. "If sad, apply kittens directly to face," she says in a stiff, serious voice. "If still sad, consider seeing your doctor for a higher dosage." She manages to get all four of them in her hands, bumping them against Ruby as they meow in protest. She keeps it up until Ruby is laughing again, so hard she needs to gasp for air.
It's a year later and there aren't any bowls or litter boxes in the dorm room anymore. The kittens have left, ever since they were old enough to be spayed and neutered. Though Weiss was the loudest in agreeing it was the responsible thing to do, some part of her feels guilty, knowing that no more Hemingway cats would come from this particular stock. She grieves it in her own way.
And when she walks from her classes to the other buildings, Grau is outside the door, patiently waiting for her. He follows with his tail erect, majestic and well-groomed.
Blake spends a lot more time outdoors, Mayday sitting on her shoulder still. He's not allowed indoors, of course, not anymore, but that's fine. More excuse to lounge in the sunlight with a good book rather than hole up in the library.
The other four regularly wind in and out of Ozpin's office through the open window, a permanent fixture on campus and around the buildings. It becomes something like a mascot— lucky six-toed cats, Hemingway cats. Glynda gives him grief for it on occasion, saying that he's setting a bad example, that he's too lenient with his students, that it sets a precedent for favoritism and rule breaking and all out anarchy, if you believe her.
"Glynda," he says with faux-concern, Junior lovingly weaving between his legs until he gets picked up, always the neediest of the bunch. "There may be dozens of reasons and rules for why a student cannot have a pet, but there are none that say why I cannot have one."
Hemingway leaps onto his desk, purring and butting her head against Glynda's hand for affection. Unlike the others she wears a collar, bright red and hand woven.
"Or six," he adds mildly.
And that is that.
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