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“Nope,” said Crowley. “Nope, nope, nope. I am not taking a cat to live inside my flat. Nuh-uh. Not a chance, angel.”
Aziraphale sighed and looked down at the small feline creature sitting innocuously on the floor between them. The cat did not bother to do him the courtesy of returning the glance, being presently preoccupied with washing a paw as if either unaware or simply supremely unconcerned that her future was currently resting in the hands of a pair of professional occult (ethereal) bickerers.
Ah, well. Aziraphale returned his attention to Crowley. “But,” he pointed out rationally, “she needs somewhere to stay.”
“Nothing to do with me.”
“She can be your… your familiar.”
“That’s witches, not demons.”
“In any case, I can hardly just turn her back out on the streets. And she doesn’t seem to have any kind of a home to go back to.”
“Don’t they have animal shelters for this kind of thing?”
“The shelters are already overfilled and scarce on resources,” Aziraphale said. “I couldn’t possibly justify bringing them yet another animal to take care of without need, when they have so much to manage already.”
Crowley moved his head irritably. “So then, just… just give her a blessing or something and send her on her way. She’ll be fine. They all have nine lives anyway.”
“They do? ...Even so.” It was a well-laid temptation, beckoning towards a delightful tangent regarding the logistics and potential theological implications of feline multi-mortality, but Aziraphale mightily resisted the distraction. “Cats shouldn’t live outside, I’ve heard. They harm birds.[1]”
“I harm birds.”
“So then you'll get along well. But sinking the ducks at the park doesn’t count. They’re always perfectly fine afterwards, you know they are.”
Crowley prudently let that line of argument drop. “Why don’t you take her in, then,” he demanded instead — going in for the attack in seriousness now — “if you’re so bothered?”
Ah. Aziraphale had been rather hoping Crowley wouldn’t make that suggestion. But, well, if there was one thing Crowley could generally be relied upon to do, it was to make valid points that Aziraphale would frequently rather not have been pointed out. He cleared his throat and lifted his chin. “She… oh, she might get fur on the books.”
“Fur,” Crowley repeated, incredulous. “On the books.”
“Well,” said Aziraphale defensively, “yes. She might. Cats get all over the place, you see, one never knows what kind of mischief they might get up to next.[2] Not to mention, the… the carpet.”
“Like you’ve ever cared one iota about keeping your carpet clean,” Crowley muttered.[3] “Anyway, if you’re too fussy to take the cat and too fussy to let her go, that sounds like your problem. I don’t care.”
That was a blatant untruth, Aziraphale knew. He could sense the caring hovering behind Crowley’s sunglasses, fiercely shoved down behind complaint and the facade of indifference. He could hear it in Crowley's mutter, could see it in the way the demon’s head was angled halfway towards the cat.[4]
Aziraphale hadn’t taken all those lessons in temptation for nothing. It was time now to pull out the serious ammunition.
Carefully, tilting his own head, fluttering his eyelashes just so, Aziraphale adopted his best, most effectively beseeching expression — the expression he knew Crowley would never refuse unless he really meant the refusal. “It would make me dreadfully sad, you know, to think of the poor creature all by her lonesome.”
Crowley made an inarticulate noise.
“And,” Aziraphale added, “I would be so happy to think of her finding a home with someone I could trust to look after her.”
“Ngh.” Crowley was caving, Aziraphale could see it happening before his eyes.[5] The demon bent to extend a finger towards the floor, an invitation to be sniffed. For a wonder, the cat did actually deign to pause in her self-cleaning routine long enough to sniff at the proffered finger.[6]
Well then.
“And,” Aziraphale went on, laying out the final piece to cement his win, “if I am not very much mistaken, your flat complex does not allow pets.”
Crowley’s eyebrows rose, thoughtful… and then he grinned. “You are not mistaken about that.”
“So I daresay it would be most wicked and fiendishly wily if someone were to bring a pet in anyway, against the rules.”
“All right,” said Crowley, who had somehow progressed within the last minute to rubbing the ears of a suddenly purring cat. “All right, I’ll take her. Just this once.”
Aziraphale didn’t say thank you, but he did smile as gratefully as he dared and invite Crowley to sit down for a drink.
~ ~ ~
“Do please take good care of him,” Aziraphale murmured later that evening, when Crowley was drowsing on the sofa, the cat curled up on the cushion beside him with her eyes open. “I can’t be there myself, he wouldn’t want me all the time and it isn’t safe anyway.[7] But you’ve met him now. And he needs someone to keep him company.” He laughed, softly. “And to keep an eye on him.”
This time the cat did look at Aziraphale — her eyes nearly as yellow as Crowley’s, though different in nearly every other regard but for their probingness — and he got the distinct sense that they were once again somehow sharing a moment of understanding, angel and feline.
Then she broke their gaze and purred loudly, turning and butting her head into Crowley’s slack hand, and Aziraphale relaxed with something very like relief.
~ ~ ~
“Do please take good care of her,” he told Crowley later, when the demon woke and prepared to take his leave, cat disinterestedly tolerating being curled up in his arms. “I promised her you would.”
Crowley just nodded. And luckily, he was apparently still just a bit too groggy to question when and why, exactly, Aziraphale had had a conversation with the former street cat — nor to suspect that a somewhat more two-way bargain might have been made.
They went out to the Bentley soon after, the demon and his new, small, furry companion, and Aziraphale watched them drive away with a feeling of satisfaction in his chest that almost outweighed the melancholy that always came with parting.
Crowley would be looked after, and he would have someone to look after in turn. All in all, Aziraphale felt, he had won the day in more ways than one.[8]
Footnotes
1 Aziraphale would not absentmindedly smother a dove inside his own sleeve until a couple of decades in the future, so this argument was not quite as hypocritical as it might appear.[return to text]
2 Like someone else I could name, he almost added.[return to text]
3 Another valid point, given the clouds of dust that routinely throughout the entire storeroom of the bookshop. Although it was not really fair to say that was because Aziraphale didn’t care; far from it, the dust and other various unpleasantries of the place represented a very conscious technique of customer-warding, something he cared about very much indeed.
Incidentally, it had also occurred to Aziraphale that some humans liked cats, and might be more inclined to lend their unwelcome patronage to a business that contained one.[return to text]
4 The cat, meanwhile, was still calmly ignoring them. A cat may look at a king, of course, but only if and when she feels like it. The same principle applies to cats looking at angels and demons.[return to text]
5 The use of the word “trust” in particular had a powerful impact, as Aziraphale was well aware.[return to text]
6 This being exactly the turn of events he had been hoping for, Aziraphale tried not to feel too offended by the cat’s apparent preference.[return to text]
7 Aziraphale was incorrect on his first piece of reasoning. But correct on the second.[return to text]
8 And he certainly didn’t mind getting to keep his books free of feline-caused danger, too.[return to text]