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The cats are the true lords of Garreg Mach. Everyone knows this. Once someone gets on the cats’ bad side, their life at the monastery is miserable. They’ll rip and shit on your things out of spite. They’ll hiss whenever you cross their paths, which is always because they’re everywhere, and the animal-loving students and knights will shake their heads at you disapprovingly. Do cats gossip with other cats? Or do the cats of Garreg Mach form a rudimentary hive mind? The evidence is inconclusive, but it seems that when one cat hates you, they all do. Then the dogs, subservient to their feline masters, follow suit with the snubbing. Your chances of scoring a hot date will go down to nothing.
Claude only knows what happens to those poor souls who offend the cats because it happened to Lorenz once. It was at the very beginning of the school year, when he was still trying his “courtship” tactics on members of the Golden Deer. Lorenz approached Marianne while she was surrounded by cats and he was surrounded by a stink cloud of rose cologne. The cats did not like that. Not only did he offend their noses, but he stressed out their favorite person in the whole monastery. Lorenz spent the next month groveling to both Marianne and the cats.
Speaking of the cats’ favorite people, Claude has made a list. He himself maintains a good, steady relationship with them because he’s sensitive to the currents of power. He is careful to provide the appropriate bribes and scritches. Although a few cat buddies prefer his company, he is still not on the overall favorites list, which is as such:
1) Marianne – the undisputed queen of all animals
2) Dedue – grows catnip
3) Professor Byleth – fish
4) Dimitri – ???
There is no discernible reason why Dimitri should be so high up on the list. Petra can keep up with them in the trees. Bernadetta shares their hiding spots. Ashe cooks for them and lets them nap in his hood. Even Caspar would make more sense – the cats know if they just give him the sad eyes by the dining hall, he’ll arm wrestle anyone for their dinner and give the winnings to the cats.
Dimitri doesn’t do any of that, and yet he ranks higher than all of them because the mama cats have somehow decided that he’s the person they should go to when they want to show off their babies. Dimitri is always, always being led to boxes full of kittens. It’s absurd.
Is it his fluffy lion-ness? Did he eat Dedue’s catnip? Claude is on a mission to find out.
That means he’s stalking Dimitri from the bushes this fine weekend afternoon.
A few days ago he’d overheard Dimitri commenting to Ashe that one of his favorite cats had been missing for a while, and it was suspected that she was pregnant. She should be reappearing any time now to lead him to her litter.
Lunch service has just finished in the dining hall, and Claude slinked after Dimitri on his way out. He followed the ever-studious (boring, stick in the mud) prince around on a few chores such as reserving practice equipment at the knight’s hall and getting his mail… Mind-numbing stuff, really. But now they’re headed back to the dorms, and Claude can sense that something’s going to happen. There are usually a lot of meows around the dorms because the students often sneak their favorite felines in for cuddles, but today it’s quiet. Too quiet. It’s a sign. Dimitri must sense it too, because he suddenly stops.
Claude lifts up from his crouch just a bit and peeks out from a neigboring bush. On his head, rising with this motion, is perched a little passenger: Owl, an inky black fluffball that hopped onto Claude’s head-nest sometime during the mail run to the aviary and has been hitching a ride ever since. Owl is not a kitten; he’s just tiny. He got his name from the knights partly because of his gigantic golden eyes that appear to see through one’s soul, but mostly because he hangs out with the messenger owls more than he does other cats. Owl is a quirky one, and a bit of an outsider. Perhaps that’s why he and Claude get along so well.
“It’s Reina,” Claude mumbles. “She’s here.”
“Mrrp,” says Owl.
Reina is a majestic golden tabby, one of the largest cats at the monastery. She prowls toward Dimitri and silently beckons him to follow. Claude scrambles to avoid being seen while positioning himself at a good viewing angle. Owl ‘helps’ by flattening himself on his head – ineffective, but a good effort.
Reina leads Dimitri to a grassy spot under Dedue’s window. This is exactly one floor down from Dimitri’s window. There, Dimitri has knelt down and is cooing to her kittens.
“Oh, they’re beautiful,” he says. “You must be so proud.”
Her ears flick – proud. Her tail flicks – agitated.
“What’s wrong? Is one of them sick? Which one?”
Can Dimitri speak Cat the way Marianne can speak Bird? Can that truly be his secret? Sure, his house is lion-themed and he sort of looks a bit lion-y, but… But how?
Regardless, Reina paces in a circle before she reaches down into the pile of kittens and plucks one out to present to Dimitri, who… stares at it.
From what Claude can see, the squirming shapes of the kittens are a mix of mostly black, orange, and gold. The wiggling thing in Reina’s mouth, however, is various shades of gray, fluffy and spiky both at once. There’s no way it’s a cat.
“Reina, that’s a bird,” Dimitri says.
She lifts her head up toward Dedue’s windowsill, where there sits a scattered pile of loose sticks and hay that might have once been a dove’s nest. Then she deposits the baby bird on his lap anyway, and stares back at him in a challenge.
“I… suppose that is true. The storm has blown the nest away, and the parents have not returned. It was benevolent of you to let it live, yet now you cannot feed this child, so the responsibility must fall upon another. I am honored to be entrusted with such a duty.” Dimitri bows to the cat, and the cat bows back.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Claude whispers to Owl.
“Cheep!” says the little baby dove.
“Mrrp,” says Owl.
“Don’t ‘mrrp’ me. You know I don’t understand what that means,” he says, with a not insignificant amount of jealousy directed at Dimitri. If Claude could understand cats he’d have the best damn spy network in the world! What is Dimitri doing with this unfair advantage? Does he not realize how much power he has at his fingertips? Gah! It’s almost as frustrating as watching him apologize for his physical strength! It’s absolutely infuriating how a man with so many gifts can have such low self-esteem!
“Mrrp!” Owl says again, batting Claude’s forehead with his teensy paw.
“C’mon now, don’t ruin my stealthy exit…” He begins backing away from the bushes.
“Mrrrrrp! Prrbbtt!”
Claude freezes. The trills were too loud and they’re looking this way. He ducks back down, but forgets to compensate for the extra height of one small fluffball on his head. Dimitri’s brows furrow. They’ve definitely been seen.
Owl, the traitor, deftly leaps off to greet Reina with a butt sniff and chin nuzzle.
“What are you doing there, Claude? I hope you haven’t been… spying on me. It would be unbecoming of you as the leader of the Golden Deer.”
“Ahaha! Why would you think that?” Claude makes a show of patting dust off his legs as if he’d been kneeling in the dirt. “I dropped my earring. I was looking for it.” He holds out his palm for Dimitri to observe the earring that was indeed there, with the help of a little sleight of hand. “But of course I happened to overhear a bit of your conversation…”
Dimitri frowns just slightly, and cocks his head just slightly. The motion very much resembles a cat and is much cuter than it should be coming from the guy who snaps lances like they’re toothpicks. Dimitri probably doesn’t believe him, but he has no evidence to the contrary.
It can’t be helped, since he’s already been spotted. Hands in his pockets, Claude casually saunters over to get a better look at the kittens. Reina regards him cooly, but doesn’t otherwise protest his presence. “Thanks for allowing me to visit your court, Your Princeliness, and Your Queenliness.” He gives her an exaggerated bow before getting down next to Dimitri.
The giant golden cat blinks slowly, as if to say, “This is acceptable.”
“Mrrpt!” says Owl.
Dimitri brightens then, and he nods as if Owl just said something very interesting. “Oh, you’re the father!”
Owl? Owl is the father?! This tiny thing, and that warrior queen of a cat, they made babies? Claude can’t help sucking in a breath, not quite a gasp, at the realization.
Reina roots around in the kitten pile and pulls out…! Another dove. She plops it into Claude’s lap.
Dimitri says, in all seriousness, “Your friend here has chosen to introduce you to his mate and children. I must admit I had my doubts about you, but he says you are kind to the wyverns and owls. You should thank him. It is quite the honor.”
“It is… so weird that you can talk to cats.”
“Claude,” Dimitri reprimands.
Oh goddess. This goody-two-shoes. Claude’s really going to have to do this properly. “Thank you,” he says to the cats. “I won’t let you down.”
Not letting the cats down means hand-rearing the doves, because they’re a gift. (Dimitri explained that Reina used to leave him dead doves, which upset him, so this is her making an effort, which makes him honor-bound to respect it.) It means making a makeshift nest out of a wicker basket, which they pass back and forth to each other throughout the day. Claude handles most of the delicate work like feeding and grooming the feathers as they come in. Dimitri provides the warmth, as his body temperature runs hotter than the average person, and thus closer to that of a mother bird.
And isn’t that an image worth snickering over? The righteous golden boy Prince of Faerghus – a mama bird. He really does take it seriously, too. Dimitri coos at the little doves, and they coo back. He can’t understand them the way he understands cats, but he still gives it his all.
It’s admirable. It’s not an act. Claude feels himself thawing to Dimitri, who he had wanted to keep at arm’s length. It was easier to be detached when he thought of Dimitri as a one-dimensional caricature. It was easier to keep his secrets without feeling the guilt of deceiving a friend. He supposes that’s what they are now.
It takes only two weeks before the birds fledge and start hopping up their shoulders. It only takes two more for them to fly away, though they occasionally come back, tapping at the windows of their adoptive parents to be let in.
Once the doves are gone, there’s no reason to keep hanging out together, except that they want to. But they can’t just say that they want to. They already established early in the school year that their relationship is a rivalry. If they keep meeting up to go horseback riding or sign up for kitchen duty together, it would look-- It would look romantic! That’s a scandal neither of them needs.
…They sign up for weeding duty instead. Or, Claude signs them up for weeding duty. It’s the least romantic chore he can think of.
While they’re pulling out dandelions near the dorms, Reina, Owl, and all eight of their kittens come out to supervise. Dimitri is on his hands and knees. Reina approaches to nuzzle her forehead against his. Then she meows, just once, a soft little sound. It’s the first time Claude has ever heard her vocalize.
Dimitri immediately doubles over, coughing and sputtering.
“What? What’d she say? Translate for me, would ya?”
“N-no, that would be--! That’s improper!”
Reina blinks slowly, and it’s not clear whether she’s encouraging or admonishing him. She chooses instead to demonstrate whatever her point was. The big golden tabby and tiny black mate begin purring and rubbing all over each other and it’s… yeah. It’s pretty clear. She thinks Dimitri should get a mate.
“Oh. I agree,” Claude says. “You are pretty tense even on a good day. That would help you loosen up.”
“C-claude! You don’t know what you’re saying!”
“Of course I do. I just don’t know what she’s saying. Did she suggest a mate for you? Who was it?” He waggles his eyebrows in an imitation of Sylvain.
Dimitri just stares at Claude and turns beet red. The stone he had moved to get the weeds around it crumbles into dust in his clenched fist.
Above, their two sky-rat sons coo at them from the branches of a tree.