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The cat appeared in Merlin's life at just the right time. The year was 2013, and London, to where Merlin returned recently after decades of absence, was suffering under a heat wave. Days were long, hot and humid, with little relief brought by nightfall; and the entire situation was just made worse by the smog over the city which somehow felt more intense than ever. The air was thick, breathing felt like inhaling someone's already used breath - a disgusting sensation all in all - and people were wandering around short tempered and dizzy from low blood pressure.
To make things even better, Merlin was in one of the funks that came around him with depressing regularity in every few centuries, when the waiting got too tiresome, the dreams a shade too dark and the future stretched out before him as an endless repeat of the same circles, vast and grim and unbearable. During his long life Merlin got better at fighting these fits, usually by fixing his attention on some problem bigger than him. Last time it was the war. That was certainly big, and Merlin had quite happily thrown his hat in, enlisting and working as a field surgeon - a rather magical one, if he might say - for years, instead of slowly turning mad, contemplating how Britain was yet again in peril, and still that did not merit the return of the Once and Future King. Merlin did try madness before and he was not eager to repeat the experience.
This latest fit was actually triggered by a book - a fantasy tome of disturbing thickness, weaving a tale of an alternate universe Britain where old magic was still alive in people's minds, and loved ones who were lost could be brought back from the land of the Sidhe if someone had the right amount of power, and the mindset to put the entire country in mortal peril. It was giving Merlin ideas - terrible, terrible ideas of the lets-release-the-giant-fire-breathing-dragon-and-hope-for-the-best variety. He had to crush them, hard and fast, except he was exhausted from the heat and slipping into darker and darker thoughts every day, being unable to clear his head. He had taken to roaming the streets of his neighborhood at night when the air was a bit cooler, forcing himself to concentrate on other things, any thing, walking until he was ready to drop and returning to his flat for a few hours of futile exercise in sleeping.
It was on one of these nightly walks when he met St John. He was crossing through a rather poorly lit alley in Ealing, head down, focusing on watching the tips of his trainers and counting his own heartbeats, when he heard it. A rattle of something large and metallic, the violent barking of a dog, and then a small blur appeared, running straight at him, then up him, and then something was on his shoulder, digging in with sharp claws, burrowing itself under the hood of his sweater. Merlin froze in his tracks, his brain desperately trying to whir itself into life, knowing only that something was at the back of his neck, something that came out of nowhere, had prickly claws and could potentially bite him in the neck any minute now.
Maybe it was a rat.
Merlin, still frozen in place, slowly raised his hand to the lump under his hood, and poked tentatively.
Nothing.
Breathing deeply and reminding himself that he stared worse things in the face than small, toothy creatures near his neck - and what did this say about his life, Merlin chose not to dwell on -, he slowly slipped his hand under the hood, and grabbed at the lump.
Several things happened at once. The lump suddenly came alive, belting out a surprisingly loud yowl, and dug what felt like a hundred needles into Merlin's neck and scalp. Merlin yelped, jumped and nearly brained himself on a lamppost, hand still clutched around the thing, which he now know to be wet and furry, and probably not a rat, since rats tended to bite first and scratch later. He wrestled with the thing, his free hand rising to pull his hood down, the other trying to pull the attacker off his head: a rather painful process, since the thing - a cat, it had to be a cat - was holding on like a limpet.
After a few seconds of struggling and a great deal of lost skin, Merlin managed to detach his new fur collar from his neck, and raised it before his face. Clutched in his hand was a tiny, filthy kitten, one eye crusted shut from an infection, but still wriggling and hissing ferociously at him.
'If anyone here has a right to be hissing at someone, it is me', he informed the small animal. 'You nearly scalped me.'
The kitten stopped wriggling and blinked up at him with its one good eye. Merlin stared back. The kitten let out a tentative, weak meow.
Merlin caved right then and there.
He took the kitten home with him. The first thing he did was to give it a good scrub in the bathroom sink, which the kitten rewarded by howling loud enough to wake the dead and trying to chew off Merlin's hand to escape. After the bath he managed to wrestle it into a rolled-up towel, first to dry it and second, to keep the claws from his face while he treated the infected eye. The cat proceeded to wriggle frantically amidst loud protests, stopping only for mere seconds to try to get in a bite or two. Merlin did not give up: he had ample experience in handling annoying, loud creatures who did not know what was good for them.
When he deemed the kitten to be dry enough, he took a deep breath as well as a step backwards, and gently poked the towel bundle to make it unroll. The cat shot out from it like a bat out of hell and disappeared under the bed.
Merlin spent the next half an hour lying face down on the bed, his head hanging over the edge, trying to sweet talk the cat into coming out, even going so far to roll around some balled up aluminium foil in case it attracts his new flatmate. The cat did not budge. If Merlin squinted into the darkness, he could see a pair of glowing eyes - well, one glowing eye and a tiny glowing slit of an eye.
'I could give you food', he tried. 'And a name, if you are going to stay here. Are you going to stay here?'
The kitten gave no answer. Merlin sighed and got up. He went to the kitchen, shredded some fried chicken left over from his lunch and left it on a small plate near the door, along with a bowl of water. Thinking of other biological needs, he also spread out some newspapers in the corner. He went to check the windows: luckily, he had an insect screen installed, so he could leave the window open in the still disgustingly hot night without worrying that the cat will fall out. He fiddled a bit with the settings of his stereo player, put out the lights and stretched out on his bed, hands behind his head, eyes staring into the darkness.
The voice of Audrey Hepburn, one of Merlin's more embarrassing crushes, started wafting softly from the stereo speakers. Merlin only met Ms Hepburn once, at the end of the eighties, on one of her field missions for UNICEF in Africa - and the less he thought about why he was here, the better -, but he could listen to her sing Moon River for hours on repeat. His thoughts slowly drifted back to the cat, not even three feet from his head, separated from him by the bed frame and the mattress.
'You are going to like me', he told the air confidently.
The cat remained silent.
'I'm very likeable', he added.
Nothing.
'Oh well', Merlin said. 'You will come out when you get hungry.' I can wait, he thought to himself. I have been waiting for most of my life now. This time, at least, there is an end in sight.
For the first time in years, waiting did not seem to be such an unbearable task.
It was some time after midnight when Merlin startled awake from his doze. The stereo was silent, but the man could hear the unmistakable sounds of something small chewing very enthusiastically. Noisy lapping followed from the direction of the water bowl, then quiet. Merlin closed his eyes. In a few seconds the mattress dipped minutely, and he could feel small feet moving up next to his body, then prickly whiskers touching his face. The kitten obviously had a thing for people's heads. Merlin waited, not opening his eyes. After a moment of indecision, he could feel the small form curling up at his neck.
Merlin smiled up to the ceiling.
'I'm going to call you St John', he whispered.
The cat started to purr.
***
In the morning, Merlin made two startling discoveries. The first: St John was actually female. The second: she was obviously a rebel. Completely ignoring the newspapers, she peed on Merlin's copy of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel. The mage looked at the unfortunate tome, shrugged, and threw it into the bin.
'Never could stand the Sidhe anyway', he told St John confidentially. St John blinked up at him guilelessly from where she was trying to murder the laces of Merlin's trainers, one end dangling from her mouth.
'Okay, so, tuna or chicken for breakfast?'
fin