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“Why the hell do you even bother getting things to eat when you never even eat them here?” Sanemi asked, exasperated.
He and Gyomei were at the cat café they often frequented. It was the first place Gyomei took him when they first started dating and Gyomei had already been a regular. Now three years into their relationship, they still visited the place often.
“I’ll eat eventually. I don’t want to disturb them is all,” Gyomei replied, still focused on the cats around him. He was currently sitting on the floor in the second room of the café. The pastries he bought himself were with Sanemi for protection as he preoccupied himself. Three cats were laying on his crossed legs, one cat was laying in the junction between his back and the wall, one cat was cradled in his arm, and one was on the floor to his right being pet by him.
“You know damn well you never eat them. You buy them, leave them in the bag for 2 hours, and then go home to eat them. Just buy them on your way out."
Sanemi pulled the plastic bag out of a cat’s reach once again. While he was fine being the keeper of the pastries, two of the newer cats were very interested in the bag and recent trips involved Sanemi playing keep away the entire time. He’d be fine with the cats messing with the bag if they hadn’t previously shredded a bag and ran away with the pastries to eat in a cat tree.
Besides the two cats he was playing keep away with, three other cats were asleep around him. There were two cats next to him on the cushioned bench. One curled against his thigh and another curled up between his back and the wall like it was hiding. Then another cat in his lap, not sleep but still lazing.
“Perhaps next time,” Gyomei said, still distracted and only half paying attention to his boyfriend’s complaints.
“Oy, we should probably leave soon”, Sanemi glared back at another customer who had been staring hard at them through the room’s glass wall. The café was smaller than other cat cafés and only had 15 cats at any given time. And since there were a total of 11 cats between him and Gyomei, this left only 4 cats for the rest of the patrons.
“What? Why? We haven’t been here long,” Gyomei whipped his head around to look back at the other man. The movement startled some of the cats who made small noises of complaint before settling back down.
“Oh, so that gets your damn attention, huh? I said we should leave soon. We’re hogging the cats again and I don’t want the customers complaining about us.”
Sanemi didn’t really care if the other patrons got pissed about the lack of cat attention but he didn’t want the café to try and ban the two of them from coming back. He’d be sad, sure, but he was pretty sure Gyomei would have a breakdown. It apparently wasn’t enough to have 3 adopted stray cats at home and have Chachamaru at school; the man still needed to see even more cats at the café on a regular basis.
“Am I supposed to care about the other customers being ignored?” Gyomei snipped, settling back into his original position almost stubbornly. What did he care if the other people thought the two of them had too many cats. The cats were free to do what they wanted and what they wanted, was to be with him and Sanemi.
Said man snickered at his lover’s reaction, smiling down at the stubborn man. Gyomei was an even tempered man, and brief interactions with him would lead many to consider him very boring but Sanemi knew him long enough to know how downright weird he was. And his way of taking his relationships with cats as a Very Serious Topic was something Sanemi found equally weird and funny.
Sanemi was brought out of his thoughts, noticing another customer having turned their head to watch them. He sent another glare at them until they turned back around. He truly didn’t care about the other customers but the attention on them was starting to set him on edge. Righting himself, the albino switched the bag of pastries to his other hand so he could clap a hand down on Gyomei’s shoulder. This fully woke the cat who had been sleeping on the giant man’s shoulders causing the blind man to snap a reprimanding “Sanemi!” at him.
“Come on! Get the fuck up. We’ve been here for an hour and a half and my ass is getting sore. You can bother the cats at home if you’re that damn lonely,” shorter man said airily, ignoring his boyfriend’s glare.
With some final hesitation, Gyomei let out a sigh before slowly getting up. Many verbal complaints were heard from the cats who were being ushered off their very warm resting place. He looked regretful hearing them but knew Sanemi wouldn’t be persuaded to change his mind. While some of the cats left, some cats stayed and rubbed against the two’s legs, small meows encouraging them to stay.
Hearing the cats at his feet, Gyomei felt tears roll down his face. While he loved almost every cat he came across, it was an honor to know the cats loved him in return. He heard Sanemi give a long suffering sigh next to him but ignored it. He didn’t care about what people thought of his crying and he especially wasn’t going to entertain Sanemi’s exasperation when the albino spent his free time obsessively browsing every animal rescue in Japan to look for any new dogs. If he could appreciate his boyfriend keeping track of every new dog that came up for adoption and their origin story, his boyfriend could appreciate his feelings for the cats.
“I know, I know. Let’s just get home. The sooner we leave, the sooner you can have three other cats to cry over."
The albino started steering the other toward the entrance, keeping an eye on the cats around them. While he knew Gyomei wouldn’t step or trip over a cat, he always liked to keep an eye out. Gyomei wasn’t completely blind but only saw an extremely small area of what he looked at, leaving him with almost no peripheral vision, if any. A few feet before the door, the giant man suddenly stopped, causing the albino to crash into him with a “oof”.
“What is it now?” Sanemi mumbled, stepping around to see what was causing the hold up. “Oh you can’t be serious. Don’t you already have too many of those things?”
Sanemi watched as the older man shifted through the wicker basket of stickers. Each sticker was the face of one of the café cats. The stickers served as a small token for the patrons as well as advertisement for both the business and that the cats were up for adoption. Gyomei got one every time. Every. Time. The albino was forced to see the café cats everywhere outside of the café. On the fridge, in their office, in the bedroom, on the blind man’s…everything that could take a sticker.
“Help me find one of the newer cat’s stickers,” Gyomei requested, ignoring his boyfriend’s silent plea to not take another.
Seeing as the other man wasn’t going to give up his search, Sanemi shifted through the basket. Not able to reliably go off of the cats' coloring, he studied the stickers for a cat with markings he didn't readily recognize. Not long after, he found the fat, furry face of one of the cat’s he was playing keep away with.
“There you go, one fat, cat face,” he said, holding it up for Gyomei to see. At Gyomei’s tears, Sanemi placed the sticker in the bag with the pastries and started ushering the other out once more.
The two walked home in silence, enjoying the peace.