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Peter realized quickly on the first night that although he loved the cat immediately, she did not immediately love him back.
That was okay. He understood. The Tower had been vast and intimidating and scary to Peter at first as well, filled with so many new things and rules he hadn’t understood. But the cat was willing to run and hide in a way Peter had mostly been afraid to do before he’d learned the Avengers didn’t mind if he messed up or wanted some privacy. The cat tolerated a small amount of petting from Peter, before seeming to decide she’d had enough. When she hid back beneath the couch—which Peter knew he could easily lift to uncover her, but thought maybe that’d be impolite—he finally returned his attention to Mister Stark.
There were important things to talk about, even if the cat might only stay with them temporarily. Tony told Peter about how the cat had wandered onto Clint’s farm, how they often had strays that came by because his family was more than willing to feed them. There were cats that were happy to take their meals and stick to demousing Clint’s property, and there were cats that would let themselves inside if the door was left open a moment too long and decide they didn’t want to leave.
Clint couldn’t keep all of them, so he’d thought Tony and Peter might be able to help out with this one. She was young-ish and small-ish and needed some good food and a gentle hand.
Peter thought it was pretty similar to what Tony had done for him. He could handle that, probably. He could be nice and quiet and gentle and make sure the cat wouldn’t be afraid of her new home.
Temporary home. Peter couldn’t stop fixating on that.
They let the cat have the living room for the night—though FRIDAY was given a few pointed orders from Tony to grab him if the cat started ‘tearing shit up’.
“Does FRIDAY tell you if I’m tearing shit up?” Peter asked Tony.
“You haven’t destroyed any furniture on purpose, so I think we’re good there,” Tony said. “I trust you, Pete. And don’t say shit in front of Pepper. Do not as I do.”
Tony showed Peter a litter box and a small soft bed and toys, different from books and Legos, all made for the cat. Most of it ended up in the living room for them to ‘deal with in the morning’. That was what Tony wanted to do, and he had his badly hidden tired face on, so Peter didn’t blame him.
But Peter very much wanted to stay and stare at the cat a little while longer, and maybe have the chance to pet her again if she decided to be brave and nice and come out from under the couch.
“Give her a little while to settle in,” Tony suggested, scrubbing a hand through Peter’s hair. “She’s already been through a lot today.”
Peter wondered if the cat had also traveled on the flying machine that had taken Peter from them to his new home, the Tower. He wondered if maybe she had also thrown up. He wondered if she’d been frightened or confused or thought her heart would maybe beat out of her chest when she saw Tony, not knowing him the way Peter did. Not knowing how good he was.
Retreating to his room, Peter did something he had never done before: he left his door open.
“FRIDAY?” Peter asked, perching on the edge of his bed. He gripped his sheets too tight, stitches popping beneath his fingers. If he didn’t physically hold on, he was afraid he’d run right back into the living room. “Can you let the cat come in, if she wants to? But let me know if anyone else tries to come inside?”
“Of course, Peter. I’ve updated your security protocols and will immediately inform you of any intruders,” FRIDAY said. “Good night, Peter.”
“Good night, FRIDAY,” Peter said, though he hesitated to lay down or to ask FRIDAY to turn off his lights. He spent most of the night restless, gaze fixed on the half-open door, peering into the darkened hallway beyond.
The cat did not come to his room.
That was fine. She was probably temporary. Peter didn’t mind at all. Not at all.
- - -
“FRIDAY?” Peter asked tiredly when the sun was poking through his half-shaded windows and he thought maybe it was an acceptable time to be conscious. He’d woken restlessly several times throughout the night, staring intently into the greyed darkness surrounding him. “Where’s the cat?”
“Good morning, Peter,” FRIDAY responded. “The cat is currently in the kitchen. My scans show you did not receive the recommended amount of rest last night—”
“It’s okay,” Peter said quickly. “I don’t mind!”
He headed for the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. If he pressed hard enough on the sides of his eyelids, he maybe felt a little less tired.
There was an odd, inconsistent sound coming from near the counter. Peter tilted his head to the side, trying to identify the noise—like soft crunching, and the miniscule snap of splinters separating.
Peter crept into the kitchen. The cat was gnawing on the leg of one of the stools perched near the counter. The stools Peter liked to sit on while eating his beloved pizza, or flying through one of his course modules, or watching Tony pace around explaining the latest project he’d started in his lab while Peter was asleep.
Tile creaked beneath Peter’s feet and the cat paused, gaze flicking toward him with steady disinterest. Stretching, extending a paw, she raked something surprisingly sharp—nails?—against the wood.
Small shavings littered the floor around her.
The cat sat back again and made a loud noise that seemed meant for Peter’s attention, but he didn’t really know what the sound meant, and also he was pretty sure that Mister Stark was going to be mad about the stool. And then maybe he would give the cat back to Bruce who would give her back to Clint and Peter would never ever see her again, which would be awful, obviously.
Peter panicked.
“It’s okay,” Peter said immediately. “It’s okay, I can fix it.”
The cat made the same noise again, staring at him intently.
He did not believe that he could actually fix it, but the optimism felt nice in the moment anyway. Especially if he wanted the cat to stay. Peter shuffled his feet, kicking most of the shavings beneath the counter. Then he picked up the cat to move her as far away from the scene of the crime as possible.
She panicked.
Squirming in his arms, the way he probably would have if someone suddenly grabbed him and lifted him several feet above the ground. Except he was trying to help her! Except she wouldn’t be able to understand anything he was saying!! She was making so many unhappy noises and he didn’t know how to tell her that he was trying to save her from consequences.
Peter tried to keep her steady, using the gentlest hands possible, but she was fast. And—ow. Peter let go as her sharp . . . nails? They dug into his forearm, slicing tiny furrows as she used the newfound perch to leap to the floor. Then she raced out toward the living room, which . . . that was where Peter had wanted to take her anyway, so he supposed that was a positive development.
“What’s going on in here?” Mister Stark’s tired voice rumbled from the doorway.
“Tony! Mister . . . nothing! I was hungry!” Peter said, crossing his arms to hide the blood beading on his skin. It would heal in a few minutes, anyway, because she hadn’t really hurt him, and it’d been his fault for grabbing her like that.
He didn’t know how to apologize to a cat.
“Do you realize how early it is?” Tony asked, hands pulling through his hair. It was all soft and messy, the way it was before he had the chance to put all that stuff in that made it spikey.
“Yes,” Peter lied confidently, and went to lean casually against the stool the cat had been attacking.
Unfortunately, the half-eaten leg made it tilt too far to the side.
Both Peter and the stool ended up sprawled across the kitchen floor.
“Peter!” Tony had his concerned face on, hovering over Peter. “You okay, kid? Did you hit your head?”
“No, I’m okay—”
“. . . how did this happen?” Tony eyed the stool, which was not what Peter had planned for, and reached toward the splintering leg.
“I, uh, well—I was hungry?” Peter tried, even if it didn’t look like Mister Stark believed him.
- - -
Mister Stark taught Peter about things like cat food and litter boxes. He and Peter played a fantastic game with the cat called let’s dangle this feather in front of her and let her chase it around and only catch it sometimes. There were other new toys like tiny mice and little springs that ended up mostly knocked beneath cabinets and the stove and the couches.
The cat was wonderful. Peter used his newfound skills from working in the lab with Mister Stark to determine what she did and didn’t like.
She did like being pet very carefully if Peter sat with her for a while first and let her see when his hands moved. She liked using her claws (Tony taught him the word after panicking a little over Peter failed to hide bleeding) to poke tiny holes in things. Mostly it seemed to be on purpose. She liked little treats that Peter begged FRIDAY to purchase after he’d spent hours on his StarkPad watching videos of other cats. She liked attacking the treats with her sharp teeth the same way Peter liked chewing on his bottles filled with blood, so he liked to think of that as their bonding time. After the first afternoon, she didn’t even startle at the sound of crunching metal when Peter bit down too hard while drinking.
She didn’t like being picked up unless it was her decision to be picked up. Peter discovered this when she started sitting on his feet or winding between his ankles, making soft noises until he reached down for her. Then she would curl eagerly in his arms, small paws flexing against his shirt. If he picked her up when she didn’t approve, the claws returned. And they were a little sharp and scary but Peter forgave her immediately, because he could get sharp and scary when he was startled, too.
She didn’t like being taken up to his webbing, not even in moments when she asked to be carried. Peter tried taking her up the side of the wall, except she made a lot of really strange noises when he deposited her in his web nest, and tried to leap out onto the floor, and made Peter panic a whole lot and promise not to ever try that again.
The cat didn’t make much sense, sometimes. She hated the web, but she liked high places, maybe only because she was the one to get herself there. She and Peter would curl up on top of bookshelves and cabinetry and Peter only felt a little guilty whenever the two of them would accidentally startle Pepper by dropping down from there.
The cat was just like Peter, really.
Sometimes she would make a small noise and gaze up at Peter and make him realize that he would destroy anything if she somehow asked him to. It made him feel helpless and wonderful all at once.
He wondered if that was how Mister Stark felt whenever Peter looked at him careful and begged for the best things in the world, like pizza. Or Legos. Or more screen time with Ned.
But Peter worried. Every scratch, every ripped shirt, every destroyed piece of furniture, every glass of water carefully nudged over the edge of a table—Peter’s stomach clenched uncomfortably, and he felt a little bit like crying. Tony had let Peter stay even though he’d done horrible things like almost killing him. He didn’t know if the cat was allowed to make mistakes like that, if she’d still be allowed to stay if the damage escalated.
That meant his heart filled and broke all at once on the best day of his life: the first time she wandered into a room Peter already occupied.
Peter had been busy playing on his StarkPad—Tony always made a weird laughing noise when Peter called it that, because he said people didn’t usually call high school course modules playing. In between lessons, he’d messaged Ned memes he didn’t completely understand, interspersed with photos of the cat captured by FRIDAY.
Movement in his periphery immediately caught his attention. Peter still felt it best to be hypervigilant, sometimes, just in case maybe possibly they were coming to try some experiment. Again.
As per usual, the movement was nothing to be alarmed about. Unusually, it was the cat, sitting there pointedly looking away from Peter.
He tried to contain his excitement and only mildly cracked the supposed-to-be-indestructible case Tony had put on his StarkPad. The movement started again as soon as Peter looked away. The case creaked in warning. Holding his breath, feeling his face redden, Peter watched her step closer. Casually, imperiously—before leaping into the couch in one graceful jump. Her paws were soft, gentle as they pushed into his legs. She settled into Peter’s lap with a small, soft sound.
Peter very, very carefully set aside his StarkPad and settled his hand onto her back. The cat relaxed further into Peter’s legs, as if this had been her plan all along.
“FRIDAY,” Peter said quietly. He knew she would hear because her hearing was nearly as precise as his. “FRIDAY, take a picture. Please.”
“Don’t worry, Peter.” FRIDAY’s volume matched his in its delicacy. “I have already captured several screenshots via my cameras and have also downloaded the video footage.”
“You’re the best,” Peter beamed, because it was true that FRIDAY was his best ceiling friend, even if Ned Leeds was his best human friend, and the cat . . .
Maybe the cat would still be his friend, even if she wasn’t allowed to stay. Peter needed to cherish every moment with her. Just in case.
Peter was trapped in the living room for several hours and incredibly content about it. He couldn’t move, not when the cat had chosen him to sit with, not when she looked so comfortable and not when she was so warm! It made him want to hug her closer and he knew she probably wouldn’t like that, so instead he settled for petting her in the way that made her make more of those contented noises.
The purring started, though he wasn’t sure if that was his fault, or hers.
Tony, walking in later to free Peter for dinner, called it, “adorable, but you can’t starve yourself just because the cat is sitting on you”.
- - -
A new routine started. Most afternoons, Peter lounged in the living room, working on a new Lego set or a module or experimenting with something called arts & crafts by Tony and art therapy by Pepper. The cat would slink in, on her own time, and then they’d stay together. And it was good.
They’d watch the screen mounted on the living room wall together, usually something FRIDAY deemed safe, usually colorful documentaries featuring real animals that lived real lives in the real outside world Peter wasn’t allowed to see for himself, yet.
Mister Stark commented about it sometimes, usually in another room where he thought Peter couldn’t hear him. Talking about how uncanny it was to see him and the cat caught up in their nature shows, heads tilting simultaneously whenever a little scurrying creature came into view. Sometimes, that made the cat swat toward the screen, which Peter thought was hilarious and adorable and wonderful. He never had any similar urges, but . . . Sometimes his teeth did ache a bit afterward, and he’d drink his blood a little faster than usual.
The cat became more comfortable securing her place in Peter’s lap, or along the back of the couch near his head whenever they had their screen time together. Peter asked FRIDAY to take as many photos and videos as possible. Because if Tony made the cat leave, Peter worried he’d forget the exact way her little fangs looked when she yawned, or how sleepy her eyes looked when the screen shut off and it was just the two of them enjoying the quiet together. The gentle noise of their purring mixed together whenever Peter managed to pet her in just the right place.
One afternoon, Tony invited himself to sit down near them. The cat lifted her head, giving Tony almost the same disinterested look Miss Potts gave him whenever he made an excuse about why he’d lost track of time in the lab, again, and missed an important meeting.
“Think of any good names yet, kid?” Tony asked, slumping down into his chair. He smelled like grease and oil, and his StarkPad was still in hand, even though he held it with the screen turned downward.
“Names?” Peter repeated, puzzled. He knew Tony had several names—Mister Stark, Avenger, Iron Man, tin can. Except Steve had worriedly made Peter promise never to repeat the last one on account of it would probably hurt Mister Stark’s feelings, somehow. Peter had his name, the one they’d given back to him. Maybe they didn’t want him to keep being Peter? But they didn’t like it at all when Peter thought of himself as Spider, or monster, or—
“The cat,” Tony clarified.
“Oh. No? She doesn’t have a name,” Peter said, because Tony and Bruce hadn’t introduced her with one. FRIDAY didn’t have a name for her, and she certainly hadn’t told Peter what her name was. He glanced down toward her, feeling her tiny paws knead into his kneecap.
“Can’t be nameless forever,” Tony said. “Let me know if you want any suggestions. Fluffy. Whiskers. Iron Man Junior.”
“No?” Peter tried a new thing he’d been working on where he hugged the cat closer to his chest and she let him. “That’s not . . . None of those are her name?”
Tony shrugged. “Take as long as you need to decide, Pete. It’s a big decision.”
Peter asked FRIDAY about it later.
“Statistically, it has proven to be a positive sign when reluctant pet owners agree on a name,” FRIDAY responded eagerly. “There is a high probability the cat will stay.”
“Forever?” Peter asked, some of his tension easing when FRIDAY played an affirmative tone.
“And the boss has informed me that I ‘don’t need to worry about anything’ when he realized I altered his search history to ensure that every advertisement on his StarkPad is related to the care and keeping of cats and how beneficial it can be to have a pet,” FRIDAY admitted, volume turned down a few notches.
“Oh.”
Peter hadn’t asked her to do any of that, especially because it didn’t seem fair that FRIDAY couldn’t even pet the cat. And probably was a little afraid that she might start chewing on some important wires at any given moment.
“FRIDAY? You’re the best,” Peter said, quickly climbing the wall to give the ceiling a few good, firm pats. It was the closest he could ever get to hugging her, which he thought was also a shame. Mister Stark had taught him the benefits of hugs.
Restless, Peter worked on fixing some loose webbing in the nest he’d made in the corner of his room. While he worked, wrists hurting only a little bit, he heard a tiny, tiny heartbeat slowly make its way closer. And closer. And—
The cat nudged her way through Peter’s open bedroom door which had never happened before and made Peter’s heart want to burst three sizes too big like that funny green man’s in the seasonably inappropriate film Mister Stark had shown him a few weeks ago.
She’d avoided Peter’s room ever since the whole trying-to-put-her-in-his-web-only-she’d-hated-that-a-lot incident.
The cat leapt onto Peter’s bed, curling up by his pillows. She stayed there, even when Peter crawled down the wall, even when he settled down—inch by inch, carefully—onto the mattress near her. She blinked slowly, lazily, the way Peter did sometimes when he was all full of blood and trying to ignore how warm and tired he felt.
The lights in the room dimmed slowly, the way FRIDAY usually did for Peter so that his eyesight wouldn’t go all haywire at a sudden change. It was one of a million reasons why FRIDAY was the best ceiling lady in the world.
Peter didn’t need to know anything about the outside world to know that was true.
Peter slipped beneath the covers, and couldn’t keep himself from letting out an excited gasp when the cat curled up beside him. Pressing her head insistently against his chin, moving Peter around so that she could get comfortable, and it was wonderful. And she let him pet her until his heartrate had calmed again, and he managed to fall asleep.
- - -
It quicky became a new routine. Peter suspected the cat liked his room so much because she knew that she deserved bigger, fancier things, like a bed sized for Peter instead of the cat bed Tony and FRIDAY had ordered for her.
Peter didn’t mind. It was the least she deserved.
Plus, the more time they spent together, the more she seemed to like him, and was comfortable demanding what she wanted from him. Food. A warm place on his mattress. Kneading his chest insistently until she could coax a purr from him, which usually triggered a similar result from her.
It was wonderful. They were happy and amazing and perfect together.
One day, Peter found Tony in the kitchen. Peter held the cat out in front of himself, dangling her from his hands, and she only let out a grumpy noise at the handling, and it was great.
“Mister Stark, did you decide?” Peter asked, swinging the cat a little closer to his face. Tony muttered something about cat hair in his cereal, which Peter decided to ignore. “Can she stay? Really stay? FRIDAY said—”
“Yeah, let me stop you there. You don’t need to convince me,” Tony said. “Pepper thinks it’d be good for me to practice, you know, empathy—something about pets and small children, and how you really aren’t that small anymore even if we just—anyway. Yeah, Pete. The cat is staying.”
Peter drew the cat back toward his chest, which she liked a lot more than hanging from his hands, hooking her chin over his shoulder with a content flick of her tail. It felt different, holding her, knowing she wasn’t going to leave him. That she belonged with him at the Tower now, like Tony and Pepper and FRIDAY did.
“Okay,” Peter said, though he found it hard to talk because he wanted to be busy smiling instead. “Okay, I think I have a name for her, then.”
“Hey, that’s great,” Tony said, leaning back in his chair. “Hit me.”
“I don’t—” Peter faltered, brow wrinkling. “I don’t want to hit you, and I’m not really sure how I’d hit you with a name, Mister Stark—”
“It’s—” Tony did that thing where he looked like maybe he was getting a headache. “It’s an expression, kid. It means you can tell me whenever you’re ready.”
“Okay!” Peter held up the cat again, in the way he’d seen a cartoon character hold up a lion in that nice movie that hadn’t been very long and had oddly skipped around to a few different song sequences before FRIDAY had shut it off. “I want to call her Cat.”
It was the perfect name because it was hers and it made so much sense, and Tony was always teaching Peter the right names for things and she was the very first cat he’d ever had the privilege of meeting.
“You want to call your new cat . . . Cat?” Tony asked.
Peter nodded eagerly, before setting Cat down because she was starting to complain. She wound closer to Tony’s feet, probably to keep Peter from picking her up again too soon.
Tony looked like he was getting a headache again.