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That morning Cassius had found his name under the “Feed Owlcat” column of the Grancypher’s chore board. In messy handwriting someone had inked a smaller message, “The mice they like are in the back right of the walk-in!”
Preferences… were to be respected, yes. But there was something else Zeta had taught him, something he couldn’t quite recall… Ah, preferences were to be remembered. So they could be acted on in the future as a way to demonstrate social affinity. It was like electing to cooperate repeatedly in iterated prisoner’s dilemma.
Five minutes to locate the freezer, perhaps ten to travel to the owlcat, and another two and a half to clean himself after. It was within the usual time he budgeted for his share of the ship maintenance labor. And so he set out to find the owlcat’s prized mice.
Its perch was a converted lower aft storage rooms. The room was lined with hay bedding and dominated by a giant wooden T upon which the bird currently rest. A heavy wooden shutter hung over the window to shield the room from the high winds generated by the Grandcypher in motion, but while docked in port (as they were currently) it was secured open to allow fresh air and the creature to come and go as it pleased.
“A most curious creature you are. The library’s tomes contain information about fossil dweller owls, and cats are common around ports… or indeed any time Dante is present. But you’re not quite either, are you? Or perhaps you’re both?”
“Such marvelous feathers…” They were long and graceful around the creature’s tail, wide and sleek across its impressive wingspan, and gathered into fluffy tufts at the neck where the avian and feline anatomy flowed into each other. It watched him as he circled it with gentle footfalls, admiring it from all angles.
Experimentally, Cassius reached his hand unencumbered by the stiff mouse to… “scritch” the cat head under its chin. Sen was half cat, and she enjoyed these ‘scritches’, so he reasoned the half cat owlcat might enjoy them as well.
The creature responded to his touch, arching its neck up to expose more of its soft down. A vulnerability, the demonstration of which fossil dwellers used to communicate trust. The rumbling coos it made must be a sign of contentment, or perhaps appreciation. Positive emotions in either case. Well done, Cassius. He’d successfully navigated the social exchange.
Its fur did not feel like a cat’s. The hairs were too rough. They were thicker at the tip than the base, like an inverted cone. To trap more insulating air close to its body? And the pattern in which it grew… he leaned in close for a better look. Incredible! it was a perfect hexagonal grid. Efficient, practical, optimal with regards to the number of hairs packed in a given area. A skilled engineer had designed this being.
It was deeply unnatural. Alive, yet stripped of the chaotic complexity that made the organic creatures here interesting. It was as though someone with a disdain for life in the sky realm had been tasked with copying it, and so worked from high level knowledge and relied on guesswork to fill in the details.
We’re both strangers in this land, aren’t we?
Alike the things here in appearance, but only through the random whims of convergent evolution. Despite the fossil dwellers best attempts to explain their world to him, there was some fundamental insurmountable mutual incomprehensibility of their respective existences.
To moon dwellers, being around others was neither desirable nor a burden. Another of their kind was equally likely to represent a chance for collaboration against a greater threat or a competitor for scarce lunar resources. And so Cassius did not have words, or even a mental framework to understand, the new bitterness that gripped him, pricking his throat and searing down between his chest and palm. The sudden onset of a bodily malfunction?
There was no evidence of this primal beast possessing the power to perceive unvoiced sensations. His face contained no muscles over which he did not exert conscious control, so it was not reading his expression like it might a fossil dweller’s. And yet, the creature clacked over on curled talons and began to groom his hair unprompted. Its rough tongue barbs abrated his skin where it was exposed beneath his hair.
“That will only make my hair dirtier,” he admonished. The owlcat persisted, undeterred, preening his hair lock by lock.
He would need to bathe, or the saliva matting his hair would take more time to clean out later. Each lick increased the effort required to return to his clean homeostasis. The delay would leave his morning plans in disarray. And yet, he didn’t move to shield his hair from the owlcat. With each of its licks down his hair and tugs against his scalp, the painful pricks beneath his ribs abated a degree.
“I don’t know what healing powers you possess, but I thank you for caring for me, friend.” He ran his hand through the downy feathers nestled close to the owlcat’s body. Friend? He’d never said that word before.
What a strange effect the inhabitants of this world were having on him.