Chapter Text
PREFACE
I find that with many pets, their negative traits are the ones that seem to stand out the most prominently. Their selfishness, carelessness, stupid-ness, and whatever else they do that just annoys the ever-living carp out of me. Grape isn’t like that.
The first time I met her, so long ago I barely remember it, she single-handedly managed to save my life. I don’t remember many of the specifics. There was something about an alligator and free catnip, but I was still pretty young. Grape had been even younger, though. Maybe she doesn’t remember at all, since she’s three or four years younger than I am.
I didn’t talk to her all that often in the time between then and our disastrous date. Just… every now and then. Whenever she was around.
She didn’t talk to many cats at all; most days she barely spoke to anyone outside of her dog brother Peanut and her owners, as far as I could tell. I talked to her so infrequently that I didn’t even know she was a girl for the longest time. Usually, I can tell. Finding out was pretty eye-opening.
In retrospect I feel it reflects badly upon me, but the instant I found out, I sort of wanted to shoot my shot; after how badly my previous relationship had ended, I was lonely, suffice to say. And at first, Grape pretty much flat-out rejected me.
Then, out of nowhere, I received a phone call. She had decided to give me a chance. Honestly, I’m not fully sure what changed, but it certainly felt like a blessing, though perhaps less outlandish than it had seemed prior, as we’d since bonded some over our mutual love for Pridelands. Still, it seemed like a truly wild dream. I really wanted everything to go perfectly.
And it didn’t. I screwed it up.
An awkward dinner that ended with me proposing we go see a movie, reaching into my collar where I was supposed to be storing the tickets, and finding nothing. I know I didn’t forget them, but they must have blown away or something when I wasn’t paying attention.
It hardly mattered. Any attempt to explain would have fallen flat. I just apologized and said I didn’t know what happened. She went home. I went home. There was rain.
Often, my owner would have forgotten to unlock the door for me and Bino, but that night, we were able to come inside and stay dry. I didn’t sleep. I wasn’t terribly sad, per se, but something felt… inexplicably wrong.
But I suppose it just wasn’t meant to work out.