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Category 3: Cat
I didn’t like him from the beginning.
Tav introduced him as Astarion. Oooh, fancy name for a fancy man.
I was sleeping, but since the hospitable thing to do was to introduce myself, I yawned, I stretched, I got to my feet, I arched my back, I—
They were gone.
Astarion barely even looked at me. He didn’t greet me, he didn’t speak to me, he didn’t acknowledge me at all.
In my own house?
Oh, no.
Oh, no, no, no.
‘This is Astarion,’ Tav introduced him. Astarion glanced over, and followed Tav to the kitchen.
I naturally assumed there was a misunderstanding and followed them to the kitchen. I sat very prettily, eyes half-lidded, observing the stranger. I groomed myself patiently, waiting for a compliment on my golden eyes, my ebony hair, my graceful lines. None came.
This would not do at all.
Tav’s cat was staring at him. Weird little black cat , Astarion thought. He looked a moment longer and decided it looked slightly demonic.
Hmm, so it was to be like this, was it? I could hold this man’s gaze. I could tread these violent ruby pools. I’d outstared better men than this one.
A starion , I scoffed. A pretentious name, for a pretentious man. It sounded like the name of a car ad from Tav’s television.
This fancy man couldn’t even boast a proper title. The thought made me smirk, and I flashed him a quick grin, and a peek at my fangs.
I, on the other hand, was descended from warrior kings and bore their honorific. I was,
That it did not all fit on my ID tag was regrettable. The tag read; Gus
‘Your cat is staring at me,’ Astarion said to Tav. His amused smirk displayed a hint of fangs.
‘Yes, Gus does that sometimes.’
The conflict started small. Minor aggressions, strategically committed to destabilize. Like the repeated encroachments on my sovereign territory, for instance. I was unprepared the first time Astarion scooped me up, and relocated me to the far end of the sofa. The SUNLESS end of the sofa. And I certainly never anticipated anything as monstrous as when Astarion attempted to starve me out. Repeatedly failing to provide meals at the established hour—sometimes late by 10, even 20 minutes, he gloated over every victory. ‘Just a cat,’ he would taunt, throwing his head back in an evil cackle.
The first true attack came while I slept.
For all six months of my life, I slept next to Tav. Every night I curled in the space under her chin, and enjoyed the warmth and sweet breeze of her breath as she slept. When she woke, mine was the first face that greeted her, and she always spoke in soft cooing tones and scratched my ears until I purred. It was a sacred ritual. Our sacred ritual. Since the invasion, I had been ousted from my bed, more than I had been in it.
The night of the first attack had been bloody. There were casualties on both sides. The fancy man and Tav stumbled into her chambers that night, giggling and smelling of wine. Later, Tav would claim she hadn’t seen me there. Perhaps, but the result was the same. I screamed and defended myself. What ensued was chaotic, and I will not debate who bit first (he did). They say that in war truth is the first casualty, and because the wounds on Astarion’s hand and arm appeared similar to my bite pattern, I was tried without due process, and sentenced to sleep that night, bruised and defeated, in the laundry room.
How dare!
Astarion had never been a cat person. He had never been an animal person, period. Animals were food, or they were irrelevant. But Tav had a cat, and so Astarion prepared to tolerate a cat. How hard could that be? he thought at first, It was just a cat. The bitter memory of that ignorance rose like bile in his throat. Astarion soon knew his folly in underestimating the beast.
It wasn’t long before Astarion decided animals came in three categories; food, irrelevant, and now, cats. The little bastard had drawn blood on more than one occasion, biting and scratching with little or no provocation. Astarion understood how cats came to be associated with the occult, and suspected that this one, too, may be a kind of minor demon.
Then there were his shoes…
He didn’t know when it happened. By the time he realized it, events were already in motion. The event was Tav’s birthday dinner at the Elfsong Pub. Astarion remembered how they ran late, as he had given her a gift before they left. Two, actually. And so they rushed from the house, pulling on whatever clothes they could find. They arrived to find the entire group gathered. Twelve of them in all. The pub had let them the entire back room, a cozy space to themselves with a highly polished wooden table, plush blue velvet chairs, a roaring fireplace, and tidy french doors to close them off from the noise in the main hall. Astarion requested it be decorated specially for this event, and the room was adorned with candles, and arrangements just how Tav preferred. It was perfect, and Tav was beaming.
Greetings made all around, they sat down together at a beautiful feast. The room should have smelled of roasted meat, rich wine and woodsmoke. Instead, it smelled of cat pee.
No one said anything, Astarion noticing first by the small signals amongst his friends. Like Shadowheart lifting her nose slightly, and Gale peeking under the table, checking his boots. It was Lae’zel who finally called it out.
‘It smells like cat piss in here, does it not?’
Astarion knew at once, and out in the hallway confirmed it with a sniff of his tasteful boots. He had no alternative. This was Tav’s celebration, and he was neither going to leave it, nor continue to perfume it so rankly.
He expected laughing from Gale, Minthara, and even Wyll, but when Tav herself guffawed at him returning, barefooted, to the dinner table, he vowed to avenge this indignity.
Astarion had been patient, but now Gus had it coming.
The second attack was positively Machiavellian.
In hindsight, I understood that wars were fought for hearts and minds as much as for blood and territory. My enemy knew this too, for as he and Tav sat on the sofa one night, sharing a bottle of red wine, he flashed a wicked smirk my way.
The moment Tav left the room, Astarion looked me dead in the eye, and knocked over his glass. Wine, dark as blood, flowed over the table, and dribbled over the edge onto Tav’s white rug. At first, I didn’t understand why he would do such a thing.
‘Gus! Dammit!’ Astarion shouted. ‘Godsdamned cat! Shoo!’
Shoo? I was sitting on the floor, licking my balls as I always did at this hour. I was nowhere near the scene of the cri—
Oh. I understood.
What followed was a shrieking Tav, blotting frantically at the carpet, cursing and shouting, and calling me unspeakable names. The war had shifted to one of public opinion, and Astarion had landed a significant blow.
How dare!
Astarion was losing his patience.
He couldn’t talk to Tav about this, knowing exactly how nuts it all sounded. Of course the cat wasn’t out to get him. Probably. But, he found it difficult to produce another explanation. It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you, he reasoned. And Astarion fully believed that Gus was deliberately fucking with him.
It couldn’t be an accident that Gus only ever threw up on Astarion’s laundry. It wasn't a fluke that zoomies began at the precise moment that Astarion took to his trance, and the morning that Gus dropped a dead rat at his feet, how could he not feel personally attacked?
That Tav still allowed Gus into their bedroom was beyond his comprehension. But, there Gus would be—up on the dresser, yellow eyes judging him as he made love to Tav. Astarion tried to ignore him, but it was godsdamned distracting! There was just no way it was accidental that without fail, as Astarion was about to climax, Gus suddenly had a hairball that needed dislodging.
The little shit needed to go.
Tensions were at an all time high between me and the fancy man. I had been imprisoned in the garage for nearly a tenday following the discovery of the boots. And again following the wine. More and more frequently I found myself shut out of my own bedroom—it was clear that peace was not an option. When Astarion entered a room I would leave. But not before hissing, fluffing up my black tail, and sauntering from the room, displaying my asshole the whole way out. It was no less than he deserved. Astarion was hardly blameless. Astarion hissed, though rather poorly in my estimation, and Astarion kicked, and once Astarion turned the spray nozzle on me, for no greater crime than watching him clean dishes from atop the kitchen cabinet.
I admit, since Astarion was always sporting a bite or a scratch, I rather felt that the tides were shifting in my favour.
I had not accounted for the inhumanity of this enemy. The final blow was technically a war crime.
Tav called out in her usual sing-song way as she came into the house, and I opened one eye. She was early today—what a treat! I stretched long, rolling my body from nose to tail before standing up and trotting over to greet her. The fancy man was not with her today. A second treat!
I followed Tav from room to room, tail on parade, weaving between her legs and purring. It was just like old times. When she emerged from a closet with the crate in her hands, I tried to run. I knew that nothing good came from the crate.
Before I knew it she had me by the scruff. Powerless, I was plopped into the crate, and the iron bars slammed shut behind me. Tav-the-Betrayer continued to chat cheerfully with me as we left the house, and still as we made our way down the tree lined streets. At our destination I was finally released from the prison. The man she spoke with was a stranger. A chef of some kind perhaps? He wore a long white coat with his name embroidered over a pocket full of silver instruments. A painter, maybe!
‘My boyfriend thinks this might be why he’s so aggressive,’ Tav explained to the man who might have been a butcher? ‘He’s an indoor cat, but if it helps with the spraying and the biting, then it seems like a good idea.’
‘It’s a simple procedure.’ the pharmacist (?) told her. ‘He’ll be all done up and ready to go home in a couple hours.’ Tav left me with the stranger.
I had nothing in my arsenal to match this level of depravity. That evening, emerging from a drugged haze, I licked my wounds and cowered in the corner, watching the fancy man watch me right back.
I was the loser, and he, the victor. I began making plans for the next phase of my life.
Truth be told, Astarion felt badly watching Gus cower under the furniture. He still didn’t give a shit about the cat, but as a man he had a certain sympathy for what had just been done to the beast. Astarion could also see how anxiously Tav kept looking between the two of them. He hadn’t considered her in this campaign of domination. Presumably she had some level of feelings for this animal, that she let him live here and ruin her belongings.
He did give a shit about her.
Gus was frightened.
Astarion was resentful.
Tav was anxious.
With so much bad blood between them, Astarion wasn’t hopeful, but sighing, he peeled a piece of cheese off their pizza and held it down by his ankle anyway.
Astarion felt stupid, but reminded himself why he was doing this. He rolled his eyes, and gritted his teeth, then tried what he watched Tav do a hundred times.
‘Gus,’ he called out, then made a kissy noise.
‘Come here, pretty kitty.’
