Work Text:
There were three certainties in life. Death, taxes, and that Yoichi’s cat hated Toshitsugu.
The first time he came by Yoichi’s apartment, he was met with a large hissing ball of white fur. He didn’t mind much as when Yoichi had told him he had a cat, he spent a few hours doing research and found that cats were territorial and tended to only bond with one person. He had accepted the cat might not like him before they even met. He just hadn’t anticipated the level of calculated hatred.
It was normal things at first. Hissing at Toshitsugu, swiping at him when he got too close, usual cat stuff. Then after their two month anniversary, things began to change.
“You know, it’s weird. I’ve never had a boyfriend last this long. They usually break up with me before this,” Yoichi said over dinner that night.
Toshitsugu had thought that was ridiculous though he was also thankful for the apparent idiocy of his last few boyfriends. He couldn’t see a single thing about Yoichi that would ever cause him to break up.
Then the cat came in.
He jumped on the table and meowed plaintively as if Yoichi hadn’t fed him dinner a half hour ago. He turned to Toshitsugu who rolled his eyes at the sight. Then before he could react, the cat grabbed a chicken leg off his plate and jumped off the table, disappearing beneath the couch.
“Zen!” Yoichi gasped, running after him. He was too slow however and the cat was safely devouring the chicken leg from beneath the farthest, hardest to reach corner in the couch. He turned to Toshitsugu and apologized profusely.
“I’m so sorry, he normally tries to steal my food but I didn’t think he would—”
He waved the apologies off. “It’s alright. I know how cats can be.”
“I still feel bad. I tried my best to make sure this meal was balanced too. Vegetables, carbs, protein. I didn’t even make dessert because I thought we’d be too full,” he cried.
Toshitsugu grabbed him by the waist, holding him close. “Oh, I’ve got a different idea to get protein.”
It was a very cheesy line, but Yoichi happened to adore stupid cheesy lines. He blushed brightly and took him to the bedroom, completely forgetting about the rest of the food on the table.
Zen finished his chicken leg and crawled out from beneath the couch, pupils dilating at the sight of all the abandoned food on the table. His first thought was to gorge himself until he threw up on the carpet. Then he realized something. His poor defenseless caretaker was gone and so was that vile trespasser.
He immediately began to search, following their scents to the bedroom. He tried to nudge it open as he usually did only to realize the unthinkable had happened. The door was closed!
He began to scratch and yowl, terrified for Yoichi. What could be going on behind that door? What if he was being attacked without Zen there to defend him? After what felt like hours of screaming, scratching, and throwing himself against the door (but was really a few minutes) Yoichi opened it, naked. He instantly began twining himself around Yoichi’s legs, purring loudly.
“Aw Zen, were you scared? Did you want to see me?” Yoichi said in a baby talk voice, picking him and holding him close while he continued purring. He gave Toshitsugu an apologetic look as he scratched the cat’s chin. “I’m sorry, I was so excited I forgot Zen hates closed doors. Maybe next time when I go to your place?”
Toshitsugu wanted to kiss his forehead and reassure him that was fine, but he knew better than to approach the cat. So instead, he smiled and nodded. Yoichi left to give the cat a treat as an apology. Over his shoulder, the cat gave him the smuggest expression he ever saw. He didn’t even know a cat could look like that.
One thing was for sure, that cat was doing this on purpose. And he wasn’t going to lose.
Toshitsugu quickly learned not to leave his things lying around after the cat chewed or pissed on them. There went his favorite leather jacket. Yoichi was very apologetic and offered to pay him back but he refused the offer. These were the casualties of war.
But he had his own way of fighting back. He was going to kill that cat. With kindness.
If he got the cat to at least tolerate him, then maybe he would stop ruining his clothes. He also hoped maybe he would stop scratching at closed doors and give them some privacy, but according to Yoichi, he had been like that since he was a kitten.
“You adopted him as a kitten?”
Yoichi nodded proudly, giving the purring cat in his lap some belly scritches as he spoke. “I found him as a newborn kitten, washed up near a river. I guess he got swept away when the river swelled because of rain. He was really dirty and weak and the vet told me there was a high chance he wouldn’t make it. We went to the vet a lot during that first year and I didn’t really sleep much, but he’s almost three now and doing great!”
Toshitsugu stared at the cat again. He was a slightly chubby short-haired cat with perfectly groomed white fur, red eyes, and while he wasn’t a Maine Coon, his height suggested he might have those genes.
“I guess you two really bonded during that huh?”
“We did. He absolutely hates being away from me. Sometimes I worry I made it worse because I work from home, so the most I’m usually gone is about two hours for shopping. And even then he rushes to see me. When I go to your place for the night my neighbor tells me that she can hear him scratching and wailing. I feel so bad but I don’t know what to do.”
“Why not get another cat?” Preferably one that liked him.
“I thought about that but, you know how I walk him sometimes? One day when we were on our walk, a stray cat came by. Zen started hissing and growling and he pulled the leash so hard I accidentally let go and he attacked the other cat. I managed to get the leash back but not before the other cat got their left ear shredded and a ton of other cuts. It did manage to run away so I hope someone else found it and took care of it.”
Of course the cat was the kind to attack on sight.
“Maybe I could move in,” he suggested.
“But then—” Yoichi cut himself off, turning red, “I mean uh, that’s a great idea.”
Toshitsugu raised a brow. “You like us having different apartments so we can fuck in mine without a clingy cat, don’t you?”
He nodded, the red spreading from his face to his neck.
“Well, my lease is up in two months so we have time to decide.”
And Toshitsugu had time to win the cat over.
He did some more research to figure out how to get the cat to at least tolerate him.
He already gave Zen plenty of space and he didn’t think the cat would let him get close enough to pet. But he could buy some new toys to wave around.
He told his plan to Yoichi who smiled and let him in while he went to grocery shop, giving them some alone time.
“Here kitty kitty. Come here Zen-chan,” he said, waving one of the twenty cat toys he bought. It was a cat wand with a bunch of red feathers attached to the end.
He waved it as if he were casting a fishing line. The cat looked at it suspiciously and went back to staring at the door, waiting for Yoichi.
He threw the toy a few more times before trying out the next four cat wands. One had a mouse on the end, another a worm, and the last was more of a machine that he had to set up and it moved the cat wand attachment at the end by itself. He thought a machine that didn’t require having his body nearby might get the cat’s attention but much like the others, he barely glanced at it before going back to the door.
Next up were the squeaky toys. Not like ones for a dog, but smaller and were all in the shape of different birds, making dying squawks when moved. Some of them even had catnip inside. He could swear the cat rolled it’s eyes at him.
There were several other types of cat toys. Springs, feather balls, worms, at one point he even scattered catnip around. The cat didn’t react and he had to carefully sweep it all up. Sighing, he went for his last resort, a bunch of robotic fish. He grabbed a bowl of water to put them in and put it at the invisible boundary the cat set. If he got too close, he got swiped at.
The cat spared a glance at the noise but didn’t seem very interested. Then again, he probably couldn’t see above the sides of the bowl to the robotic fish below.
“I’ll just push it over. He’ll be too overwhelmed by the fish to swipe at me,” Toshitsugu said to himself.
He slowly slid it over, one centimeter at a time. Er-Er-Err. The cat again looked at the noise, seeming very annoyed, it’s eyes narrowing as it saw the man coming closer. This time, it didn’t turn back but stayed still, glaring.
“Come on Zen-chan,” he said, using the nickname Yoichi did. The most normal nickname anyway. “Here kitty, look at all the fish.”
He slid the bowl a little father. The water sloshed at the edges, but didn’t spill. The cat had it’s ears pinned back, looking to his face and back to the bowl. Then without warning, it bolted, knocking the bowl over.
Toshitsugu found it strange seeing as he expected to get swiped at but he couldn’t complain. He picked up the fish and put them in the bowl to put on the counter, intending to grab a mop for the water. He took no more than two steps when a white blur came out of nowhere, tripping his feet. He tripped and fell face first on the floor, dropping the bowl, red ceramic shattering on the floor and cutting his face.
He looked up, wincing at the throbbing pain in his nose and wiping the blood off his face as he saw the cat grinning smugly, grooming a paw.
“Fuck you Zen.”
He did his best to clean up the ceramic though the water was still there when Yoichi came home. He apologized but Yoichi was more concerned with the blood all over his face and insisted on taking him to the hospital. He needed some stitches and it would scar but he would be fine. As for his nose, it was badly bruised but not broken.
Yoichi kissed his cheek. “I still think you’re handsome.”
He smiled appreciatively deciding that he was the real winner of this round because spending those four hours with him in the hospital meant Yoichi was away from home and with him for even longer.
Unfortunately for him, the cat was crafty and could learn.
Toshitsugu’s next strategy was to give him treats. Was the cat already overweight? According to the vet, yes, by about five pounds. Yoichi had him on a diet but it didn’t seem to be working. Probably because the cat was very good at acting like he hadn’t been fed and stealing food off Toshitsugu’s plate.
But he no longer cared about the cat’s fat ass. If it wanted to eat itself to a heart attack at the cat equivalent of forty then fine. He may have felt a tiny bit bad helping it get there, but if treats were what was needed to win the cats heart, then treats it would be.
“Here Zenny-chan,” he said in the sweetest voice possible, holding out the small dry fish-flavored square. He dropped it on the floor and waited for the cat to come to him like he did with Yoichi.
Zen gave him a look, as if he were a rotten mouse corpse, and went back to licking his tail. He sighed and went to put the treats when he heard a crunch and darted back to see the treat gone and the cat licking his lips.
He tried again over the course of the next few days and realized the cat would wait until he left, then grab the treat.
“Fat ass,” Toshitsugu called him after realizing, then for extra insult, he added, “You look pregnant!”
The cat simply continued to nap in the beam of sunlight through the window, not paying him any attention.
His next step was using treats other than the one Yoichi did. They were pricey but any cat who liked fish was guaranteed to like it. Or at least that’s what the commercial said.
The cat did eat the treat, but he wasn’t sure how much the cat liked it until one day, when he was helping Yoichi clean. He was cleaning out the cat cabinet and organizing all the treats when Zen came by. He silently watched as Toshitsugu put the many treat boxes on the counter to organize them. When he began to put them back up in a new order, Zen struck, leaping from the dinner table to the counter and knocking over as many boxes as he could. Most of the lids were popped open from the impacts and he began eating as many treats as he could while the nasty smelling human panicked.
Toshitsugu grabbed a broom to sweep it up, but angered by having the delicious treats swept away, Zen leaped, claws out. On instinct, Toshitsugu put a leg out to keep him back. The cat hit his foot, not harshly but the impact was firm enough he was knocked back. The cat yowled loudly writhing in pain.
Yoichi ran in, gasping at the scene. “Toshi, what happened? Zen are you alright?”
Toshitsugu explained what happened as he gingerly picked up the cat, who meowed whenever he touched his chest, where he had bounced off the foot.
“I don’t think you did this on purpose, but please try to be more careful next time. I think I should take Zen to the vet, just to make sure he didn’t break anything. You can finish cleaning in the meantime.”
The cat gave him one of those smug looks it was so good at as he reluctantly began sweeping the treats up. They were all the expensive treats he bought too.
Zen was fine. He had a small bruise but according to the vet, “He’s just being whiny. Also, he gained another pound.”
In the meantime, the lease on Toshitsugu’s apartment ended in a week and it was decided he would move in.
Zen was suddenly assaulted with the intruder’s scent everywhere as his belongings were slowly moved in. He made his hatred known by grabbing things from his boxes and shredding them. Or if it was possible, climb in the box and piss in it while making direct eye contact with Toshitsugu.
Yoichi felt so bad about his boyfriend’s things getting ruined, he finally decided to do something he should have done a long time ago.
Zen was getting neutered.
It should have been done about a year and a half ago, when he was six months, but he had so many health issues as a kitten that Yoichi didn’t want to stress his body out with more surgery. Then when he recovered, Yoichi still felt paranoid and decided not to. But while researching, he found that neutering helped male cats stop spraying and decided it was time he got over his fear.
When the surgery was over, Zen was loopy from the anesthesia. He stumbled out of his cat carrier and right into Toshitsugu’s arms, purring as he was carefully held.
“Can we drug him all the time?” he asked, feeling tears form as the cat laid peacefully against him at last.
Yoichi snorted in laughter, and he decided it was best not to say he was being serious. Unfortunately, it couldn’t last. The drugs wore off and Zen scrambled off his lap, too freaked out at being so close to the intruder to scratch. Instead, he went to seek out Yoichi’s comforting scent.
Yoichi was working in his office and gladly welcomed Zen’s presence, though as the cat came more into his senses, he felt something was off.
He decided to groom himself, deciding that would surely get rid of the strange feeling. When he got to his nether regions however, he realized what it was.
They were gone. Both of them.
He meowed in fear and confusion, begging for Yoichi’s attention and reassurance. As his caretaker held him close, he tried to figure out how that could have happened. Then he remembered the strange sleepy feeling and waking up in that smelly stranger’s arms. He must have been the one to take them and Zen had the perfect plan for revenge.
“Aw, Zenny-chan. You’re so cute. My cutesy widdle Zen-Zen. Who’s my precious cutie patootie kitty kins? My cutie kitty kins,” Yoichi said, giving him belly scratches while he purred loudly.
The plan would need some time to work anyway.
Zen waited a week, allowing them to get comfortable. He let them sleep through the night, though he still woke them up at 6:30 AM sharp for his breakfast. This was no excuse for slacking off. The stranger was the one who got up to feed him, which upgraded him to ugly useless servant, but for his plan to work he was going to need to stay in bed.
To keep them from getting suspicious, he still did his duty to watch over Yoichi, especially when he sat on the water-bowl-chair and stood beneath the rain machine. What if he drowned without Zen there to watch over him?
“Wow, you weren’t kidding when you said the cat followed you everywhere,” Toshitsugu said one day when he walked in to hand Yoichi a towel.
Yoichi stepped out, dripping wet, and quickly dried his arm to give Zen some pets.
“There’s my kitty. My cutie kins. Zenny-chan my cutie kitty kins,” Yoichi said in a baby talk voice as the cat flopped over for belly scratches.
Toshitsugu stood there for a few minutes until Yoichi noticed him and smiled. He ruffled his boyfriend’s hair and kissed his cheek.
“Don’t worry Toshi, you’re cute too. My cute widdle Tocchan,” he said, kissing him all over his face.
He blushed. “You don’t need to do that.”
“I don’t want you getting jealous. Now come on, its bedtime,” Yoichi said, grabbing him by the hand.
The bedroom door was so rudely shut in Zen’s face. He decided it was time to enact his plan. He moved to the farthest corner of the house, using one of his many scratching posts while his caretaker and servant made strange noises in the bedroom. He had no idea what they were doing but they stopped after a few hours at least. And they were always naked in the morning, which would help with his plan.
Finally, the sun rose, and he enacted his plan. He had been practicing while they were asleep and leaped upwards, managing to twist the handle while simultaneously pushing the door with his body. It opened and he sprinted inside, landing squarely on the ugly servant’s chest where he got into a comfortable loaf position.
Toshitsugu woke up to a sudden weight on his chest and wondered if he was dying. Then his eyes adjusted, and he saw the cat, loafing peacefully on him.
“Yoichi! Yoichi wake up. Look!” he hissed quietly so as not to scare the cat.
Yoichi grumbled then shot up at the sight. He quickly began taking pictures and went to get Zen’s breakfast, not wanting to interrupt the moment. “The two most important men in my life are finally getting along,” he cheered.
Toshitsugu carefully patted his head which the cat accepted before jumping off him and heading to one of the cat wands on the floor. One with a worm toy at the end which he had brought to Yoichi to play with before he went to shower the day before.
“Aw, you wanna play?”
He began to wave the worm around and Zen eagerly jumped at it, widening his pupils for maximum cuteness. Just as Toshitsugu began to let his guard down, that was when he struck.
His screech of pain was heard through the entire neighborhood.
Yoichi ran in to see his boyfriend screaming and cursing in pain, his lower half covered in blood, while Zen neatly licked the red off his paws.
“HE HAS A TASTE FOR FLESH!” Toshitsugu screamed, still doubled over on the floor.
“What happened?”
“I was playing with him when he attacked me! My dick!” he cried in pain.
Worrying about the possibility of an infection or needing stitches, Yoichi got the both of them dressed and drove him to the hospital.
Despite the scratches all over his genitalia, Toshitsugu was fine. He was disinfected (which hurt) and sent on his way without stitches. However, there was to be no more sex until he was fully healed.
He got home and glared at the cat peacefully napping in the cat bed attached to the window.
“I know you did this on purpose,” he muttered tiredly.
The cat paid no attention to him, sure that the intruder must now also be missing those parts after his attack.
In fact, Zen was so sure of this, he no longer thought of Toshitsugu as an intruder but a poor servant unfit to grace the same floors as him but was useful due to his opposable thumbs. He enjoyed lording over him by using the litter box when he was scooping it and sleeping in his side of the bed, leaving him to be very uncomfortably contorted around him.
He was little more than the spare human of the apartment, which was better than outright hating him. Both humans noticed the change and Yoichi commented on how wonderful it was that both his favorite men could get along now, for real.
Toshitsugu watched him scarf down the new treats he bought. “I guess if this is what it takes for peace, then fine. I would actually lose my balls if it makes Yoichi happy.”
Zen then jumped on the counter and knocked over a glass of water. Just because.
He sat and watched Toshitsugu clean it with amusement.
Yes human, clean up after me and acknowledge me as your lord. Mrow-how-how-how!
Bonus Time!
Scream
Zenny-chan?
Haiii!
Nani ga suki?
Chocolate mint. But not as much as Yo-I-Chi!
Only
AFO: Wow, my little brother must be so sad in a universe where he’s an only child.
Yoichi: I’m FREEEEE!!!!!
DIY Vasectomy
AFO: Hah, now you’ll never get my innocent little brother pregnant
Toshitsugu: Neither of us can get pregnant. Also, everything still works.
Yoichi: Yeah besides, if anything he’d be the one getting pregnant.
Name
Toshitsugu: How the fuck did you decide to name that cat Zen of all things?
Yoichi, holding the perfectly calm, purring cat in his lap: What do you mean? He’s very Zen.