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It was not her cat. She couldn't even touch the thing, though she would occasionally spot it curling up next to Malcolm while he idly scratched it under the chin. It – Malcolm told her it was probably female, but she preferred thinking of it as an “it” – seemed to like Malcolm so much better than her, but it never went with him when he went back to his apartment.
“You just need to be calmer,” Malcolm told her. “Let her come to you.”
“I don't want it to come to me,” Jessica responded. “I want it to leave me alone.”
“Cats don't do what you want them to. They do what they want to do. And for whatever reason, Jessica, she wants to be near you.”
Jessica scowled at the cat – a big, gray tabby which was missing part of its ear – but it took no notice of her and continued purring under Malcolm's hand.
It had shown up in her apartment one morning – about a week after Kilgrave... well, after that all went down – sitting in her kitchen like it owned the place. She felt a wave of anger all out of proportion to the situation rise up within her.
“Get out! Shoo!” She shouted and waved her hands, but the cat ignored her, continuing to groom itself calmly. Jessica's anger subsided.
That was the strange thing: every time Jessica tried to touch the cat, it shied away, but if she tried to scare it, it simply gave her a look. I have seen some shit, that look seemed to say, and you do not rank on a list of the scariest things I have encountered.
Jess had to respect that, she grudgingly admitted, so she let the cat stay. (In the back of her mind, she wondered if she could have gotten rid of it anyway.) She had scrounged up some food that it seemed to find acceptable, and it had then disappeared.
Not long after, she had woken up to find it curled up on the lower left corner of her bed, as far from her as it could get while still being on the bed. Jessica and the cat had stared at each other a moment, then Jessica had moved toward it – though whether to pet it or to toss it off the bed even she didn't know. It was a moot point anyway: the moment she moved, the cat had leaped off the bed. Nevertheless, every morning since, she had woken to find it on that same corner. At least, every morning when she had actually slept in her bed instead of passing out at her desk.
One night, the nightmares were particularly bad. After waking up, Jessica huddled shivering under the sheets. She rarely went to bed sober, and this was why. Even so, she didn't feel like she had the energy to get out of bed.
She had resigned herself to a long night of staring at the filthy window and willing the sun to rise when she felt a small change in the weight distribution on her bed. The cat must have jumped up onto its favorite corner. Jessica lay still, and she felt the cat begin to delicately pick its way across the bed toward her. Finally, she felt its warmth as it settled next to her back.
Jessica's own tremors subsided as she concentrated on the cat's breathing. It was steady but faster than hers. She wondered if all cats breathed that fast. Then she heard a small sound like a revving engine and realized that it was purring.
“Dumb cat,” she mumbled into her pillow, and, smiling, she drifted into a dreamless sleep.