As per the young master's request, tea and a light snack were being brought to the heart of the rose garden where Ciel had decided to get a little fresh air and stretch his legs. He'd just endured a morning-long stuffy meeting with several of his continental managers regarding the next Christmas season offerings. It had been exhaustingly intense since the three men needed to go on to London the same day to consult with several raw materials suppliers of gutta percha, mohair and kapok for ways to keep quality acceptable while prices remained reasonable. At the end of the afternoon All Ciel Phantomhive wanted now was a few relaxed moments in the open air to get the cigar smoke out of his hair (and lungs!) and to close his eyes in a bit of shade and listen to the birdsong and the fountain splashing a bit.

The butler soon appeared, bearing a tray of plates, cups, tea and finger sandwiches and Maylene following close behind with another bearing an almond blancmange with strawberry sauce. The often clumsy maid managed to deliver her burden to the table, execute a quick curtsey and exit without upsetting anything or falling on her bum for once.

"Next time, Sebastian, you carry the tea and sweet and give her the other food to carry. I could care less if the stupid cucumber sandwiches end up tossed all through the shrubbery," said the earl, sticking a rude finger into the strawberry sauce for a quick sample.

The butler morphed into disciplinarian for a moment and smacked the intruding little fingers back into line before serving the tea. "I thought a nice milky chai would be a pleasant change of pace, young master. I hope you approve."

"Not too strongly spiced, is it? I don't like so much spice I can't find the taste of the tea."

"In fact I did mix this with some Darjeeling for just that reason, young master."

"Good, good. It smells very good."

"Hot or iced, my lord?"

"Iced tea is an abomination that comes straight from Satan's bottom, Sebastian. Give me a proper cup of tea." The butler chuckled and gave the boy his 'proper cup.'

The young earl took a sip. "Yes. I like it. Do that again with the Darjeeling should you decide to serve chai in future."

"Yes, my lord." The young man popped a devilled egg into his mouth, made short work of two cucumber sandwiches and then fell on his slice of blancmange. "More sauce." He held up his plate and the butler obliged. Finally, the boy pushed himself back from the table and stretched out his legs with a sigh, sipping on a second cup of tea.

The tableau did not change substantially for the next ten minutes or so. The young man dozed and sipped and watched the butterflies and bees, and the butler stood by silently, listening to his master, the birds overhead, and the black cat slipping here and there through the undergrowth, hunting. Eventually, the butler shifted quietly, discreetly and cleared his throat, subtly drawing the young earl's attention to his desire to speak, as was the way with really good servants.

"Yes, Sebastian, something on your mind?" said the boy, barely cracking open an eye.

"I wondered whether the young master might care to learn a bit of something while he dozes in the summer sunshine?"

The boy's head popped up to regard the servant with slight apprehension. Hopefully he wasn't coming over with another case of 'demon tutor.' The Latin master had sent around a message earlier in the week to say hed taken ill and not to expect him on Wednesday and Ciel was still rather annoyed at the butler's agonising lesson on declensions.

"Depends. If it's more Latin or maths or something, keep it to yourself."

"I would imagine this would be more under the heading 'biological science', my lord. The young master so often expresses a desire to now more about the nature of creatures such as myself I thought..."

"Ah. That's all right then. But I reserve the right to stop you mid-stream if it gets too obnoxious or creepy." After a moment Ciel noticed the lack of butler speaking and sat up to stare. He found a pair of red eyes staring back looking rather affronted.

You wound me, my lord. Since when have I ever been 'creepy'?" The diminutive noble rolled his eyes and snorted inelegantly, scanning the horizon with a nasty little smirk on his lips. When next he looked, his servant's eyes were boring into his with a hard look.

Terrific. I suppose I'll be paying for that, shortly.

Ciel gave as good as he got for a moment but then gave it up with a flap of the hand not full of fine china.

"Right, right. Well, go on then."

"The young master has often commented on what he considers the oddity of my appreciation of cats. Apparently he thinks I would only have eyes for dangerous things like a wounded cape buffalo or offended domestic staff—"

Oh here we go...

"I was only teasing, Sebas—"

"However, the attraction cats hold for me does not really lay in their beauty or softness-though it is quite true they are lovely to put one's hands upon and elegant to the eye. I believe just as so many tend to underestimate my young master because of his size, people tend to misinterpret the nature of the cat because they appear small and cute. But to my mind, the real attraction of any cat is in their deceptiveness and in their impressive predatory skills and instincts." He stopped, giving the little master a moment to ponder this new way of looking at things, to mentally turn it over and examine it on his own for a few moments. The boy sipped his tea silently for a little while, watching the black cat at the end of the garden, who seemed to be providing an object lesson to accompany the demon's words.

"It's...it's deceptiveness!" the boy said finally, looking at the butler with an expression which suggested the boy thought the butler had finally begun to crack.

"Yes, my lord."

"Well ... all right, if you say so."

"It is the same sort of deception which occurs when you and I occupy this beautiful garden of a sunny afternoon side by side. As we spend an hour here in one another's company, it is very easy for you to fall into the error of thinking I am just the same as you, that I value the same things you value, have the same sorts of thoughts and concerns, because I look as though I am one of you, is that not so? Because humans generally judge the world by what their eyes tell them, is that not accurate my lord?"

Ciel eyed his butler and weighed his words. And as he eyed the butler up and down, trying to think what sort of erroneous assumptions he might have been entertaining about his servant, the butler, still just a touch annoyed with the youth's tart mouth from earlier, sent him a little mental 'impression'. Something the butler imagined the child would see as 'creepy': a micro-vision of his true form complete with a blast of pheromones the demon was capable of projecting onto others to inspire various emotions: in this case gut-wrenching horror.

Only a single waft: he did not want to unhinge the child, just help him get his perceptions properly aligned, and perhaps teach a quick lesson on the virtues of thinking before opening one's big mouth.

The graceful Rosenthal cup fell from the boy's fingers as his pupils were blown wide. Fortunately, the butler's reflexes were inhumanly quick.

"Shall I refill this for you, young master?" said Sebastian as he straightened from catching the cup, replacing it on its saucer again and straightening up to tower over the young man from quite close before him. The butler could still see the vision's effect lingering in the boys eyes, and Ciel could not stop himself from drawing back from his servant, though no real, overt threat had been made.

"My lord?"

"Yes. Refill it. And ... finish. Finish what you were saying." A smug little grin tip-toed over the butler's lips as he bent to carry out his master's wishes.

"Just so, then: when a householder sits before his hearth of an evening, reading a book or scanning the day's broadsheet, he may view his cat curled up at his feet, in the ashes of his fire, the very picture of domesticity, the very symbol of a snug safe home. And it is easy for the man to look on the little bundle of fur, not too much different in size to a wild rabbit, and think the cat is much like him, loving its leisure and the soft life, a regular saucer of milk and scraps from the mans table suiting him down to the ground. He thinks the cat's dreams are much like his own, that the animal is 'domesticated'.

"Nothing could be further from the truth. The real emotional life of cats is full of violence, killing, raw, greedy sex and death. In no way do they resemble one another. To take just one instance: does the man's woman throw herself on her back and roll moaning for a mate-any mate when she's 'in the mood' to copulate?"

"You have been to Whitechapel at night, haven't you Sebastian?"

"Those women are driven to desperation. I'm talking about taking frank, naked joy in sexual congress with whoever fights and wins the right. A cat will accomodate any and all comers. Does that have any parallel in the life of typical middleclass English men and women? Does the typical Englishman have to kill something with his own teeth and nails and then defend that kill from other violent creatures whenever he wants to feed himself? Is he in a continual battle with his neighbours to maintain the boundaries of his own territory? And what parallel in your life could compare to the village pack of dogs who think cats were invented solely so they could have something to harass and kill for sport?"

"Alright, I begin to see your point."

"And notice my lord that you 'see' my point. You do not taste or hear or smell or sense my point. Your perceptions of reality are very much dominated by sight. Both mine and the cat's are not. We also possess senses for which you do not even have a name. You will believe a thing 'when you see it for yourself' as men are wont to say. Even if what you 'see' is a lie, yes?" The young earl found himself staring over-long at the butler's beautiful face, meditating on the other messages being given him in this little mini-lecture on cats and demons.

"For its size, a cat is a highly successful predator. It nearly always successfully brings down its target once it settles on a particular creature. As a fellow predator I cannot help but admire its dedication and precision because these qualities are important to my survival as well. Watching a cat hunt and kill successfully is nearly as satisfying to me as hunting for myself."

"So in short, you're saying you like to watch cats kill things." The boy said flatly, his distaste plain.

"Yes!" the butler answered, his excitement clearly evident. He seemed oblivious to his little master's reactions to his words at this point, all his attention on his favourite cat, still stalking something in the long grass at the foot of the tall shrub border.

"One thing you may find difficult to understand because you have no such answering need in you, a thing cats share with my kind, is an actual physical need to kill on a regular basis. Perhaps your need for fresh air and daylight and stretching your legs now and then comes the closest to it. Humans will actually sicken if unable to be out in the daylight and fresh air and regularly exercise their bodies. Think of the shape Finny was in when he first came to us."

"Yes, he certainly was in bad shape."The boy had been bald and covered in sores.

"And your wish to escape to the garden after that stuffy meeting today is a good example as well. You felt a physical craving for it. Just so, my lord, a cat kept indoors all the time as a pet, denied the chance to stalk and leap and catch and kill suffers emotionally, becomes dull and depressed."

Seemingly unaware of it. The demon's body was beginning to mirror the tension of the cat crouching in the shade of one of the rugosa rosebushes. Ciel had yet to see what the cat was zeroing in on, but he could certainly see the effect it was having on the animal. It had dropped to a low crouch, then run forward a few strides only to freeze, one paw raised, then drop lower still. Now the only thing moving was the very tip of its tail, which was vibrating. Ciel's eyes were drawn in comparison—rather against his will—to his butler, who, never taking his eyes from the cat, had also dropped a fraction of an inch into a sympathetic crouch, a rather fixated expression on his face. The last two fingers of his closest hand were held under tension, slightly raised from the edge of the table he was touching and they were trembling ever so slightly, a vibration in perfect sympathy with the tip of the stalking cat's tail.

The butler's voice dropped in volume but he continued softly speaking. "What humans take as 'playfulness' in cats is really that need to kill. Even as infants they exhibit an insatiable hunger to pounce on things and 'kill' them. Siblings in a litter practice on one another and anything else they can tackle and bend to their –" the words abruptly cut off as the cat darted forward, only to freeze once again.

The butler's self-awareness seemed to return: he stood again and made a fist to bring his trembling fingers under control. Ciel noted with discomfort that the butler's breathing had suddenly accelerated as well. He understood enough of the workings of the demon's body to know it was nothing but excitement being expressed: Sebastian had no real need to breathe, fast or slowly.

"So to sum up, you—." At that moment, several things happened. The cat exploded into action and seized something in the tall grass which squealed with piercing cries over and over. The butler beside him seemed to disappear into a receding blur of black to where the cat crouched over its prize. Ciel was left sitting alone in the wicker chair in the garden, staring into the mesmerizing golden green eyes of the black cat who was regarding him with a blank stare, its mouth full of something furry and fist sized—probably a young rabbit—struggling feebly in the cats strong, sure little jaws. Ciel felt a creeping horror of the little death tableau before him, a sense of sympathy for the prey animal, not the empty-eyed predator in the sleek black fur, went creeping up his neck, stirring his hair. The cat's little victim gave one last despairing twist but the cat only hunched forward a little more intently and clamped down. Ciel distinctly saw her do it. The creature caught in its fangs gave a last drawn-out despairing shriek, went rigid, then limp, then silent.

"Did you know, young master," said the butler's voice, suddenly right at his ear, hot breath playing against his neck, "that a cat denied the freedom to kill long enough will go quite mad?" A large hand came to rest on his shoulder, clutching at him. "It will start hallucinating, attacking anything that moves, and eventually suffer a complete breakdown?"

That's enough, demon. Know your place, damn it!" said the boy, tearing his shoulder from the hand and leaping from his chair to get away from that sinuous whisper, stomping angrily back into the mansion, muttering about the need to get back to work.

The butler found himself alone in the garden, gazing into the beautiful eyes of the exultant cat and smiling widely. So thoroughly had he enjoyed her hunt, his own fangs and claws had begun tingling, threatening to make an untimely appearance. He'd bitten his own tongue deliberately to help stay in control and was now rather enjoying the taste of his own blood. It made it seem a bit more like her kill had been his kill as well. He sincerely wished he could join her hunting in the garden today but with the morning meetings and everything else backed up because of them he, would be required to play the proper English butler the rest of the day.

"Perhaps tonight, my pet," he whispered. And when he murmured 'pet' he meant it in a completely different context. Closing his eyes momentarily he imagined the taste of the nape of her neck between his teeth and fantasized her furry flat flanks were back between his hind legs, tail willingly swept to one side for him, bottom angled up in welcome. He could almost feel the sensation of treading over her with his hind legs in preparation for taking her roughly, just as he liked it. Just as she liked it as well; rough, bestial and with a splash of blood at the finale.

She had no name. She was no pet, but rather his cherished mate, and the lack of name did not stop him silently thanking her for the gift of his sanity in this long-term contract, for which she alone could be thanked. She'd been showing off for him this afternoon, and it excited him beyond reason. He wondered what good thing he could do to repay her favours. Could a cat be made to partake of demonic nature? Learn to shape shift even? Live on as he lived on? He supposed he wouldn't know if he didn't at least try. This demon was always open to new experiences and became distinctly aroused imagining her stunning green-gold eyes set like jewels in a demonic face like his own.

Such were the thoughts that entertained the demon butler as he picked up after his master's impromptu al fresco tea and he'd been right, they were nothing at all like the thoughts that occupied the boy. They did, however, put a broad, straightforward smile of simple happiness on the butler's face, a smile full of canines and carnassials and a flesh-shredding tongue very much like that of his beautiful feline companion's.

How very similar demons and cats really were, the butler mused as he gathered up the cups and plates and had himself a good chuckle at Ciel's expense. It certainly helped to keep life interesting.