Word got around quickly that there was a stray roaming Storybrooke.

Emma couldn't go a day without getting a call about the cat. Each time she had to go out and investigate. She had chased the cat down side streets and through well manicured backyards, but she had yet to catch it. Her attempts to refer the residents to animal control led to the realization that Storybrooke had no animal control department. So Emma resigned herself to chasing the cat again and again.

It never appeared in the same place. However, everyone knew it was the same cat. People talked about it in the checkout line at the grocery and in the cafes. Two weeks in the Daily Mirror, not wanting to miss a chance to take pot shots at Emma, tacked a special section called "Cat Watch" on to the crime blotter. There wasn't much crime happening in Storybrooke and the whole crime blotter was typically taken up by the cat's exploits.

Emma wasn't quite sure what all of the hubbub about the cat was for. It was, to her reckoning, just a cat. A brown tabby with bright golden eyes and dainty paws. It was by no means a big or even aggressive cat. The cat had never tried to bite or scratch her, even when she'd gotten quite close to it. It was strange behavior for a cat. Emma hadn't been around many in her life, but even she knew it wasn't typical behavior. There was just something not quite right about the cat.

"What are you going to do with it if you catch it?" Mary Margaret asked her.

"No, clue," Emma said. "Maybe leave it on the mayor's doorstep?"

"That's just cruel."

"To her or the cat?"

Emma came to a point where she didn't even chase the cat anymore. When she got a call of a sighting, she'd hop into her car and drive out. Sometimes she would have to disperse the onlookers, sometimes she would be alone already. Emma would out out a little bit of cat food, then sit down and wait for the cat. Some days it appeared, some days it didn't.

The days it did appear, the cat would rush out from beneath a bush or around the side of a house to the food dish once it ascertained that Emma was the only one there. The tabby would shove its face into the pile of food and eat, barely stopping to chew.

"You know, if you'd just let me catch you, you could be someone's cat and they could feed you until you were round," Emma told the cat.

The cat paid her no attention. Only when it had eaten its fill would it notice her. As they established a routine, the cat grew friendlier, coming closer to Emma until it allowed her to stroke its tail a few times before it fled.

Each time she was closer and closer to catching the cat. The thought of finally catching the cat gave her a sense of dread. She had no clue what to do with it once she had it. It wasn't as if there was a pound. Emma entertained the thought of letting it live in the jail.

And then, one day, the cat was gone.

He found her where she'd hidden in the garden. He didn't bother to keep the garden up anymore. It was just a tangle of weeds and the remnants of once well tended hedges and rose bushes. She was gone and there was no reason to labor away at keeping it up.

Letting someone else touch the rose bushes was out of the question, not because of money but because of their connection to her, to him, to what had been. Paying someone else to keep them up seemed impersonal. Letting them languish reminded him of his sins and of why he was miserable. He couldn't show her love, just as he couldn't nurture the rose bushes back to health.

He found the tabby crouching beneath one of the bushes. She was still, her tail curled up close to her body and her golden eyes alert. She watched him, as if she belonged there and he was the intruder.

There was no collar on it, but the cat appeared to have been well-fed by someone.

He tried shooing the cat away, shaking the bush, clapping his hands, but nothing seemed to work. Mr. Gold poked at it gently with his cane, but the cat only slipped around the other side of the rose bush and laid down again.

"I expect you to be gone before I return," he told the cat. "Or I'll call someone not nearly so nice as the sheriff."

The cat was not impressed. It flicked its tail back and forth, watching him still.

This was the place. She had been looking for it quite some time, roaming the streets of this town looking for this place. It was not the place she remembered.

That had been much bigger. She had memories of getting lost in great rooms full of old books and trinkets where the sunlight hardly ever shined. Rooms where he'd had to come and find her and lead her back to safer spaces.

This place was not the same, but it was the same.

There were the rose bushes she'd always enjoyed. They weren't in bloom, but she enjoyed listening to the wind rustle through the leaves and napping beneath their shade. These were not things she had enjoyed before, but she saw their virtue now.

The thing that defined the place, however, was not the rose bushes, but his presence.

But even he was different here.

There were no more sudden appearances. She had been keeping a close eye on him, watching all of his movements to and from his home. Sometimes she would sit on the windowsill outside the kitchen and watch him as he moved about. He smelled just the same as he had in the other place. It made her want to rub her head against his legs, all three of them. But something had happened in the other place which kept her from doing so.

He didn't remember her or, at least, he didn't recognize her. He watched her, though she watched him more. The man was suspicious of her.

Life in the garden was easy. She napped in the sun and beneath the bushes, her surveillance of him taking up only a small fraction of the day. The other hours were spent lazing and eating what she could find.

One day, he was coming down the back steps, walking on all three legs. One of his feet missed the last step and he took a tumble. He'd been going too fast, not paying attention to what he'd been doing. She darted out from behind the tree where she'd been hiding to check on him.

At first, he didn't move. His face was screwed up in an emotion she vaguely recalled as pain. She pressed a paw to his forehead and he opened his eyes. The cat rubbed her head against him, trying to will him to sit up. Humans weren't supposed to lay like that. She knew when he reached up to stroke a hand along her spine that she knew he'd be fine. She purred for him, loud so she knew he could hear it. When he sat up again, she climbed into his lap and proceeded to make biscuits.

He spoke to her in hushed tones, and she understood none of it.