Written for the LiveJournal community Watsons_Woes for their July Writing Prompts challenge. The prompt for day 4 was: Use at least one alliterative sentence in today's entry - and the more alliterations, the better!

Follows "Raining Cats".


_Spencer_

Mrs. Hudson was the most skeptical about the addition of a feline lodger-Holmes, I suspect, was busily concocting ways he could experiment upon the animal-but she was very attentive in providing food and water. He put himself on her bad side several times in the first week when he found his way onto her kitchen counter and into the pantry and helped himself to whatever he could eat before she chased him off.

About one week after I decided to keep him, Mrs. Hudson was startled when he emerged from the pantry and dropped a dead mouse at her feet while she was trying to prepare breakfast. She seemed pleased when she told me, for she had long suspected there were mice plaguing her pantry.

This scene was repeated for several days in a row, until Mrs. Hudson was utterly won over by the small orange cat that was so fearsome against mice. He seemed quite satisfied with himself when she was praising him to me, and he was granted full access to the entire house from that day forward.

The offerings ceased for a while after that, though there were moments when I woke up in the night to the sound of scrabbling claws on wooden floors and I wondered what he might be up to.

But mostly I wondered what to call the poor creature. Every name I tried on him did not fit in one way or another until I despaired of finding a suitable moniker. I talked to him about my dilemma when he was curled up in bed with me, saying names aloud while he looked at me with what might be called skepticism if the expression were on a human face.

If I cannot even name a cat, how do parents ever manage to name their children?

Then early one morning I woke to him treading on my face and stepping on my shoulder, and I knew what to name him. "Spencer. Your name is Spencer."

Spencer stretched out along my sternum and started sucking on my shirt. I petted him and he purred, pressing his paws repeatedly against me.

I slipped back to sleep with Spencer slumbering on my chest.