Watsoncat Belongs to theCaptainsideways, always has, always will. You can visit Watsoncat on tumbler, or on deviantart.
Hello, my name is Watson-cat. It's short for "Watson, your stupid cat..." But as you can imagine I'm not so fond of my full name.
I have another name too, but no one uses it, which is a shame. It's a fine sounding name.
I live in a small house. I used to live in a large house, but I like the small house better. The small house is filled with things I like. Things that ring and things that are soft, I have such fun!
In a small house I can jump up and reach everything, so I'm fine with that. I climb on places I'm not supposed to everyday.
The house is small and filled with junk, but it is cozy and it feels like a nice home, and something interesting is always happening.
I also live with two humans. They're both a little odd. One is a bit eccentric and he can stay up all night long and sometimes he doesn't eat. He also plays an instrument that sounds like a cat-song. I sometimes join him and yowl while he plays, but he never likes to sing duets with me. He hits me with the stick. I think he called it a bow. Weird.
The other one is comparably boring. He eats normally, goes to sleep when tired, leaves every day, then comes back and feeds me. I kind of like the reliability. I have a feeling that if I relied on the weird one for food I'd be a much skinnier cat.
The boring one is odd in his own special little ways. I'm not going into much detail here. This is just for fun and for now. Maybe later I'll make it longer, if I can ever get a spare moment on the computer again.
Typing is hard for a cat. Keyboards are made for fingers. I'm just glad there are Shift keys on both sides; otherwise I'd have atrocious grammar. Spell check just told me I spelled 'atrocious' wrong and corrected it. It's a great time to be a cat-writer. I can't imagine how cats wrote before computers. It must have been hard and sloppy.
I also live with another cat. He's a weird cat, but also a good friend. He has a beautiful-sounding name, but I mostly just call him 'Sher'. That's because all I say to him is "sure…sure. Sure." Half the time I'm not even listening. I hope he never finds out.
The humans occasionally get a great burst of energy and run out of the house. When that happens they don't come back for a long time, sometimes days. Or one will come back and the other is gone, or they will both come back tired, but in good spirits, chatting excitedly about things I don't understand.
It's okay if they're gone, because I know how to open doors. Sher doesn't know how I do it, but I can open the door to the apartment and the fridge. I'm not going to tell him; because if I did I have the feeling I'd never see him again. For the moment we're partners and housemates.
Sher-cat is mysterious. He seems to have a lot of friends outside the house and it bugs him that the humans won't let them in, and won't let him out.
"How in the world am I supposed to conduct business when I'm locked up like some common hamster? It's infuriating!" He is currently fuming at the back of my head while typing.
I think I'm going to answer him.
No, I'm going to let him blow off some steam for a while. In the meantime I'm going to stop typing and get a snack. Something smells like meat in the refrigerator.
I'm back but I think it's conditionally. Sher-cat has asked me to open the door for him and I said no. I don't want to get in trouble with our humans and I don't want to be responsible if he gets hurt. He's glaring at me from the corner of the room, but I'm almost certain he'll get over jijidshu00000000awdcz c
If my humans ever read this I'm sorry. Sher-cat jumped me and made me open the door. I can't help but worry while he's out there. There are cars and busses and bikes and dogs and people and all sorts of things that no cat should face alone.
I know; after I lived in the big house they threw me out to live on the streets. It was war every day and I'm still a little traumatized. The nice (but boring) human brought me here, and for that I'm grateful, but I can't let Sher-cat face the dangers alone. I'm leaving this up on the computer so that if we die, there is some token of what has become of us.
We're back! I can't believe we made it back before the humans. So much happened, I can't wait to tell you!
I pulled open the door and Sher-cat was standing in the hallway. There are actually two doors to leave the small house (which I discovered was called a flat, which is odd. It is in no way flat.) and Sher-cat had become trapped since he was unable to open either one to get back or move forward.
I reluctantly opened the door to the outside. I wanted to go back to the apartment, and probably could have since I was the only one who knew how to open doors but Sher-cat sat on me until I conceded.
Conceded? Is that the right word? Forgive me, I know more words than most cats, but I still get them mixed up sometimes.
Anyway, I gave up and opened the door to the outside and was immediately blinded by a flashing ray of light that I later found to be the summer sun. A gust of hot air like dog's breath nearly knocked me over but Sher-cat was unaffected and stepped right outside, into the roar of a busy, uncaring world.
"Thanks for that. You can go back now." He told me as he leapt down a few steps onto the bright side walk. I watched him amble away into the city as some deafening horn blared away from somewhere close.
I couldn't just leave him. I'd only known him for a short time, but we had shared experiences and that made him my friend. He's a good cat. Weird, no doubt but a good cat.
I shut the door to the flat and ran down the street to catch up with him. He was walking pretty slowly, and I caught him with ease. I thought he'd be happy that I came, but he was really upset.
"Glad to see you came, now go home." He hissed at me, his ears betraying his anger more than his expression ever would.
"I came to help you." I said. "Or to convince you to come back with me."
"I'll return when I feel like it." He said urbanely. "I'm about to embark on an arduous case that I would prefer to do alone. I'm not responsible for dirtying your fluffy tail, so why don't you just go home and take an eighteen hour nap or something?"
I was hurt by his anger and his rudeness, but I had already made the decision to follow him and help him, no matter what he said or did.
"I might have gone home if you asked nicely." I told him. "But now I don't think I will; I'm stuck on you now."
"Listen, this isn't some game. If you're going to follow me you need to do exactly as I ask and don't ask questions." He growled.
"Isn't that what we already do at home?"
"This isn't a joke."
"Fine then. Lead the way if you know where you're going." I said.
Sher-cat seemed to know his way around the streets well enough, but he was still a bit green when it came to basic feral survival. I had spent many months as a stray and I instructed him on how to walk up the streets by clinging to buildings, and rolling behind garbage bins when humans or bikes came your way and leaping onto higher surfaces occasionally to disperse your scent.
"I knew you spent some time as a stray, but I had no idea you were so well versed on stray-cat strategy, your aloof demeanor does you no justice."
I was uncertain as to whether he was paying me a compliment, or insulting me in disguise.
"How did you know I was a stray? I asked him as we turned another corner. "No one ever told you, I think."
"Simplicity itself, you become agitated whenever humans leave for extended period of time, which speaks of abandonment issues. I can tell you're agitated because you obsessively clean yourself, which in cats is a clear sign of stress. You have shown excellent aptitude for finding food and for eating the most…um, novel of things which shows you are not at all picky, as is to be expected of cats that have grown up on a steady staple diet of cat-food. And finally, you act as though each human that enters the flat other than the three you know is an invader, and you hide in a place where you can observe them and not be bothered by them which bespeaks of a hunting instinct. So ask yourself where does a cat learn abandonment, to scavenge for food and hunt, and to be weary of humans? The obvious answer is that the cat was a stray."
"That's amazing!" I told him in awe "You're a psychic!"
He spent the rest of the journey angrily explaining how he was not a psychic, detailing the exact steps of his deduction, and generally chewing me out for believing in psychics in the first place. I learned that I had made a mistake I was never ever going to repeat.
When we arrived at the destination Sher-cat was looking for he suddenly sat down and waited. Confused and a bit apprehensive I sat down and waited with him. Sometimes he would stare absently at the sky, while other times he would glance around as though seeing something of interest. I couldn't see anything and I wondered if he wasn't a little bit crazy.
Suddenly a large, grizzled gray cat stepped in front of us. He had a square head and a few other kitties in tow. I became a little bit scared as I realized we were probably on his territory and he might want to fight.
"So, you got my message." He addressed Sherlock.
"Yeah, but I couldn't catch all of it. My human started to play his violin."
"At one in the morning?" the gray cat looked at us in disbelief.
"He is a strange human."
"Somehow you two suit each other." He said flashing a brief, toothy grin.
Suddenly he turned to me and his expression hardened. "Who's the fur ball?"
"My partner." Sher-cat said plainly. The gray cat looked surprised, but didn't ask any more questions.
"Where's the body?" Sher-cat asked looking around, as though it could be nearby.
Body?! I almost shouted out loud in disbelief, but realizing that Sher-cat wanted me to act professional I stifled my remarks. But still, I didn't sign on for any bodies!
"The road-kill truck came and picked him up a half hour ago. We couldn't stop him."
"Drat." He said. "No body, no evidence, what kind of case do we have here?"
"Are you guys the police?" I asked, instantly regretting my utterance.
The gray cat's long fur bristled with aggression and Sher-cat stepped in front of me, shielding me should the older cat lose his nerve and attack.
"Honestly, how fresh-faced is he? He doesn't know who we are!" he roared.
"He learns quickly." Sher-cat said. "Can you show me the scene of the crime PLEASE so we can begin? "
Lestrade (he said that was his name, but I'm not sure. It doesn't sound very much like a cat-name to me) lead us to one particular alley where there was a maroon smudge on the ground. If I had anything in my stomach, I might have thrown up right there. Evidently it was an imprint of a cat that had died a horrible, bloody and violent death.
"Evidently this is the imprint of a cat that died a violent and bloody death." Said the short-haired brown cat.
"Danderson, walk down to the end of the street and count how many blue cars drive by over the course of ten minutes." Sher-cat said, evidently annoyed. For once I was glad I had kept my thoughts to myself.
Danderson looked to Lestrade for guidance and Lestrade motioned for him to go. He glumly counted cars for several minutes while we investigated, I watched him over my shoulder.
Sher-cat was pressed against the ground, looking closely at the smears of dried blood, his nose right up against the pavement.
"A dog did this." He said finally.
"How do you know?" I asked. It seemed to be just the question he was hoping for.
"The blood is thicker in a pattern, though it smoothed out as the cat bleed out. The pattern is that of an arched semi-oval; obviously a dog and a big one at that."
"Actually, I know." Lestrade said. "This is the fourth cat to die from a dog attack this week. The dog will bite, then let go and leave the cat to bleed out without eating it. I've never seen anything like it."
"Are you certain it's the same dog?" I asked.
"It's a big dog that kills cats by biting them and letting them go, how many could there be in the city?"
"Too many for you to know, too many to know." Sher-cat said ominously.
"What should we do?" I asked.
Lestrade contemplatively began grooming his paw. "What we need to do is set up a trap for it. We'll leave a cat out and set up a big net and…"
Lestrade cat had to stop because Sher-cat broke into a fit of hysterical laughter.
"What is so funny wise-guy?" Lestrade said defensively.
"How do you plan to kill this monster-dog?" Sher-cat asked. "If my measurements are anything to go by, you might as well try to net that building."
"How big is it?"
"Let me make this simple. The four of us standing on each other's backs wouldn't reach his mouth." He said with a terrible grin.
"That big huh."
The best thing to do is to find where it came from and make sure it never comes back. You can handle that…right?" Sher-cat said suddenly appearing bored.
"You're not going to help?" Lestrade said incredulously "Lives are at stake."
"But it's such an easy problem with an easy solution. It's boring. You can more than handle this."
"I wouldn't come to you at all if I could handle this! Give me a hint!" He demanded.
"It is simplicity itself. Look at a map and plot the areas of the attack, then search in those areas for homes with new dogs. Find the dog which matches the description and you'll have your killer."
"How do you know it's a new dog?" I asked beginning to feel a little bit thick headed.
"These attacks are clearly the work of a disturbed mind, it isn't too far to assume that these aren't the first attacks he's done on cats and if we don't stop him from escaping they won't be the last. He must be a new dog, since the attacks just started this week."
"Sounds reasonable." Lestrade said. "Let's go back to headquarters and see if we can find the area you mentioned."
"I need to get home. My friend here is worried for our health." He tapped me with his sharp paw. "He's terrified of being outdoors."
"I think we should help Sher." I said ignorantly. He shot me an angry glance, but Lestrade seemed happy.
"That settles it then. Let's go."
"No, I don't want to. I'm going home." Sher-cat said, becoming increasingly impatient.
"Don't be such a brat!" Lestrade cat snapped. "You can be so selfish!"
"You know me. I'll always help with an INTERESTING case, and this is NOT interesting." He pouted.
"I'm interested." I said meekly. I really wanted to find out what would happen to the dog and if the streets were safe for strays again. Now that I was so invested in the mystery I really wanted to know how it ended.
"Shut up." He told me curtly.
"I'll make it worth your while." Lestrade said enticingly.
Sher-cat frowned. "How?"
"You know how."
"You have some?"
"I have plenty."
"It's mine if I help you?"
"Only if you help."
Sher-cat bit his lip and bowed his head. It seemed as though he'd given in to Lestrade for the time being.