Thirteen Days of Spencer
I'VE REACHED 100 FICS POSTED (on AO3, anyway, which gets more work than this account does). This is my celebration fic, and it's utterly pointless and completely ridiculous.
Enjoy.
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1.
It was a boring day when Emily decided that she was going to Run Away. Running Away was a Very Naughty thing to do, she knew, and Emily had always loved being Very Naughty. She'd learned all the naughtiest tricks. How to roll on the whitest clothes so her black fur showed up the clearest; all the best spots to kick at the carpet; just the perfect times to leap up onto countertops to cause maximum Cat Chaos. Oh yes. Emily was a Very Naughty cat, and that was how she liked it. Her days consisted of waking up, washing self, meowing for breakfast, washing self, Being Naughty, meowing for second breakfast, washing self, making sure the first three rounds of washing self were adequate and, if not, a fourth go at it, meowing for lunch, some more Being Naughty, nap before afternoon snack… etc. etc.
She was, Emily decided, the Most Perfect of cats, and it was completely dull.
"Am I a pretty cat?" she asked Ian one day, finding him sunning himself in the study. They were allowed in there, and he was on his bed being a perfectly good cat. How dull. He opened one blue eye and studied her as she examined his mottled grey fur. He was a nice cat, if boring, stocky and tomish. Toms were boring, she'd decided. All sleep and no fun, unless they were thinking about girls. And she was too young for him to be thinking about her being a girl, although she suspected—as she batted at his stubby tail with her perfect black paws—that was maybe changing.
"The prettiest," he assured her. "Come here, let me clean your ears, Lauren."
She didn't want to have her ears cleaned. Not by him. Grey, she decided, was far too plain a colour to clean her ears.
"My name is Emily," she said snootily, and danced away to sharpen her claws on the curtains. And that was when she noticed the open window. Outside was bright and sharp, just like her claws, and she knew it was the naughtiest thing a cat could do, Running Away.
"I'm gonna," she said, and so she did.
Outside was brilliant. So brilliant. She ate a bug and then another and then some grass when her tummy complained about Too Many Bugs, and then she climbed seven trees. Not just one tree—but seven! Outside, she decided, was the Very Best place to be a cat. She was going to stay Outside forever.
But, she realized, there was a problem. Because she was Outside and Ian wasn't and her ears were possibly dirty. She stopped and licked herself thoughtfully, nice and warm on a sunny lawn and Very Far from Home and Ian. What if her ears were dirty? What if someone saw her with dirty ears? She couldn't be the Most Perfect of cats with dirty ears. The very idea was outrageous! But she'd never been any good at cleaning her own ears…
Maybe, she thought, if I climb to that top of that fence—because she was a great climber, you know—I'll be able to see someone who can help me clean my ears. Another cat perhaps. Off she went to the fence, only stopping once to eat another bug. And up up up the fence she went with the fence shaking and rattling gleefully under her paws and her claws going snik snik snik in the wood. At the top, there was sun and wind and she was fully aware that she was an amazing cat and—what was that?
"Grrr," said the wind. Emily shivered—not because it was cold, but because that sound was deep and angry and fierce. Like a monster. No… worse than a monster.
"Dog," declared Emily, spotting it. The thing was mangy brown and covered in dirt—dirty ears, she noted with a sniff—snapping and grring and digging around with its galumphing great paws at a rattly piece of metal leaning against a wall. "Yuck, dog." And she turned to leap down and away, because a place with dogs was No Place for her.
"Please go away," the metal asked the dog politely. Emily paused. Could metal talk? Nothing at Home had ever talked, but then again, the Outside was different. "I don't want to be eaten…"
But the dog wasn't a clever dog, not at all, and he just barked and snarled and snapped and probably was gonna eat the metal, talking or not. Emily ran along the fence—for she was curious and full of errors, like poking her nose where it shouldn't go—until she was above the dog and the metal, looking down.
"You'll pay for this!" barked the dog at the metal. "Sinner! Coming here where you shouldn't be!"
"Mew," said the metal. Emily gasped. That wasn't metal at all—that was a kitten!
"Go away!" said another voice, the first. The kitten wasn't alone under there. A dusty paw reached out and batted at the dog's muzzle uselessly. No claws, Emily saw, and rolled her eyes. That was no way to scare off a stupid dog. They only understood claws.
"Hey!" she hissed, puffing up big. She knew she looked ferocious: black as the night and with so much Floof that it made her three times as big as she really was with gleaming white claws and teeth. "Heck off!"
"Um mah," said a kitten's voice. "That was a bad word."
"Shh," said the other.
"I'll eat you," warned the dog, looking up at her and going all bristly. "I'll eat you too. I'll eat you all!"
Emily decided that this was a time for Cleverness, not Claws. "You're a Bad Dog," she told him with a sniff. Stupid dogs, unlike clever cats, thought being Bad was a Very Terrible thing. Idiots. She could have told them that being Very Bad was the best. "Your person is going to tell you you're a Bad, Bad, Awful, No Good Dog… in fact, I shall go and get them. I shall yowl and yowl until they come out and see how awful you're being."
"Very awful!" said the older voice from behind the metal. "You're a Bad Dog, Tobias, and your owner will know!"
"You wouldn't!" gasped the dog.
Emily laughed, sitting on the fence and puffing out her chest. "I would," she promised, "I will!"
There was a loud moment of silence, and then the dog slunk away. "I'm letting you go because I'm Good!" he told them, tail between his legs. "But I won't always be so nice!"
But the cats weren't listening, because as soon as the dog had moved away, two blurs of fur and speed had shot out from behind the metal and gone dashing up the fence and away up the street. Emily, because it was impossible not to run when she saw others running, leapt up and ran with them, laughing gleefully because she'd outwitted a dog—and that was definitely Not Boring.
…
"Hello," said the voice, when they'd finally stopped running. Emily looked around first, because it was a clever cat thing to do, to always know where you are. Then she washed her whiskers, because it was the Most Perfect cat thing to always look Your Best when talking to strange toms. And this was a tom—she could tell. "Um. Hello?"
Finally, she looked at him. Not to say hello yet. She needed to get an idea of just what kind of tom this was. After all, he certainly seemed like a Very Nice cat—what with his four nice white paws and his lovely long whiskers—but there were aspects of him that she frowned a little at. His fur was scruffy and knotted and such a strange colour—brown! she scoffed, because she'd never seen such a dirt coloured cat with dust for a chest and wispy bits of fluff floating off of him. All skinny and bitten and—aha! He itched at his belly—covered in fleas. With a strange dark ring of fur around his neck and down his chest, like a line of blackish. Strange creature.
But, nice, she thought maybe, peering past him and down to the little white and grey and—orange? —kitten squished down hiding under his belly fluff.
"Hi," she said finally, and whisked her tail up in the air to stand all proud and fluffy. He looked at it and she saw his pink nose twitch. "Why'd you take a dog on for?"
"It was my fault," peeped the kitten. "I was exploring."
"Nora likes to go where she shouldn't," the tom scolded, but his strange eyes—brown too, Emily thought, except almost green also and oddly fun to watch shift from colour to colour—were gentle. He wrapped a white paw around the kitten and tugged her out, vigorously washing her with a quick pink tongue. That Emily approved of. To show her approval, she washed as well, making sure to get all the dust out from between her toes. Dust was the bane of a black cat's fur. When in doubt, wash! That was the cat way.
The purring, when it started, she wasn't as fond of. It seemed almost easy for a cat to purr. Emily hmphed. Affection slut, she termed the tom, as he purred happily at his little kitten and she purred back. These cats were weird. But maybe good at washing ears, if she didn't mind the fleas.
"My name is Emily," she said, when she was quite sure that she was adequately groomed enough to introduce herself. "I'm a Very Pretty cat," she added, because she'd been told so often.
The tom looked at her, his eyes bright and whiskers twitching. "You are," he said, and sidled closer, sniffing at her neck. "You're the prettiest, I think. Do you have a mate?" He said so hopefully, barely a sneeze of a thing if she was to put Ian next to him.
"Oh, sometimes," she lied to seem mysterious, dancing away. "Sometimes, not. When I want one."
"Do you want one?" he tried, trying to copy her light moves and failing. Galumphing toms. All paws, no sass.
"I don't even know your name." And she didn't. What kind of a cat did he take her for?
The tom blinked. "Oh, oops," he said, looking down and away guiltily. She noted that he hadn't groomed himself. There was a burr of fur by his foreleg that she dearly wished to get at. "Ah. Spencer. I'm… Spencer."
"The Smartest," Nora exclaimed. "Daddy is The Smartest—he can read!"
"Catshit!" Emily was indignant that they'd lie to her. Cats couldn't read!
But Spencer looked shy. "I can," he said, leaning close and peering at her collar. "See—I can read that. It says your name—Emily—and it says '1004 Washington Way', and it says 'Please call this number if found' and then some more numbers."
"What are numbers?" asked the kitten.
Emily was more focused on other things. "How does it know my name?" she asked, mystified. And just like That, she believed him. He was a Clever Cat indeed—perhaps the cleverest.
Spencer shrugged. "I don't know," he admitted. "I had one once, a long time ago. It didn't know my name though. It only said 'Subject 114' and 'autoclave before disposal'. I took it off." He looked proud for a moment. "I know how to undo things, as well. Would you like to come see my home?"
Emily paused. "I'm not going to be your mate," she warned him. He shrugged. "You're a funny colour and you've got tatty bits. And fleas…" His expression turned sheepish. "…but I'll come see your home…"
And he brightened. He was, she decided, a nice cat, if a bit rough around the edges.
"Come on then!" he chirruped with a nice little purr, bumping up against her and rumbling happily. "Let's go! Oh, JJ is going to think that you're lovely."
…
Spencer lived Outside.
Emily was pretty sure that that was the most brilliant thing ever. She hadn't known that you could live Outside! It seemed that Spencer—despite his weird colour and his fleas and his tatty bits—was a Very Naughty cat after all. Running Away, she decided, had been a roaring success.
"Here it is!" Spencer said, showing her a beautiful little mulberry bush with wide leaves and lots of interlocking branches. Underneath was dry and smelled of Spencer and a little of his kitten and very faintly of some other cats. Nora, as soon as they'd arrived at the leafy park Spencer called His Home, had vanished into the trees. Emily could see a jumble of rocks against a back fence and yards of greenery—and she could see curious eyes following them. "I dug it out myself."
"It's lovely," Emily said, because it was. She sniffed around it appreciatively and then sealed her approval by stopping in the middle for a wash. Spencer politely sat next to her with his haunches making bumps on his back and his front paws tucked neatly under him, waiting for her to finish. "You could wash too, you know."
"Oh." Spencer unfolded a paw and licked it clumsily before stopping. "I'm, um. I don't know how."
Emily was appalled. How could he not know how to wash? That was the Most Cat you could be! Maybe he wasn't a cat. Maybe he was a squirrel pretending to be one. She sniffed him carefully, just to be sure.
"I think you look really nice when you wash though," Spencer said, half-closing his brown-green eyes and looking away. She kept sniffing him. He didn't smell squirrelly. He smelled like a cat, a boy cat, about the same age as her, not sick or old or hurt…
There was simply No Excuse for him not knowing how to wash.
"Hmph," she said snootily, and looked away. How Ian would laugh about this!
"Oh, look," Spencer whispered, slinking down onto his belly and peering out. "Shh, Emily… there's The Man."
The Man, as Spencer called him, was a human with a worried kind of face and clothes all ruffled. Emily watched as he poured kibble into a row of mismatched bowls, the kibble spilling out and into the dirt. Her tummy growled and she pushed past Spencer to go and eat, ignoring his gasp of, "Emily! You can't let him see! He has a—"
Dog.
Emily paused as the dog got to its feet and hrumphed at her, plumy tail held high. It was one of those black and tan things who thought they were all that and she stuck her nose up at him and sauntered past. His human was feeding them—therefore he was clearly a Cat's Human and therefore a Good Human and that meant that this dog wouldn't dare touch her. Not her! She was a show cat. She'd won ribbons.
"Thank you," she mrrped at the man as he paused to look at her, picking the bowl that looked the fullest in case Spencer would like to share with her and hungrily digging in. It wasn't her usual food, but one couldn't expect the usual food when one was Outside.
"Down, Hotch," the man said to the dog, who sat down obediently. Bah. How boring a Good Dog was. Despite him being far far bigger than necessary—which was anything bigger than her—she'd have given him a go if he'd pushed her. "Well, hello, you. Who are you then? Much too pretty to be one of these guys."
Emily understood 'down' and she assumed Hotch was the dog, because Down was usually followed by a name—like Down, Emily! when she was on the cupboard—and, of course, she understood 'pretty', so she knew he was talking to her, but everything else was irrelevant to her and therefore ignorable. She kept eating. Where was Spencer? There was far too much food here for just her, or even her and Spencer and his kitten.
And then the man walked away, his dog padding with him, vanishing inside a house nearby. Emily eyed it and made a plan to check to see if there were things to Cause Chaos in there later, before Spencer ran up to her.
"You went up to a human!" he gasped, eyes wide and nose all twitchy. "That was dangerous!"
"Pah," said Emily. "Humans aren't nothing. I've lived with humans forever."
But Spencer just looked worried, nudging close and eating from her same bowl. He looked skinny, so she pushed some of the best bits towards him. "I'm not so sure," he said between bites. "Gideon is… okay. He never kicks or throws things, but… I don't think all humans are nice. I don't feel like they are."
She looked at the strange black marks on his chest and how his throat was skinny and tattered where something—she suspected his collar, because hers had caused her trouble before her human had loosened it—had chewed away at all his fur.
"Maybe not all humans," she agreed, and then the Others arrived.
"Who is this then?" boomed a big tuxedo tom with rippling muscles under a glossy coat. "What a snippet of a thing! Bet you're no good in a tussle, girl."
Emily fluffed up big and spat at him, just to prove she was.
"What a lovely coat," said a soft-voiced little white cat, her fur yellowed at the paws by dirt. Blue eyes blinked up at her. What a tiny cat! "You're not a Stray, are you?"
"Not at all," Emily told her. "I'm Running Away."
"I ran away once," said another cat, this one a chubby tabby with strange, bright markings. "Oh, it was terrible, so scary, but then I found this place and these guys and they're all so wonderful, aren't they? Are you staying? What's your name? Do you like mice? I know where to get the best mice—"
"Morgan, JJ, and Penny," Spencer told Emily, his chest all proud again. "They're my family. There are more—but they're the Most Special."
There were more. Other cats ate and bickered around them, kittens and toms and queens alike, but Emily ignored them. These ones were the ones Spencer wanted her to pay attention to, so they were the only ones she planned to pay attention to—yet, anyway.
"Hi," she said. "I'm Emily. I think I might stay a while. Are any of you good at washing ears?"
JJ, as it turned out, was wonderful at it.
