It was a beautiful day in the Enchanted Forest: sunshine warmed the grass where it filtered through the trees without making the air too hot and a slight breeze ruffled the canopy of leaves in the most soothing rustle. On this pleasant spring afternoon, all of Morwen's nine cats found themselves meandering out to the sun-drenched patch of purple catnip for an intense bout of lounging and solar charging.
Jasmine, the smallest, had just rolled over on her back to expose her belly to the rays when Jasper Darlington Higgens IV cocked back one cream and silver ear. "Did anyone else hear that?" he asked the assembly.
"No," Scorn grumbled, twitching her calico tail in annoyance. "You're hearing things, go back to your nap."
Jasper, unconcerned by Scorn's scorn, cocked his whole head to try and listen in case it happened again. "It sounded a little like a wizard's teleportation pop, maybe?" He sounded remarkably unsure of himself though.
Trouble sat up, gray nose twitching to scent for wizard magic stink. "I didn't hear anything, and I don't smell wizard magic anywhere, but I'm ready for a fight if those slimy little snakes are poking their nose where they don't belong!" He had never forgiven the wizards for his lemon and soap scented wet fur.
"Now Trouble," Miss Eliza Tudor chided. "Don't be so insulting to snakes."
"Wizard?!" Fiddlesticks whined, brown fur shuddering. "I don't want to fight with wizards. What if they drain the magic from our catnip patch? What would we do then?"
"He didn't say it was a wizard," Miss Eliza Tudor soothed without a ruffle of her fluffy white fur. "Jasper asked if any of us heard something. It might not be wizards at all. If it is, they wouldn't care about our catnip. If they do, Morwen will plant some more."
Fiddlesticks settled back down. "I hate wizards," he muttered.
"I didn't hear anything," Aunt Ophelia offered.
Murgatroyd squinted up at the sky. "I didn't hear any teleportation pop, but I do hear something... a whistle, maybe? I do have better ears than the rest of you, so maybe I'm the only one that can hear it."
Jasper huffed. "Better ears? This from the guy that missed the pop."
Choas pricked both ears skyward. After a beat he launched himself to all four paws with his tail puffed like a bottle-brush. "INCOMING!" he screeched.
Everyone but Scorn scattered.
"Please. Like I'm going to fall for tha-"
Something plowed directly into the catnip patch, showering Scorn with dirt and plant debris.
She puffed and snarled and slashed and hissed at whatever had just so affronted her cleanliness.
"The catnip!" Fiddlesticks yowled in horror. Which gave away his hiding place.
"Ouch." The something turned out to be a man, dressed in strange clothes, certainly, but decidedly human-shaped. He sat up with a small groan. "I hate it when they do that."
Scorn pinned the man to his seat with a disgruntled growl and a displeased glare. "I am dirty."
The man blinked confusedly for a moment, then looked down at himself. "I am dirty, as well," he pointed out as though the cats couldn't see that for themselves.
All the cats froze at his words, so apropos to Scorn's statement. Humans couldn't hear cats. Only a cat's witch could understand a cat.
"Calm down," Miss Eliza cautioned. "Maybe he was guessing."
"That must be it," Murgatroyd agreed from the branches of his apple tree. "He probably belongs to another cat. One that has him trained very well."
"Yes, that must be it." Aunt Ophelia sighed in relief. "You can't hear us at all, can you?"
The man looked over at the feline with the spiky tortoiseshell patterns. "I do not belong to anyone, least of all a feline. And of course I can hear you. What would be the point in talking if no one could hear you?"
"MORWEN!" Fiddlesticks shrieked in terror as he streaked towards the house.
Everyone else stared in shocked.
Miss Eliza Tudor recovered first. "Aunt Ophelia, would you be so kind as to go with Fiddlesticks? I'm sure Morwen would appreciate a slightly more coherent version of what's going on."
Carefully, Aunt Ophelia skulked around the man to follow her screaming cohort.
The man made no move to stop her. He looked back at Miss Eliza Tudor. "What did I do to scare him?"
"Humans aren't supposed to hear cat speech," Scorn snarled, still clearly unhappy about the sorry state of her fur.
The man considered the cats. "I am not human," he said after a moment. To prove his point, he stretched. His eyes light up a crystal clear, blue. All the dirt and debris fell off of his clothing. Two great wings, visible only to the cat's sharp eyesight, spread from his back to cast a deep shadows behind him.
None of the cats seemed all that impressed with the display, however. Kazul's wings were bigger, after all.
None except for Chaos, whose eyes widened. Not in surprise, but in glee. He crouched low to the earth and began to shift his weight back and forth between his rear legs. "Calibrating, calibrating..."
"Oh, dear," Miss Eliza Tudor sighed, knowing Chaos was about to live up to his name.
"What is he-?" the not-human began.
Before he could finish, Chaos finished his launch calibrations and sprang into the air. Fangs and a pair of front claws dug into the feathery mass. A set of back claws rapid fire racked through the glossy rows.
Trouble, not being the type of cat to miss out on all the fun, immediately flung himself onto the other wing.
Playful growls and mock snarls filled the air.
The not-human rolled his eyes and hung his head between his slumped shoulders. "I am Castiel, angel of the Lord, seraph of Thursday, commander of heavenly armies," he muttered to himself. Then he looked up to glare at the cats hanging from his wings. "I am to be respected and feared!"
"FEATHERS!" Trouble screeched with a throaty yowl, absolutely unconcerned with an angel's wrath in the face of a fluffy new toy.
With a frustrated snap of his wings, Castiel dislodged both the felines. Trouble and Chaos twisted in midair to land neatly on their feet.
"I was done anyway," Chaos sniffed haughtily.
Trouble pounced an errant feather, trapping it under one paw and proceeded to chew.
Castiel tucked his wings safely out of sight. "There is a reason so much of humanity is allergic to your kind," he grumbled.
"Oh, there is a cause?" Morwen inquired, strolling up on the scene. "I always wondered if allergies were a wizard's curse. It seemed like the kind of spiteful thing they would come up with."
Castiel turned to face the woman. "Demons, actually."
"Ah. That was my second guess." Morwen brushed past the angel to study the hole in the ground.
"The catnip patch!" Fiddlesticks wailed. "Didn't I tell you, Morwen? Didn't I?"
"Yes, yes, Fiddlesticks. I will make sure to fix the catnip patch. After." Morwen turned back to the angel. "Aunt Ophelia tells me you understand cat."
"I understand thousands of languages spanning the many millennia of Creation," Castiel replied. "Cat has not changed since the Garden of Eden."
"Why would they?" Morwen laughed. "They were probably created already believing they were perfect."
"We ARE!" Murgatroyd yowled from his tree.
Castiel glared up into the limbs. "As Dean would say: Then explain why you lick your own ass."
Murgatroyd hissed.
Morwen tried not to laugh.
"I should get back to my dimension," Castiel informed them all. He spread out his wings one more time (Morwen saw them through her enchanted eyeglasses) and vanished in a flurry of wind. Let it never be said that the angel didn't know when to quit while he was ahead. And it was never easy to get ahead when dealing with a cat.