Hello again everybody! This is a special story for a pretty unknown holiday. Today is National Cat Day - a day to celebrate the felines in our lives for those of us that have them! So if you have a cat, be sure to give 'em a big squeeze! If you don't like cats...I'm sorry to say this story may not fit your taste, but you're welcome to stay and read anyway!

Please enjoy everyone! And as always, comments are greatly appreciated and welcome!

The Cat Who Ruled England

Chapter One

It was the ugliest creature that he had ever seen.

Large, orange eyes stared up at Mycroft from an almost pitch black face, intently studying him as he tentatively reached to take the pet carrier from his mother's hands. The animal inside made a small mew - a sound likened to the coo of a dove- and the carrier shifted as weight moved around inside.

"He's a very sweet cat," Mrs. Holmes said as she walked past her son with a dramatic sweep. "I just couldn't stand to let the shelter take him. Margaret was such a nice woman. It's a shame that she went the way she did."

"Heart attack, was it?" Mycroft asked as he shut the front door.

"How did you know - oh, never mind." Mrs. Holmes waved her hand. "I know this is sudden, but I want you to watch over him while everything is being sorted with her will. Shouldn't take longer than a few weeks." A soft mew sounded again.

"Pray tell, why not ask Mrs. Hudson to do your beckoning?" Mycroft set the carrier on the floor. "Surely she would be more equipped to handle this."

"Oh, I could never ask Martha. She has her hands full with Sherlock as it is. And before you say anything," Mrs. Holmes turned to him and pointed her finger. "I'm not about to ask your brother to do it. I would constantly be worried – all those chemicals around the flat. I would be afraid he would get into something dangerous." She looked down to the cat carrier. "Well, go on then, let him out! I'm sure he's eager to stretch his legs and explore his new surroundings."

With a sigh, Mycroft leaned down and opened the door to the carrier. A whoosh of black and orange flew past him, a gentle force of wind hitting him in the face. A skitter of claws sounded down the hall for a moment, and then all was quiet again.

"I do hope its claws don't tear up my carpets," Mycroft said dryly.

Mrs. Holmes shot him a look. "His name is 'Sir Snickers'."

Mycroft didn't believe that intelligence could simply disappear from hearing something so ridiculous, but he wondered for a brief moment if he had heard a faint sound of some of his sense leaking from his ears at the announcement. "I'm very sure that cats can't laugh," he finally said.

"He was named after the sweet, of course, don't be silly, Mike." Mrs. Holmes took her jacket off and hung it on the rack. "Come help me with bringing in some things. I bought him a bag of food and some litter for his box-"

"I'm sorry, his what?"

"His litter box – you know, like his loo."

Mycroft froze midstride. "Oh, no," he said after he had somewhat rehinged his jaw and began walking again. "If you think for one minute that I'm about to let an animal defecate in a box in my house, you would be sorely mistaken, Mother."

Mrs. Holmes stopped and turned around to stare at her son, crossing her arms. "Mycroft," she stressed, "he isn't trained to go outside in the grass. What do you expect him to do, hold it all in?"

"If he can manage it."

Mrs. Holmes rolled her eyes and turned around to walk toward the car again. "Don't worry, I thought ahead and bought one of those Cat Genie contraptions. Cleans itself, you won't even have to mess with cleaning the box."

"That doesn't change the fact that it has to be in my house."

"If you're so worried about it, then have Anthea deal with it. Isn't that what you pay her to do?"

He highly doubted that Anthea would take the new duty of litter box attendant well, but if push came to shove, he would rather her be the victim of the cat's waste product than him. Mycroft helped Mrs. Holmes bring the supplies in and watched from a distance as she put together the Cat Genie in a spare empty room, handing him the manual as she passed by.

"I'll be calling to check up on him."

"Of course you will." Mycroft's lips curled into a sarcastic smile.

"Behave yourself. You never know, you may come to like him."

"Doubtful, but I won't kill your optimism." He escorted her to the door and held her jacket open for her to slip into it.

"Thank you for doing this, Mike." Mrs. Holmes patted his cheek affectionately.

"Yes," he said as he opened the door to let her out. He watched her climb into the car and drive down the driveway. When her car disappeared around the corner, he shut the door, listening for any sign of movement from the cat. But silence only met his ears. Well, at least he'll leave me alone, he thought to himself dryly as he walked down the hall to his study. Maybe this whole affair won't be so bad after all.

It was in the middle of the night when 'Sir Snickers' decided to make an appearance.

As Mycroft sat at his desk pouring over paperwork for the Georgia Project, he heard a thump and looked to see the cat sitting at the edge of the desk, his majestic red and cinnamon mane puffed out in a grand display of preening. The large orange eyes against his very flat face were bright with curiosity as he carefully studied the human sitting across from him.

Persians- notorious for posing for attention. Well, he wasn't about to play admirer to such a narcissistic creature. He looked back down to his lap and sighed, his breathing stopping halfway as 'Sir Snickers' actually began to walk across the desk and flopped down in the middle of it, rolling onto his side to show off the dark mass of fur that was his stomach, his back leg flopping back dramatically with an air of grace.

A blatant sign of trust.

Mycroft blinked. There was absolutely no reason that the cat had to trust a human that he literally met in passing only a few hours earlier. Maybe it had something to do with those senses that people said animals had, but even then. What was the sense in his actions?

There isn't any.

With a shake of his head, Mycroft looked back down to the file, continuing to work until he was practically about to fall asleep in his chair. When he leaned back to rub his temples, the cat opened his eyes and began to thump his tail gently on the desk.

"Well," Mycroft started after a few seconds of pause. "I assume that you know by now that you and I are being forced to cohabitate until your fate has been decided." 'Sir Snickers' stared. "However, I refuse to call you by that ridiculous name you've been sacked with, 'Sir Snickers'. Now let's see; what could I call you?" Mycroft's eyes scanned around the office, names jumping out at him from all different places, but as his eyes rested on a bookend of Sir Winston Churchill, the cat rolled to sit up and mewed, as though he was sensing that an announcement was about to be made.

"I'll call you Winston while you're here."

The cat's tail began to make grand sweeps across the loose papers on the desk, causing them to fly through the air and to the ground. "I suppose that means you approve. Good." Mycroft got up and walked around to start cleaning up the mess. The cat jumped down from the desk and mewed again, rubbing up against Mycroft's leg. He groaned inwardly; apparently, Winston didn't understand that suits were not items to decorate with cat hair.

"Stop that." He made a motion to chase Winston off, who promptly hopped a good couple of feet away and watched him again. "We'll need to have a discussion about where your fur can and can't go at some point." He set the papers down on the desk and left the room, shutting off the light as he went by. In the dark, Mycroft walked down the hall to his room, his mind already coming up with a list that he needed to assign to Anthea and the rest of his staff-

He grabbed the doorframe to his bedroom in surprise, his heart nearly jumping in his throat; something had made him trip! Feeling for the light in the bedroom, he switched it on to see Winston looking up at him from by his feet.

"You're not gaining any ground with trying to put yourself under someone's foot. And furthermore, you're not sleeping in here." Mycroft pointed to the empty bedroom. "Go-"

With the speed of a bullet, Winston ran into the bedroom and practically sailed under the bed. Mycroft sighed and ran a hand down his face, massaging the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. Well, I suppose I don't have a choice in the matter; as long as he stays under the bed. Trying his best not to let himself dwell upon the fact that he had in theory lost territory to a cat, Mycroft got ready for bed and as he was leaving the bathroom a few minutes later, he paused and held back the insane urge to sigh for the umpteenth time that night. Winston was on the bed and making himself comfortable by the pillows, kneading the mattress and purring as loud as he could.

"Excuse me."

Winston looked up and continued to knead in contentment, his claws pulling and ripping at the duvet. "If you're going to sleep in here, you're going on the floor. Down." The cat promptly jumped to the floor and slunk under the bed again. "Just stay under there for the night if you would be so kind." With those last words, Mycroft climbed into bed and shut off the lamp on the bedside table, sleep claiming him almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. And thankfully, Winston didn't seem to protest against the order to keep his place under the bed and away from Mycroft for the night.

"He's so cute."

Mycroft looked from the newspaper he was scanning over and rolled his eyes. Anthea was scratching Winston's chin and ears, the cat's purring so loud that it could've vibrated the whole table that he was perched on.

"I like him," she continued with a smile. "He's so friendly and his coat is gorgeous." She ran a hand down Winston's back and he arched up at her touch.

"I suppose so."

Winston mewed in protest as Anthea stopped her affections, reaching to tap her arm with one of his black paws. "I never thought I would see the day when you had a pet."

"He's not my pet, I'm just cat-sitting or whatever you want to call it. As soon as I can get a chance, I'm going to be rid of him."

"Well, I could take him if you're so inclined to give him up."

A pause. "Your flat is hardly fit for a cat," he finally said.

"I think I can manage to find some room for him-"

"No, it's fine. I don't want to burden you. Besides, I've already deemed you in charge of the litter box should the Cat Genie malfunction and that should be more than enough work for you if it comes to pass."

Anthea scoffed, but smiled. "Why does that not surprise me?" She reached to pet Winston's head. "So does Sherlock know about this?"

"No, and if I can help it, I don't want him to know. I have enough on my mind as it is. Hopefully, Mrs. James's family will find her will before Sherlock decides to pay a visit."

With a chuckle, Anthea picked up her purse and phone. "Knowing your brother, sir, I highly doubt you'll be able to keep this a secret for very long. Let's hope that someone gets murdered or something; that should keep him busy enough to forget about visiting you."

Mycroft scoffed. "If only that were true."

"I'll tell the staff you'll be in tomorrow. I'll say you're sick."

"I never get sick."

"Do you really want me to tell them that you're staying home because of a cat?"

"Sick it is, then," Mycroft said after a moment's pause. With one last pat to Winston's head, Anthea left and everything was still and quiet again. The headlines of the papers pulled Mycroft's concentration away if only for a minute, and when it came back to the world around him, a soft drinking sound met his ears.

He folded a part of the newspaper back and reached to pull his cup of tea away from Winston quickly. The cat licked his lips and sneezed, obviously quite satisfied with what he just tasted.

"Is nothing sacred with you?" Mycroft asked with a scowl as he set the newspaper down and got up with the teacup in his hand. This, he thought to himself as he refreshed his tea, is going to be a long few weeks.

To be continued...