Just a little drabble from Dick's point of view. I don't know much about Damian, and honestly, I thought he was a little jerk when I read a comic with him in it. I quit halfway through and it wasn't until today that I picked it back up and re-read it. I hope I do him justice.
Damian's obsessions with cats is something I had attributed to wanting to be more like his father.
Even in Gotham, with it's perpetual gray skies and looming rain clouds, finding bats were uncommon. They didn't like the city, no matter how dank and dirty, and the part of town that the Wayne Manor was situated was neither of the two. Damian had only seen bats occasionally while he was out patrolling with me, staring up at their flying figures, perplexed in a way only a ten-year-old could be, his expression stoic and thoughtful.
It wasn't too long after that when the cats began to show up. They were the closest to bats in appearance, I supposed, and much more convenient. I could see why he would pick them - their pointed noses and the way their ears curved, they appeared similar to the way his father looked under his cowl, dark and imposing.
The cats he brought home were almost always abandoned or injured, and most of the time I didn't even have a clue that he'd brought them home. My first thought when I found out that he had them, via Alfred, was that Bruce must not know about the cats, or he would have made Damian get rid of them.
It was sickeningly funny, in it's sick, twisted way. They were just cats, but it was more than that. It was an attempt to be more like his father, adopting the stray ones that no one wanted, with troubled pasts and possibly troubled futures. They needed a home and they needed love, but he didn't make them stay. If they wanted to run away, they could, but few did.
A lot of them were injured when he brought them home, and more than a fair share weren't keen to being adopted and whisked from the life they had known. He may be the Batman's son, but he was only ten, and I wasn't oblivious to the cat scratches on his arms and his neck from when he'd tried to pick up a fighter. They'd stay, albeit hesitantly, eat, and run away.
There was only one that stuck around for good, staying in his room and leaving fur everywhere. He named him Grayson, and true to his name he was as gray as the sky outside the Wayne Manor - but I know that wasn't why he named the cat that. He was the only one who loved the boy enough to stay and become company, and occasionally accept pets when the boy was in the mood to give them out.
When I found out he named the potential runaways Todd, I wondered how much the little boy truly knew and truly understood.
I don't think I'll ever really know.