Gold's Gift
Dedicated to my sister and her 5 cats and anyone who has been "owned" by a cat
A/N: Takes place after chapter 38 of the Gold Standard.
1
Cat-tastrophe
Mr. Gold would have told anyone who asked his opinion about pets that they were fine . . . in other people's houses. The one exception to that rule was the pedigreed black Bombay kitten Henry had given his daughter Alina for her eleventh birthday. Since the kitten was a gift, Alina had thought the name Nala—gift in Swahili—appropriate for her. She had assured her father that she would happily take care of the kitten, and Gold was content, or as content as he could be with a whirlwind of black fur now ensconced in his salmon-pink Victorian.
To say he and his new fur-child did not see eye to eye was putting it mildly.
The second morning Nala had come to stay, he had walked into the master bathroom and begun to shave and wash his face, only to discover the kitten had somehow managed to get inside there and totally shred an entire roll of toilet paper . . . all over the floor.
Gold gawped at the mess . . . paper shredded into confetti was scattered all over the bathmat and the tile, as if the cat had first torn it to shreds and then dragged it all over. It looked like a snowstorm had spawned there. He was so shocked he forgot to put down his razor, which was dripping with lather, and some of it fell on his good silk shirt. Snarling imprecations which involved a cat stew, Gold tore off his shirt and tossed it into the hamper.
As he stalked back into the bedroom to get a new shirt, he heard his wife call sleepily from her nest of covers, "Rumple? Is something wrong?"
"Nothing that a quick trip to the vet's or pair of pliers can't fix, Belle," he answered tightly, yanking another shirt out of his closet and putting it on.
"What?" Belle sat up, her dark hair falling over one blue eye. "What was that about a pair of pliers?"
"Nothing, dearie. Go back to sleep. I'll see you around six, as usual." He blew her a kiss before returning to the bathroom to shave, but not before glaring at the kitten crouched under the wingback chair in the corner near the window. "Darn cat! You stay out of my bathroom, or else!" He shook a reproving finger at her. "And don't give me that innocent look! You're about as innocent as a wolf in sheep's clothing. Now you've made me late for work."
It took about seven minutes for him to gather up all the paper and stuff it into a trash bag.
When he came out, he found Nala happily pouncing on his Gucci loafers, biting the soft leather with her sharp teeth.
"Get!" he growled, poking her with his cane.
Only to have her grab his cane with all four feet and try and bite it!
"Hey! Stop that, you crazy kitty!" he scolded, shaking the cane to try and dislodge his fuzzy passenger, and trying to balance on one foot at the same time.
"Rumple? What's going on?" Belle asked sleepily, sitting up and peering at her husband, who appeared to be hopping up and down. "What are you doing?"
He flashed her a frustrated look. "I'm . . . trying . . . let go . . . to get this . . . creature . . . off my cane!"
Belle started giggling as she saw what the kitten was doing. "Aww, Rumple! She's just playing with you! How sweet!"
"Playing?" he grumbled, glaring at the kitten who was happily gnawing the fine wood cane like some demented woodchuck. "I'll show you playing. Knock it off, before I make you go play in the street, cat."
Nala cocked her head at him, her green eyes gleaming, then abruptly sprang to her feet and dashed under the bed.
Gold shook the cane at her before he put on his shoes and limped from the room, pausing to shut the door behind him, trapping the little menace inside . . . but he hadn't reckoned with a cat's lightning swift reflexes, and didn't see Nala dart out the door just before he shut it.
As he was coming down the stairs, slowly in deference to his lame leg, a black bolt shot inbetween his feet and almost made him trip.
He staggered and had to grab the banister in a most undignified fashion to regain his balance.
That's it! That little menace just tried to kill me. I'm shipping the blasted furball back to Henry . . . as soon as I find a box big enough, he thought angrily. I knew having a pet was a mistake. They're nothing but trouble!
Undaunted, Nala galloped down the hall into the kitchen, and Gold frowned as he reached the bottom of the stairs. Weren't cats supposed to be silent when they ran? This one must be defective, he thought sourly, because it sounded like a herd of gazelles stampeding.
The little kitten hid beneath a chair as Alice came and set a cup of coffee down by Gold's place and said cheerily, "Good morning, Mr. G!"
Gold looked up at his longtime housekeeper and friend and grunted, "Well, it was good . . . until Alina's crazy kitten decided to wreck my bathroom." He limped over to his chair and sat down.
"Oh, dear. What happened?"
Gold told her inbetween sips of coffee. Then he unfolded the paper and began to read it.
Alice began preparing an omelet for him and set out a bowl of honeydew, pineapples, and strawberries in case he was hungry, along with a small plate and a fork.
A fly buzzed around the fruit bowl. Gold waved it away with a hand and continued reading the financial section of the Mirror.
Beneath the table, Nala's ears swiveled around as her supersensitive hearing honed in on the fly buzzing overhead. Her tail began to twitch as she silently crept out from under the table and crouched, waiting for her chance to capture the annoying insect.
The fly suddenly landed on top of Gold's paper, unnoticed by the pawnbroker.
Until something black smashed into the center of the paper.
Nala's paws snatched the fly from the air . . . and sent the corner of The Daily Mirror right into Gold's cup of coffee.
Hot coffee splashed all over the table, and on Gold's hand.
"Oww!" he gasped, shaking his hand. "What in hell?"
Nala sprang right over the rest of the paper, knocking into the bowl of fruit on the other side and sending it careening across the table.
"Mr. G, what on earth?" gasped Alice, as she looked up from putting the omelet onto a plate along with some potatoes and seeing the fruit bowl skidding across the polished oak table, along with the leaping kitten, whose clumsy attempt to grab the fly had merely stunned it, and now it was flying in loops above the table.
Luckily the fruit bowl halted before sliding off the edge, just as Nala made a second try at the buzzing fly . . . only to fall off the table and land on the floor in a furry heap.
"Serves you right!" Gold grumbled, watching sourly as the energetic kitten shook herself and raced away into the den.
Alice sighed and placed her employer's breakfast on the table after mopping up the spilled coffee. "Sorry about your paper. But it's only that piece that's ruined."
"The piece I was reading," he snorted, and set it down so he could eat.
"Sometimes kittens can be clumsy," Alice said.
"That one's not clumsy, Alice. That one's a catastrophe!" he said, rolling his eyes. "It's a good thing my coffee didn't get on my six-hundred dollar Armani suit, or else that cat would be a gift to an exotic restaurant." He stabbed his omelet with his fork, almost wishing he had his powers as the Dark One back. There had been a potion recipe that called for catgut . . . or he thought there had been.
"Alina would never forgive you, sir," Alice said.
"Humph! I'd buy her a replacement . . . a stuffed one," Gold said shortly, while Alice refilled his coffee cup.
Thank goodness he was going to work, where no ebony whirlwinds were allowed to wreak havoc in his shop.
Page~*~*~*~*~Break
Some days weren't worth getting up in the morning for, Gold thought after he'd come home from a rather trying day at his shop, where mishaps had occurred all day, starting with three rowdy kids chasing a lizard through his shop and knocking over several things while their mother had shouted uselessly at her little brats to stop before they broke something (too late because a crystal vase and a Chinese Ming pottery bowl had shattered). She had offered to pay for the items, practically begging his pardon, and Gold, who couldn't abide sniveling, especially in front of children, said he'd add the price gradually to her rent and waved her away.
As he'd swept up the mess, the green salamander scurried away under a cabinet, so now he had vermin hiding in his shop. Then old Mrs. Armbruster had come in and tried to get him to pay top dollar for an old necklace she insisted was real diamonds dug up from the Black Hills, where the Indians had hid them and her ancestor had found them long ago, before the massacre at the Little Big Horn.
Besides the fact that her ancestors didn't even come from this world, much less traveled outside of Storybrooke, and they'd found gold in the Black Hills, not diamonds, Gold could tell immediately that the necklace was nothing more than cleverly cut glass, good costume jewelry, but nothing else. When he'd told the widow so, she'd become highly indignant, accused him of trying to cheat her out of her "inheritance" and vowed to have him arrested for fraudulent practices! By the time she'd waddled, huffing and puffing, out the door, he'd had a headache.
And that was only the beginning. One of his rent checks had bounced, Granny's had run out of hamburgers, and a grungy customer had left greasy handprints all over his glass case and left without buying anything.
Now all he wanted to do was relax before dinner, maybe have some tea, and spend some time with Belle, but when he went to find her in the den, she was asleep, with a book over her face, and Nala, the obnoxious imp, was sitting in her lap like a Sphinx.
Gold bent to take the book off his wife's face and waved a hand at Nala. "Scat, cat! Go chase mice."
He set the novel on the small table beside Belle and went to sit down on the Chippendale and put his leg up, for now it was throbbing rather uncomfortably.
His eyes had begun to close when he felt something attack his foot.
"What in—hey!" he yelped as needle-sharp teeth nipped his ankle. He jerked his foot and a tiny body landed on his chest.
Opening his eyes, he found himself nose to nose with an emerald-eyed bewhiskered countenance. Nala mewed, and he scowled.
"You've got some nerve, you insolent dust ball. Go play in the street, with the other alley cats," he ordered exasperatedly.
To his everlasting shock, the annoying animal proceeded to turn about three times and curl up on top of him, lying on his chest and purring like muted thunder!
"You're pushing it," he told the little fuzzball. "The only reason I'm not making a trip to the animal shelter right now is because you're Alina's pet. But . . . I could always change my mind."
Nala gazed at him insolently . . . then yawned and began to groom herself . . . getting a blizzard of black hair all over his suit.
Gold vowed to make a sizable donation to the Storybrooke animal shelter this holiday season and include in it a box containing a certain black cat—free to a good home.
He glowered at the kitten purring contentedly atop his chest. "Who do you think you are—Bast herself?" he muttered. "I don't like you, even if your fur is softer than velvet. You shed like a sick sheepdog with mange and your purring could wake the dead."
He closed his eyes, doing his best to ignore the conceited feline perched on him. The blasted cat had a purr like a rusty motor and he wondered why people found such a thing soothing. He surely didn't . . . not in a million years . . .until his eyes shut and he fell asleep.
Nala kneaded her spot a few times to get comfortable, then she too dozed, paws tucked under her slender body.
When Alice came into the den to call them for supper, she saw Nala sleeping atop the reclusive pawnbroker and snapped a picture with her cell. "Doesn't like cats, my left foot!"
Nala opened one eye and winked lazily. Then she went back to sleep, thinking that her human made a comfortable pillow.
A/N: So, who thinks Gold will eventually warm up to Nala? Or will she end up as anonymous donation to the Storybrooke animal shelter? More to come soon, and Archie will be in the next chapter!