Seeing the inside of Molly's flat made Sherlock question whether freedom was actually worth it. While his color vision was reduced as a cat, somehow the aesthetic qualities of Molly's flat still deeply offended him. It was all a bit too much – overstuffed chairs and excess throw pillows, things with embroidery and pictures of cats. Sherlock immediately hid under the couch and closed his eyes against the onslaught. He was going to need to redecorate, that much was clear. Although if he did, he couldn't imagine that Molly wouldn't replace anything he destroyed with more fluff, and it was unlikely that she'd develop a taste for anything more elegant. Also he really didn't want to go back to that cage, and he supposed that could happen if Molly concluded he was too feral to stay there.
In the kitchen, Molly was putting out food and water. No more coffee, he realized, and felt oddly bereft. After she disappeared into her bedroom he padded out and sniffed. Slightly higher quality than in the shelter, but it was still cat food. He wondered if Molly ate much takeaway, and if she'd let him have any.
Sherlock spent the next few days getting acquainted with the features of Molly's flat. The litter box situation was appalling as usual, although Molly kept things very clean for him and provided a small shelter for privacy. She bought a new cat bed to replace Toby's, but Sherlock preferred the sofa.
Bathing was just awkward. He waited till Molly went to work for that.
To Sherlock's delight, while Molly was out at Bart's, he found that there was a window in the kitchen that opened onto the fire escape. Sherlock nudged the latch and it fell open. Not large enough for a person, but plenty of room for himself. Using the fire escape, he made his way down to the street.
Oh, London! It was splendid, the alley ways and streets all seemed new to him now, and yet the maps of the city in his mind remained flawless in his memory. Sherlock roamed Molly's neighborhood, inspecting rubbish bins, slipping in and out of the doors of the shops, and chasing pigeons in the park. He didn't even miss having a murder to investigate, although he was unsure how long that feeling would last.
Sherlock noticed the sun going down after a few hours and made his way back to the flat. Even the alley behind the flat was interesting on its own. He noted the scents of other cats, of the noisy Pomeranian in the building next door, of freshly fried falafel from the Middle Eastern restaurant. Sherlock had rarely been all that interested in food before, but he had to admit that as a feline it took up far more of his interest. Perhaps Molly would notice how good the food smelled on her way home, and if she liked kebabs he could sneak a bit for himself.
Really, décor aside, Molly had been an excellent owner so far. She did want him to be more of a lap cat than he liked the idea of being, but she seemed to think he was skittish and that was the end of it. At least for now.
Cats brought back tributes, didn't they? Dead mice and such for their owners. That would be a normal sort of thing to do, and it would be best not to raise suspicion. Sherlock crouched in the alley and waited for a small gray something to inevitably appear from the pile of trash bags outside the kebab house's back door. His mother had tried to teach them all to be mousers, warning them that humans often expected this duty of cats. Sherlock had been terrible at sharing, adequate at play fighting, and barely tolerated being bathed. However, he had been very, very good at the mousing.
At least he had when the mice had been stuffed. This one was moving of course, and Sherlock smacked into the wall instead. He was fairly certain it snickered at him before zipping off. No gift for Molly today, then, and he needed to get back before she arrived home and found the open window. Sherlock bounded up the fire escape and landed in the kitchen with minutes to spare.
"I've a treat for you," Molly cooed, and Sherlock really hoped it wasn't a jumper because he'd have to claw her eyes out when she tried to put it on him and that would be a shame at this point.
She placed a stuffed sausage-looking thing on the floor and Sherlock briefly felt like she was mocking him. He approached it and sniffed. That was...odd. Minty, sort of, but also grassy, and – oh. He liked it. He really, really, really liked it. He spent the rest of the evening dashing around the flat and rolling around purring happily with the catnip sausage. Molly laughed at him all the while and he could not have cared less.
When she came home from work the next day, she seemed sad and tense, and Sherlock wondered if there had been something very unpleasant among her duties that day. She sank tiredly into the sofa after dinner, and Sherlock considered hiding in his bed for a moment before deciding that he could concede this to her. He leapt onto the sofa and settled into her lap (no more disgusting raspberry lotion, thank you, lavender and cardamom instead) and let her stroke his fur, noticing how her pulse slowed, how her breaths became longer and more relaxed. He felt sleepy himself after a few minutes, and despite the noise and glitter of Strictly Come Dancing on the television, he drifted off.
He awoke during the news, to the announcement of a missing persons case in London. In his old life he would have been texting up a storm to Lestrade right now. As a cat he had no idea if he would ever solve a murder again.
When Sherlock encountered the unusual smell in the skip in the alley behind Molly's building, however, he realized that he was about to find out.