7.
Home sucked.
"Rooorrrrowooorororowwww," Emily complained at the closed window and, "Rooooowwwwwww," at the relentlessly shut front door and, "Mrrrooooooooooowwwwwwww," at the utterly boring everything.
Inside sucked.
There were no bugs to eat, no JJ to wash, no Hotch to tease. Ian was there but he wasn't helping with the boring because he wouldn't stop talking about how she shouldn't have Run Away and how much of a Bad Cat she was and how kittenish she was being. But she just wanted to lay in sun that wasn't filtered by glass and shit anywhere but the stupid little box she was allowed and she wanted…
She wanted Spencer.
"She's never been like this before," Elizabeth was saying to the vet after Emily had been unceremoniously thrown back into the carrier and driven there. Emily, cranky and grumbly and not at all happy with the cold, gloved hands scruffing her, rumbled unhappily on the steel table. "She ate until she was sick and then was sick and then started making this noise! And her fur—why is her fur like that? We have a show in a month."
"She has fleas," the vet was saying. Emily listened to their unintelligible noises disinterestedly, instead looking across the room to a bank of cages there. Other animals watched her from within. "Is Emily spayed?"
"Oh god, she's not pregnant, is she? I was going to put her with my tom—she scratched him when he sniffed at her when I brought her home. He has a horrid mark on his nose now—that will cost him the Championship and he was a shoo-in, oh Emily."
Oh Emily, as she was sometimes called when she was Very Naughty—and she was a little smug to have earned that term today: "Damn right I'm Naughty," she told Elizabeth with a sassy flick of her rump—growled just to show them that she was Unhappy with a capital Un. But the stupid humans kept talking—
"—spaying would help with the temper and the wandering, unless you want kittens—"
—and something was bothering her about one of the cats in those cages. One that watched Emily glumly with her grey and white nose tucked neatly on her paws, a slash of orange colouring vivid on her shoulder and her eyes a familiar grey-green—
"—don't recommend declawing, but—"
— "Do you know Nora?" Emily asked the cat curiously, watching as she jolted upright and stared at Emily through the wire mesh. "And Spen—"
"Yes!" gasped the cat, pressing against the wire with a mrrooow. "Oh my gosh, yes! Are they okay? Where are they? Oh, my Nora… how do you know them? She's my baby, my kitten, oh I have to get out of here!"
Emily blinked.
Nora's mom was alive.
"Do you know how to read too?" Emily asked, flicking her tail nervously. Spencer really seemed to like Nora, after all, and Nora was a clever little thing, so maybe her…
The cat twitched her head, tilting it and staring at Emily. "Yes?" she replied slowly. "I learned as a kitten, before Spencer and I Ran Away… why?"
Oh.
"What's your name?" Emily was full of questions and a little bit full of some strange twisty feeling too. The last thing she'd said to Spencer was that he was a weird cat, but here was another cat just like him… maybe he wasn't weird at all. He was brave and strange and a little bit impractical, but all of that made him special. A Very Special cat.
"Maeve," said the cat. "What if I never see them again…"
Maybe Maeve was a Very Special cat too. And Emily?
She was just A Cat.
"Don't worry," she told Maeve quietly, hands picking her up to move her back to the carrier. She knew this place—it smelled very close to where they'd found Jack, and Elizabeth always put the carrier close enough to the car window that Emily could look out as they drove—and she bet she could find it again. "You will."
…
At night, she and Ian were locked into their room. Everything they needed was in here: food, water, boxes.
She didn't want to be in here tonight. And it was going to take being Very Naughty to get out. Possibly the naughtiest she'd ever been.
"Oh no, what a disaster!" she sang loudly as she climbed the curtains with her wonderfully sharp claws, making sure to dig right in and twist about until they clattered down with a crash! "Uh oh, what a mess," she added smugly, as she flipped both litterboxes over and then carefully used the rug next to them for her business. "Oops," she said, climbing up onto the shelf and one-by-one knocking anything that looked fragile down. Some of the fragile things didn't break.
She climbed down and kept smacking them until they did.
She ate Ian's food. She jumped into Elizabeth's plate while she was eating dinner. She threw herself boldly into the potted plants and then ran dirt all over the house, making sure to tug open dresser drawers and pace back and forth on the whitest of clothes.
She waited until Elizabeth was almost ready to put them to bed and then wedged herself behind the bookshelf, howling like she was stuck until Elizabeth was forced to spent an hour and a half unpacking every book and carefully trying to ease her out. As soon as her human's hand touched her, Emily slipped out the other side, jauntily trotted to the kitchen, and sat by her food-bowl with a plaintive mew?
Emily knew. Even closed doors would eventually be opened if one was sufficiently Naughty.
It worked. Bedtime came, and Emily was shut downstairs—away from where Elizabeth could hear her singing every song she knew. Away from Elizabeth, but right by the windows with the latches that looked just like the ones that Spencer had undone to get Jack out of the cage.
"Right," Emily said smugly to herself, jumping up onto the sill and patting at the latch. Outside, dew glinted on the damp lawns and the sky above was starry and clear. "If Spencer can do this, I certainly can. Spencer hasn't a ribbon to his name…"
But the latch firmly refused all her efforts to tug at it, the wood making sad noises under her determined claws. But she kept trying and biting and batting until—
Tap tap tap said the window.
Emily, with fixed decorum, fell backwards from the sill and onto her tail. After climbing up quickly and glancing around to make sure no one was looking, she tipped up onto her back legs and peered up at the window.
Tap tap tap said the paw poking at it from the other side. The white paw, smoothly turning into a brown leg, which vanished and was replaced by a little pink nose and two wide eyes.
"Spencer!" gasped Emily. In return, Spencer's mouth moved but there was no sound. She jumped up, rubbing against the glass with excitement at seeing him, feeling him do the same on the other side as he greeted her. "How do I get the window open?"
Spencer didn't seem to be able to hear her either, but he placed his forepaws against the glass—she put hers against his with the glass between them, seeing his whiskers twitch shyly at the gesture—and peered down at the latch. Dropping down, she mimicked what she'd been trying to do, watching his paws carefully as he mimed for her what he wanted her to do.
It was a silent, anxious few minutes before the latch popped open under her paws, the window scraping open, and she was Outside!
"Spencer!" she gasped again, tackling him from the sill. They both tumbled off with shared squeaks, landing in the flowerbed below and rolling in the begonias. Spencer had a flower stuck to his ear. Emily didn't even lick it off—dirty ears or not, he'd found her. "How did you find me?"
He wiggled under her and purred as he said, "Washington Way. I remembered your collar and, um, I thought…"
She peered down at him. "Thought what?"
When his reply came, it was gentle: "I thought… I wanted to ask… well, you didn't answer me. Did you want to go Home?"
Emily didn't even think about that.
"No," she said, and pressed her nose to his, closing her eyes and finding that deep part in her chest that would… there. She began to purr, a thin, nervous sound that soon resonated from her chest and into his: "No, I think I'm quite happy with you, please."
In return, he shyly licked her whiskers, his own purr echoing. A weird cat, an imperfect cat, a wonderful cat… but most of all, Emily decided, he was Her Cat.
And then she remembered Maeve.
"Oh, I found—" she began, sitting upright, and that was when the night split apart with a throbbing yowl that made her feel small and young and like she needed to curl down and inside herself. Puffing up with fear, her and Spencer both whirled to face the threat looming above.
"RrrrRrrrrRRRRrrrr," throbbed Ian, his muzzle bared back and his fur huge. His thickset tail lashed angrily, his claws extended, and he looked big and dangerous and male. "How dare you come here!"
"We're leaving," squeaked Spencer, backing away. So small in comparison with his tail tucked low and ears slicked back. "We're just going, we're—"
"Not going anywhere, Lauren," Ian said coldly. Emily swallowed. She wasn't one to take being told what to do kindly, but Ian's voice was dark and honeyed and sinking deep into some crucial part of her. "You're mine."
Emily took a step away and then a step back before nervously jittering on the spot, unsure. Ian had always been there. She knew him. He was a constant. Could she defy that?
That was more than being Naughty.
"I don't want to stay," she said finally, seeing a light flicker on overhead as Elizabeth woke to the rancorous growls emanating from her tom. "I want to go with Spencer. I don't want to be Inside."
"You don't get any wants," Ian snapped, and leapt. Emily squeaked as he scruffed her boldly, still smaller than he was and barely able to stop him from hauling her bodily back towards the window. "You're not your own cat, Lauren, you're mine and you're Elizabeth's and you're collared."
Around her neck, the collar was heavy and proved just that. Emily froze, uncertain. More lights were flickering on inside.
But then the was a low rrrrrrrrr that wasn't honeyed and it wasn't deep and it didn't make her feel hot and girly and lonely at all. She turned her head. Spencer stalked Ian with his fur fluffed up too, his brown eyes furious and his ratty tail high. Rrrrrrrr he said in a voice just like his purr but angrier. "She's not yours. Emily is her own cat, now let her go or I'll make you." Rrrrrrrrrr he kept grumbling and Emily joined in with her own snarling sssssssssssss of anger.
"No—" Ian began, but to speak he had to release her. She leapt out of his jaws and hurtled to Spencer, arching her back and dancing about in front of her with her marvellous Claws bared and her tail an arch of anger. She'd fight him too! She'd fight anyone who tried to stop her!
"I'll eat you if you try to stop me!" she boasted with another hiss and then spat at him for extra emphasis. "We'll both eat you, Spencer and I, and you'll be nothing but cat litter in the end! What a tom! Barely a tom at all!"
"Soft tom," meowed Spencer, winding under her and looking out through her front legs. "Coddled tom. Can't-fight-us-both-tom."
"Gonna-be-alone-tom," Emily added, twitching with some wild, furious energy.
The front door opened, Elizabeth hurrying out. Uh oh.
Suddenly, Spencer popped up next to her, scruffing her like the dumbfounded Ian had. Emily squeaked with shock, dragged forward with her ears yanked cruelly off her head, but then there was a pop and she was—
Free. The collar hung in Spencer's mouth, limp and lifeless and not holding her anymore.
He spat it out. Elizabeth yelled.
Emily yelled back, and then they both turned and fled that place with their tails high and hearts jaunty. And she never, ever looked back.
