Some might consider it callous to have a beer and a curry and fall asleep when your best friend was dying. But Lister saw nothing wrong with it; why make himself sleepy and upset when there was nothing more he could do? He had visited Cat to keep him company until Cat had irately asked Kryten to throw Lister out. He had forked over every nude wrestling video he had brought with him from Red Dwarf. They were seeking out a little pussy for his pussy. What more was there for him to do? He dozed off with a lager in his armpit and a foil container of curry balanced on his chest.
He woke up an indeterminate period of time later. He dipped his finger into the congealed sauce and sucked on it, the fire bringing him fully to alertness. He dumped the container onto the floor next to the bed, rinsed out his mouth from the tap, and staggered up to the ops bay. The door was locked, and there was no answer to his chimes; Lister decided that Cat must want some privacy. Thinking back to his attempts at cheering Cat up with knock-knock jokes the day before, he couldn't really blame the creature. Lister made his way to the midsection to have his brekkie. The table was oddly devoid of a breakfast tray, and he peeked into the kitchen, looking for Kryten. He sighed at the absence of the mechanoid, and started to drum his fingers on his chest, pondering.
"Oh, there you are, Mister Lister!" Lister jumped slightly at Kryten's voice and turned. Kryten stood behind him, holding a breakfast tray that showed evidence of having been made much earlier and shoved in the refrigerator. The cornflakes were soggy to the point of decomposition, and the onions sagged depressingly on top. "Here is your breakfast... ah... er..." Kryten waggled his way over to the table, setting the tray on it. Lister's eyes narrowed as he noted Kryten's too-easily-detectable unease.
"Thanks, Kryters. Eh, what's up?"
"Up?" Kryten asked, far too quickly. "Oh, nothing, nothing at all. Everything is lovely. Lovely as normal. What would make you think anything is up?"
Lister walked over to Kryten, not sitting. "I can tell summit's up. Something wrong with Cat, innit? What's wrong?"
"No, sir; Cat's actually doing," Kryten's eyes flicked nervously in the direction of the ops room, "much better, I think."
Something else was nagging at the back of Lister's mind. He tried to replay, in his mind, the walk from his room, the visit to the ops room, the walk to the midsection - something was off, something subtle. Suddenly, it hit him. He had not been insulted this morning. "Where's Rimmer?"
Kryten jumped slightly at the question. "Oh, he's... keeping Cat... company."
"And Cat's doing better?" The only way he could think of that Rimmer's company would make Cat feel better involved a larger range of torture machinery than was standard issue for JMC landing vehicles.
"Yes, I think so." Kryten's jelly-rubber lips were trembling.
Lister sighed. "Kryten, just tell me what is going on, would you?"
Kryten broke down. "Oh, Mister Lister, sir, I just didn't know what to do! Cat was doing worse and worse... he was delirious. We haven't seen the least sign of any Cat-life since we started looking, and I was so terribly afraid that he wouldn't make it! And Mister Rimmer's hard-light drive is supposed to be almost undamageable - Legion promised..."
Lister grabbed Kryten's shoulder plates. "Kryten! What did you do?" He shook them, to make his point a little more urgent.
Kryten was almost blubbering at that point. "I... lured Mister Rimmer down to the ops room, and locked him in with the Cat. I thought that the Cat could take it from there." He gave a little mechano-sob and looked at his feet.
Lister yelled something incoherent and banged his fists on Kryten's shoulder plates. He ran to the ops room, and started to stab randomly at the keypad. Luckily, Kryten had set it to the very cryptic 1-2-3-4-5, and the door hissed open after only a few minutes of Lister banging at it.
The ops room had only emergency lighting on, and the light from the corridor cast a sickly rectangle of light into the room. The light fell across a snoozing, purring Cat, wearing nothing but a sheet pulled over his waist; despite the greenish cast of the light, he looked his normal healthy and suave self, not the wasted creature he had been the last few days. He opened his eyes and blinked sleepily at Lister's outline. He raised his head slightly, grinned at Lister, and gave him a wink. He then put his head back on the pillow and started his purry snore again.
"Cat, mate! Where's Rimmer?" But Cat was happily asleep, and did not look like he wanted to be any other way any time soon. Lister walked into the room, and suddenly found the answer to his question, lying in a pile of shredded blue uniform on the floor behind the examination table.
It took Lister several weeks to forgive Kryten for his 'plan' to make Cat well again. It took him almost as long to forgive Rimmer the goofily broad grin that was on his face when he staggered out of the ops room.