Dedicated to Boris Yeltsin, who mentioned a prompt that inspired this story. (Just to note, I don't make promises to use prompts. I only use ones that connect well enough with other ideas so I feel capable of writing a decent story. This one was a pretty good idea - of Cat having cooking problems when making something for Beck and Jade - and I went with it! Readers are welcome to communicate ideas to me, and if I use an idea I try my best to credit the person and dedicate the story or chapter to them. :D)

I hope everyone has a good start to their weeks. Maybe this will give you a few smiles as you face your Mondays while Cat deals with a wild weekend. :)

...

Cat had a very self-satisfied smile on her face as she stood in her family's kitchen. If one wanted to use cliches, she looked like the cat who had swallowed the canary. In this case however, it was the Cat who had control of the can opener ... and fittingly, she was using it to open a can of tuna.

Why was Cat so excited about being able to do a fairly mundane task? That might be because her mother never trusted her in the kitchen. In fact, their whole family was not particularly "allowed" in that area of their house. Her mother was usually too stressed to cook and when she did, it tended to be bland and overcooked. Her father was hopeless, seemingly capable of the impossibility of "burning water". Her brother ... there were good reasons that he was not allowed the utensils! Most of the drawers were securely locked so that he could not get access to them. Cat could understand that. What she could not understand was why her mother extended the same treatment to her. Who cared if she was a little forgetful at times? Her mother did not remember everything either. Why, just the other day she had forgotten to tell Cat to take her special vitamins until bedtime - so there! And Cat could mostly remember to not swallow metal objects - only one tiny spoon had been swallowed (and then there was that one time with Jade's key...) - and it wasn't like the doctors weren't able to fix her! She knew to call 911 when the toaster caught on fire. Yoghurt and fruit always tasted good, and chocolate sauce and sugar made everything taste even better! That was all that a competent cook needed to know, in Cat's honest opinion. Sugar needed to go on more things.

But Cat's mother never agreed that she should be allowed to cook. She always sighed long-sufferingly and patted Cat's head gently before looking away with tears in the corner of her eyes. Cat did not like seeing her mother cry, so eventually she stopped asking her so often.

So, referring to the opening premise once more, why was a Miss Cat Valentine happily wielding a can of fish and clattering on the cupboard with a metal can opener? There were a few reasons...

...

The previous day, Friday morning, Cat's parents had gone away to a city a few hours away to visit a specialist with her brother, and Cat had - for the first time ever - convinced them that she would be okay on her own. Granted, it had not taken much "convincing". It had been closer to a Thursday night talk of:

Cat: Do I have to go? Can I stay home, pleeeeeease? I really don't want to miss school on Friday 'cause Jade and me are going to be doing a scene that we've been practicing all week! And I get to be a fairy in it, and Jade is the evil witch trying to catch me in her cauldron and eat me! And I get to wear my pretty costume that I made and ...

Mother: What, Caterina? Oh, Francisco! We forgot to make plans for her. Ooooh, why is there always something?!

Cat: Momma, did you hear me? I don't want to go!

Dad: See, Alina? She doesn't want to go. We can just leave her for the weekend. We can leave money for take out and she'll be fine. The tv bill is paid and the whole house is darn near danger-proofed.

Mother: Fine! It'll be easier to travel with just the three of us anyway. You're sure you'll be fine, Rina? Maybe I should get a babysitter, but at this point it'd be so little notice and ...

Cat: I will be fine on my own!

Mother: Where is your brother now? I haven't seen him in at least half an hour! Niccolo! Niccolo! Nick!

Cat had interpreted that as her mother finally trusting her to stay all by herself at last - at sixteen. And with her mother finally trusting her to be grown up enough to stay alone, maybe that would also mean that she was grown up enough to cook now!

There were a lot of particular motivations for Cat to cook on this Saturday morning. The first was that she had finally found the key ring that unlocked the wonders of the kitchen cupboards. Today was her chance to seize! This might be her one opportunity to cook until she moved away for ... whatever came after high school. She still did not really know what would include, but she vaguely thought that since in movies, sometimes best friends got to live together, maybe it would be super fun if she got to live with Jade. She was honest with herself though and could not see Jade being as excited and smiley as the actors in those movies always were.

Actually, Jade was part of the second motivation. Cat had thought that she would be okay being on her own all night. In practice, that had not worked out well. She had gotten back from school and then watched cartoons until 1:00 am - no one was telling her when to go to bed or turn off the tv (paradise!). Unfortunately, the final episode had a scary villain in it who liked uttering threats and disappearing in weird, bubbling piles of goo. That was the only reason Cat finally stopped watching the cartoons - she did not like that character and the rest of the few channels on the tv were weather, news, and an Italian soap opera. However, once she turned off the tv, she realized exactly how dark and quiet the house was.

And how scary!

What if a bad guy - goo or no goo - showed up here while she was alone?!

Cat had hidden under her bed with all her stuffed animals except for one of her biggest teddy bears who she placed at the door of her room to be a security guard. Still, she could not calm down. Her heart was beating rapidly and it was getting a little hard to breath. She rolled over to try to reach one of her giraffes - hugging giraffes usually helped her calm down when the "ants-eye-tea" (more commonly pronounced "anxiety") got too bad, but she could not find Mr. Longneck. A little sob escaped her. It was just then that she realized something was digging into her skin. She still had her phone in her jean pocket. With another sob - this one of relief - she realized that maybe she could call someone!

It was telling that she chose to call Jade instead of her parents or any other adults in her family.

"What?" Jade demanded harshly as she answered the phone. It was, after all, the middle of the night. But Cat could not feel offended by Jade's sleep-induced frustration.

"Jade! Jade! Jade!" she repeated in tiny, squeaky cries.

"Okay, okay," Jade instantly soothed once she realized who was on the other end of the call. "What's wrong, baby girl?"

"I'm lonely!"

Jade sighed, then patiently asked with the overly sweet tone that she sometimes used with Cat (not possessing a naturally sweet tone unless she was trying to convince Beck of something, she had a hard time finding the right forced modulation) - "And why are you lonely, Cat?"

"Because a bad guy with goo might come!"

"Who?"

"From the cartoon!" Cat sobbed. It felt so good to hear someone's voice and not feel alone that she was crying in relief as much as from fear.

"Were you watching late-night cartoons again?" Jade suspiciously demanded, the edge taken off with a yawn.

"Uh huh!"

"I thought your mom didn't let you watch anything past 8:30."

Cat chewed on her lip for a moment. Would Jade tell on her if she told her the truth? Nick always told on her, or so it seemed. But Jade was better than a silly, slightly-scary brother. Jade almost never told on her, and if she did she always explained to Cat why first. It was about things like not taking her medicine (the pills sometimes made her sleepy and she did not like that!) or only drinking coffee all day until her heart felt like it was beating as fast as a hummingbird's wings (Jade had surprisingly not laughed when she felt Cat's pulse). Jade had told her that her health was more important than fun, but she had also somehow made sure that Cat's mom didn't scold her for those misadventures (although Jade had done her own dose of scolding beforehand in both cases). Cat thought that this was probably not a health-related case, so she whispered into her phone, "My mom's gone, so I watched all night!"

"That makes more sense," Jade said with another drawn-out yawn before she suddenly asked in a more alert, suspicious tone, "What do you mean, your mom's 'gone'?"

"She and Daddy and Nick went to a doctor."

"Really? Where?"

"In Richfield."

"Wait! That's six hours away!"

"I know! That's why I didn't want to go, so I got to stay! All by myself! And it's the first time ever. But now I'm lonely, Jade, and I don't think I like it anymore! And they won't come home until Monday and I ... I ..."

Cat never knew that Jade buried her phone in the pillows for a moment as she let out a tiny, angry shriek at how Cat's parents would ever think that leaving Cat of all people alone for a a weekend was a good idea. Jade's ethics were questionable at times, but she was certain that this was gravely wrong. All Cat knew was that Jade, with unusual gentleness, broke through her crying with kind words and comfort.

Jade turned on a small lamp in her room, giving light to her side of the video call. "It's okay, Cat. Calm down. My mom's car is broken down at the moment and I'm not sure if I can get a taxi there. If Beck were in town I'd call him, but he's away until tomorrow morning. Would it work for me just to stay on a video call with you all night? That way then we can talk until you fall asleep, and it won't be like you're fully alone."

Cat sighed in relief and nodded, a few tears dribbling down her face. She wiped them off her nose - for some reason tears tended to make her skin itchy if they got a chance to start drying.

"Thanks, Jade."

"Whatever," Jade said, but it was not as gruff as could be expected in the middle of the night. She peered at Cat's gritty video. "You have nightlights on, right?" Cat nodded. "Then why is the video so distorted? Are you under your bed again?"

"Uh huh."

"Okay. Then get out from under there, pull out all those squishy things you like, and get in your bed. Wait - you're not in pjs, so go change and brush your teeth."

"Okay, Jade."

Cat sniffled and followed Jade's directions. Jade reminded Cat what she was doing whenever she got distracted (like with her musical toothbrush or how the smoke detector battery light was flashing to indicate that the battery was still going strong), and eventually Cat was crawling into bed, clinging to her phone and all it represented of Jade.

"Tell me a story," she pleaded, pulling her blankets tightly around herself. She gave her best begging face to the screen.

"Caaat," Jade groaned, but then stopped herself abruptly. "Okay, fine. What kind of story?"

"I want it to have a butterfly in it."

Once again, Jade censored herself and did not let Cat hear her idea that a story about a butterfly should also contain a web and a blood thirsty spider. Instead, she nodded comfortingly. "Okay. A butterfly named ..."

"I want it to be named Lottie!"

"Fine. Lottie the butterfly. Anything else?"

"A unicorn," Cat said with a long, sleepy yawn.

"What's the unicorn's name?" Jade prompted.

"Um ... Sparkles."

"Are you sure?"

"Isn't Sparkles ... yaaaawn ... a good name?"

"What about Midnight Thunder?"

"Nooooo. That's scary!"

"Raindrop?"

"Um ... maybe ... yaaaaawn ... Raindrop Sparkles."

"So, there's Lottie the butterfly and a unicorn named Raindrop Sparkles. What colours are they?"

Jade skillfully kept prompting Cat for answers in a comforting, low tone. Slowly the answers became overwhelmed with yawns. By the time Jade had been given the full outline of the characters and requested plotline, Cat was fast asleep.

"The end," Jade murmured with a smile. She was satisfied to have been able to put Cat to sleep without ever saying "once upon a time".

A job well done! Now if only I could scare her parents as much as they let their daughter be terrified...!

Although Cat was sleeping soundly, Jade kept her word and left the call connected until the next morning when she was woken by Cat's happy squeal, "Jade! You're still there! It's 5:30 and you stayed on all night!"

"Uh huh," Jade grumbled with her eyes still tightly closed.

"You're coming soon?"

"Nope. But I will later," Jade promised despite her growling. She fumbled in her blanket to find her phone.

"Okay! I'll make you something to eat."

"Make enough for Beck too," Jade remembered to include before ending the call and diving back into her pillows. She needed far more sleep before she dealt with Cat in-person.

...

So, not only was this Cat's one chance to use the kitchen, she now had guests coming who would eat what she created. She had remembered that Jade liked tuna sandwiches and Beck liked noodles (just like Cat herself!) so she had settled on the idea of tuna casserole. Still in her pajamas, she flipped through the cookbooks and finally found an old family cookbook. One on wrinkly page there was a recipe titled "Aunt Stacey's Famous Tuna Noodle Casserole". Cat happily looked over the ingredient list and gathered a pile of boxes, bottles, cans, and utensils. So now she was enthusiastically opening a can of tuna and trying to figure out how to boil noodles.

Cat's cooking was not the most conventional. The microwave was overused and abused in its capacity, but most of what came out of it seemed edible judging by Cat's happy expressions after tentatively tasting from different bowls. Finally she mixed everything together into a pan and turned back to the cookbook. She flipped to the next page, frowned thoughtfully as she read the directions, and nodded to herself. She could do this.

Hopefully.

...

Any guesses as to what will happen next on Cat's weekend alone? I think she has some concerned company arriving soon, but there'll be another two or three short chapters to come of adventures and mishaps. :)

Please leave a review if you have a moment. I want to know how to improve, so feedback is great. :)