Dec. 6 ~ Furitain
in
"Cat Cave"
Good evening to you. I am England Cat. I'm a courtly little cat, with four small paws, a right proper coat, a right proper tail, and a right proper set of folded ears.
I love being all cozy while scrutinizing my human's affairs. Thanks to him being friends with Austria Cat's human through needlework club, I've got a crochet cat bed in every room of our Oxford home. The chenille yarn is a wonder. I can sharpen my claws on it, and the only consequence is that I leave bits of fake fur all over the floor for my human to pick up by hand. He knows the Hoover hurts my poor ears and makes me shred the wallpaper. I simply can't help myself at the dreadful moaning of that machine.
However, patching wallpaper is yet another activity I like to watch him finish. I suppose you could call me a cat of good taste. The charm in the washing machine's weekly production of "Sweaty, Smelly Socks and Such" wears off once I'm too dizzy to stand it anymore, but combine it with the serene sight of my human trying not to belch after eating a Cornish pastie and a Mars bar for supper, and we have ourselves an insightful critique on the state of the modern man.
But I digress.
The basement of this old house was finally finished a few years ago. It used to be full of cobwebs and rodent skeletons and potions and lotions and body butters, too. There were old tomes of curses, boxes of dusty candles, bits of twisted steel, long wands made from the boughs of thousand-year-old trees, and of course, the Blood of a Deviant, which if I recall, was an essential ingredient in a number of transfiguration spells my human once sold to his allies during the Seven Years' War. All lovely sentiments in their time and place, but with the twenty-first century crashing in around us, we had to modernize the basement lair. I have a cat bed in here now. It's nestled on the same shelf as the Railway Series books and all the little wooden models of locomotives I like to knock to the floor with my tail. From here, I have a perfect view of my human slumped in his gaming chair, spending hours on his "sleeplockes" and "shiny hunts." I haven't the faintest clue either.
Just now he stands up and yawns, having finished watching that three-hour long film about engines and blow for the thirteenth time on his computer. It's hardly necessary to say he's a lonely man. At least being lonely and eccentric grants him some intrigue from the spirits beyond the veil. Is that Coleridge, or simply nonsense, I wonder… I really must get some sleep.
"Time for bed," my human says at the door. He beckons me down, and I make a whole show of arching my back and traipsing gently down from my perch to meet him. Up the stairs we go, and I'm shown a lovely view the tattoos on the back of his calves — Pikachu on the left and some sheep-looking bugger on the right. I can't keep up with these new installments. I'm a cat, and a shrewd one at that.
I beg for one treat, and then it's time for my human to brush his teeth and get into his pajamas, which, like most nights, he gets annoyed with and sheds after fifteen minutes. This leaves him in his scottie dog boxers and fuzzy socks, which, in the dreary cold of December are utterly impractical. My human does not care. Pajamas are for visitors. Alone, he'll sleep like a crazed jungle creature.
"Would you like to sleep on me again tonight?" My human asks. I stare at him from my spot on the carpet, taking in his wiry, shivering form, only moderate in its coating of body hair. He can't build muscle, nor put on fat. It's never sunny enough for a tan, yet his diet is hearty and he never goes pale or sickly… unless the economy's gone awry. His body is locked in an eternal state of plainness. It's so plain, in fact, that to compliment or disparage at all is exaggeration. There are no imperfections. There are no noteworthy features. An argument could be made for those eyebrows, but I hold they're the only things keeping his material form from collapsing and spiraling back to the unending void of ennui it was spawned from. No! Ennui is too strong a word! And French, too!
"Why do you continue to stare at my arse?" My human asks.
"Why do you keep standing there trying to make something of that arse in the mirror? Get under the covers and rest, you fool. Or did the computer screen completely rot your sense of time?" I meow back.
He takes the hint. The lights are turned out, and he slips under five layers of quilts, shivering extra when his bare skin hits the bare pillow. I jump up on the bed and pad up on his stomach to knead and prepare it for my nightly nest. Outside, the streetlights flash gold and bronze on a silent storm of snow. I'll spend tomorrow morning watching my human scramble through the drifts after forgetting to put out the bins, and that's if he remembers it's bin day at all.
He scrolls on his phone, the plastic light making him look… not pale, not ghostly, but… lunatic. We'll say that. I crawl up and rub my face against the device until he's forced to set it aside and give me the petting I deserve. My purring starts up, and now I'm rubbing all over his face and shoulders and digging at the sheets.
"Oh, I know what you want. You want to burrow under the blankets again, don't you? Explore the cat cave and get warm. It's so chilly in here tonight."
The cat cave? Oh, what a wonderful invention, the cat cave. I'll stop my critiques for one moment while he prepares the entrance."
My human lifts up the collective blankets and allows me to slip under the covers next to him. I paw at the sheets and poke my head down into the dark abyss of the cat cave. The blankets above are so heavy that it's only narrow enough for a little cat like me to wiggle into. Bracing myself, I burrow and shimmy, digging and forcing more blanket away with my nose until I'm deep into the warm pocket of the underworld. My human drops the edge of the blankets, and I'm shrouded in total darkness.
My whiskers brush against wool and cotton. On my right is my human's body. He's stopped shivering now, and his skin is heating nicely thanks to the cozy cocoon he's created. Deeper I crawl until I come to his fuzzy calves and feet that smell of lavender-vanilla soap. Just as I'm about to lick his toes, I feel him shift his legs to slip off the bothersome socks.
I sniff him, then attempt to pad up onto his soft stomach, but he giggles and shoos me off. "No cold paws on me! Settle yourself, kitty, settle!"
Are my paws cold? Why, if I were allowed to curl up on his stomach, I might warm them. But I suppose his logic is flawed, and I'm not strong enough to resist his twiggy arms.
Still, I explore. Up over the stomach I crawl to the other side of him. His hand comes over my fur like a phantom in the night, stroking my back and trailing over my puffy tail. I lean my cheek into his short fingers and purr loud enough for him to pet me harder.
He folds himself up on his right side, stroking me until I'm relaxed enough to finally settle down. I curl up into the crook of his stomach. Fur against skin. Sharing the warmth emanating between the two of us.
"Oh, what a day," my human says. "I doubt I'll be able to get up in the morning so soon. Just a few more pesky things to take care of, and then the winter holidays will be here for me to enjoy."
My ears perk.
Winter holidays…
Why, I'll get to watch him trim the tree! And knock the baubles off when I scale its trunk!
The thought makes me so excited that I'm up and wiggling again, and he's forced to relocate me to the nearest cat bed so he can get some sleep.
~N~
England has a Wooloo tattoo~
Please go watch the three-hour amateur parody remake of Thomas and the Magic Railroad that was shot in the same exact locations as the original. I'm obsessed with it for some reason.
Updated by Syntax-N December 6th, 2020. Reposters cursed.