Chapter 8
"Miss Haru is a fetching young woman with taste, and a strong will. What is not to like?" Baron answered, refusing to catch the other meaning in Muta's question.
"Well, if you aren't interested, then I'll try romancing her," Muta said, very deliberately, baiting his friend into reacting. "The girl's a peach."
Baron's green eyes flashed almost dangerously. "You will not," he stated, rising from his place at the table. "You have three wives, if you recall, Muta. You won't do that to Miss Haru."
Muta smiled a smarmy, self-satisfied and slightly grating smile. Having three wives was a perfectly acceptable thing among cats, four might be going a bit far, but three was perfectly all right. The impressive fatso also had close on fifty offspring; not all of them were kittens any more either. Of course, he probably wasn't the only husband his tabbies had, but that didn't bother him any more than it bothered them to know that he had other wives. The social structure of the Cat Kingdom was very much a "what you want to make of it" type of lifestyle. If a cat wanted monogamy, that was fine, but if another wanted "free love", then that was fine too.
Baron and Muta had been friends almost as long as they had been aware of themselves, and they had long agreed to disagree on this point, but Baron had never stood aside and just let his friend woo another innocent, and he certainly wouldn't allow him at Haru that way.
"Besides," he continued, collecting the used dishes. "She's human, none of us are in any position to court her."
"I don't think that's going to stop the butterball, Baron," Toto chipped in, not caring if he insulted the other cat at the table.
"Hey!" Muta objected, resenting the slur on his size. "Chicken-wings is right though," he added, sneakily. "I'll back off for you, Baron, but not for her species. I'll just take her for a nice little stroll around the Cat Kingdom, and she's fair game by dawn."
"Has it occurred to you that she isn't interested in any of that, fatso?" Toto asked. "You said, after all, that you had seen her kick the king in – what was it again? Oh yes, the nuggets. I'd think that meant she isn't interested in getting dragged off to be someone's wife."
With that, Toto let himself out and returned to his pillar in the courtyard, trading the gloss of black feathers for the grey of stone once more.
"Worm-breath," Muta growled in response to being called fatso, but his shoulders had slumped. "Hmph, no. Four wives would be getting greedy anyway, and I don't feel like getting pummelled like she did the king. Alright, I leave her to your cold graces Baron, but try and warm up, yeah?"
Baron snorted quietly. Cold graces, what a thing to say about a friend, but he knew it was true. He'd never been one for romancing, too proper and polite to invade upon the space of the gentle sex and make such propositions as an admirer might who wished to become more intimate with the object of admiration.
"AAARRH!"
The cry came, in Haru's voice, from the front room of the Bureau, where she had gone to work on her painting.
Muta and Baron were through the door without any more thought given to the young woman's single status, thinking only what it could be that was causing her to scream.
"So this is where you were hiding, my pretty," came the ugly, slimy voice of his majesty the king.
"How did you find me here?" Haru demanded, struggling for all that she was worth.
He had put his arm in through an upper window, and had gathered up her slim, shrunken form easily in one large fist.
"Someone was kind enough to tell me that your house had been visited by a crow and a cat in a suit. Everyone remembers the stories about the Cat Bureau, Babe," answered the smarmy king, pulling her out the window and looking at his little prize. "Now, since you object to being my queen, I think I'll make you my kitten instead."
Haru screamed again as she was carried through the king's conjured portal to the Cat Kingdom. Humans didn't have magic, but the king had taken possession of the mystical stone that granted the rulers of the Cat Kingdom the power to move between the worlds at will.
"Toto, wake up! We're going to need your help!" Baron called as he ran for the shrinking entrance. If it closed before he got to it, both he and Muta would be able to conjure another, but it would take time. Time that they probably didn't have.
Toto swooped down from his perch. Baron jumped on the bird's back and Muta was grabbed up in the strong bird's claws. They just made it through the portal before it closed behind them.
"I don't like being here," Toto confessed as he flew on, following the shape of a large shaggy cat that was towing a young woman behind him. It could only be Haru and the king.