Cat's out of the bag.

No pun intended.

The journalists have found out where I'm living now. They've also 'found out' that I recreationally kill and maim animals. The very kindest of the articles posits that I may have been driven mad with grief. That's the Observer. The Sun are happy to just call me Doctor Death and be done with it. By the time I got back from Baker Street yesterday they were already here. About four of them then. Two outside, one on the stairs, one right outside my flat.

I haven't been out today, but there are more than four of them now. You can hear them, moving in the corridor like rats in the walls. Sherly keeps scratching at the inside of the door like she can get at them if she only figures out how to work it.

"I think we're sitting in, today, girl." Oh, she doesn't like that. Down goes the head, sloping off towards the desk. She doesn't even like over there today; I've had to draw the curtains and while she seems to quite enjoy trying to climb them, she doesn't like sitting in behind them. "Don't be like that. I've still got that chicken."

Leftover roast. Mrs Hudson said she'd never get through it all on her own. The truth of the matter is she just wanted me to have another day of 'real food' before I end up back on the ready meals. Although by the time Sherly gets her share I'll be lucky there's enough left for a sandwich.

It's eleven-thirty, and already I'm starting to feel restless. I don't know if it's the fact that I finally got out for a while yesterday, or the fact that I'm now forced to stay in, but the hermit lifestyle suddenly doesn't suit anymore.

I could try watching TV, but you know the vultures outside are going to be listening out. Watch the news and they'll say I'm obsessing about the days when I used to be on it. Watch daytime trash and they'll say I'm depressed, still prostrate with grief all this time since. Watch Animal Planet…

Could break out the old blog again. Report from within on the Siege of the New Place.

'Day one. I can bear the solitude, but won't these callous hounds think of dear Sherly, who I'm sure has an active cat social life outside the apartment? I watch her pine away and think of her namesake and what was done to him by these same ghouls.'

…Nah, best not.

The phone rings.

And I swear to you, I feel them. The ones in the hallway gather suddenly towards the wall like iron filings to a magnet, and I imagine them with safecrackers' stethoscopes, desperate for any scrap of sound. I take the phone through to the kitchen away from them and sit by the window. It's lovely there, nice view over back gardens rather than parked cars, but the curtains are closed, so it doesn't much matter.

"Hello?"

"Oh, John, it's not true, is it?"
Oh, thank you, Mrs Hudson. Thou of the Unshakable Faith. Your trust never ceases to amaze me. They called Sherlock a fraud and a criminal mastermind and tore him down like the statue of some despised dictator, and never once did you waver. And they say I killed a fox and you have to ask.

"No, it's not. Wasn't me."

"Only it said in the paper-"

"I'm innocent, Mrs Hudson."

"And you did ask me about that cat."

"The cat's alive and well, Mrs Hudson."

"I take it that's why the hacks are off my doorstep, then. Don't let them wear you down, love. And don't put anything sensitive in your rubbish, they're worse than fo…" She just stops herself, trips over the rest of the word 'foxes' and just stops. Then proceeds to tell me all her stories about what the hacks have done to her the last few weeks and what she's done back.

She gets to the part, which she's gotten to before, about how she hasn't moved a thing in the apartment, and she won't either, until she knows it's safe. They're all hanging about, you know. Looking for souvenirs. The believers are worse than the mainstream; all wanting a piece of him. Relics of the saint.

That's the part where I rap on the table and tell her I have to go and send the scum away from the door.

I don't though. The scum are all confused, wondering what that banging noise was.

I just sit there for a minute. The kitchen is quiet and dim, like a headache. Or maybe it's just that I have a headache and the kitchen is quiet and dim.

"I don't want to be here," I say out loud. The whining noise in my own voice shocks me. I'm not much of a one for outright complaining, not when there's nothing I can do about it. And there isn't. I know exactly where I want to be, but it just isn't an option anymore. So there's no point in complaining about it either.

I've said all this out loud too. Not mad about the fact that I'm talking to myself. Even Sherly's not listening. Sherly is, in her distress, trying to climb the kitchen drawer handles to get to the bag of chicken on the worktop. Never should have let her watch those Felix ads, they've given her ideas.

I stand just enough to grab the freezer bag from over her nose. The sound she makes is precisely the sound I heard in my head on any given occasion when Sherlock stormed blindly past Molly Hooper. You don't need to be telepathic, it wrote itself all over her face. 'Unfair', 'Mine', 'I earned that', 'I've got a bloody medical degree, you arrogant twat'.

Alright, never in so many words, but the sentiment was the same. And Sherly doesn't have a medical degree. That I know of. She has, however, been around the block a bit and now that she can have luxuries she's damn well going to have them. She's a very expressive cat, you know.

And in exactly the same way, now that I'm holding the power, Sherly trots unquestioningly over and sits by my feet. I pick a bit off for her, hold it down so she can take it off me. But by the time I've straightened again she's looking up, expecting more.

I throw her one more little scrap. "I need some of this for a sandwich later."

She ignores the scrap on the floor. Eyes on the entire bag, tail waving lazily back and forth. She can do this all day. She can stare me out all day.

That's fine, I can do it too. I've got nothing else on today and I can't even go out.

I last about three minutes. Then I get up, put two full slices on a plate and close it in the fridge away from her, and give her the bag.

She eats, but doesn't eat much. She's made her point, and now she wants attention again. Jumps up into my lap and pushes her head against my stomach.

"I bet nobody else ever takes care of you, do they, Sherly? I mean, most cats, they've got a whole network of little old dears who'll feed them at the back door, but you don't strike me as that kind of girl. You're an independent soul, aren't you? You only even came up here because I helped you out that time and I'm talking to the cat again, aren't I?"

I stand, put her down on the chair and try to walk away. Nowhere to go, really. Maybe back to the living room. Maybe I'll read for a while, kill an hour like that. Maybe I'll turn the TV up full blast and make the journalists think I'm really up to something in here.

She makes that indignant, hard done by noise again. But when I turn she isn't looking at me. She's looking away to one side like she can't even bear to.

"…I'm sorry." Jesus, she's good. That was a genuine apology. "God, you're as bad as him. As long as there's something to take you'll take it and we're all supposed to thank you for it. Him… thank him, stop projecting onto the cat, John, it's not healthy…"

Sherly jumps down from the chair. Takes things at her own easy pace and comes to me. Puts her paw on my shoe the way she does when she's getting ready to jump. And yes, I proffer my arm and she hops up into it. Puts her little head against the side of my neck. God help me, it really is comforting…

"No offence, kitty, but I have no idea how you do it. On your own all the time, I mean. Just depending on yourself all the time. That was the thing about the army, you didn't have that in the army. You were always surrounded and everybody did for everybody and someone was always looking out for you. And then I packed all that in.

"Don't get me wrong, I don't regret that. I couldn't have done that anymore. It's not an easy life. But I was on my own here too. And then there he was and then there he went and now here I am. Do you know what I – cat, John, talking to a cat, don't ask it questions, that's worse…"

And then she miaows. Not like she's shouting at me for not treating her like a person, it's not that miaow. It's a miaow like…

But that's ridiculous.

"I never knew what it was like before. To have something you can't imagine being without, and for it to go away. And to know you'll never have it again. That it's not just on holiday or gone out for milk. You convince yourself, sometimes, that it's on a train going farther and farther away from the city to find somewhere that'll still sell it cigarettes, and that's why it's late. But it's not coming back, not ever. He's not coming back. He's in the ground in that churchyard and-"

Before I can go any further, the phone rings again. Everything shatters, and suddenly I'm very aware of talking to nobody who speaks a word of English.

I sigh, blink a couple of times in the dim, and pick up the phone again.

"Hello?"

"You mean you don't know where he is either? You useless, fucking bastard, I swear to God, you just can't get the fecking sidekicks these days, can you? Christ I always knew you were fecking useless!"

"…Oh my God, Moriarty."

"Answer the bleeding question, Doctor Death. Oh, and by the way, if you've harmed a hair on that girl's head, I swear to Christ I will quite literally find out if bread can be made from ground up bones."

"What do you mean where he is? He's in a grave, in a graveyard, and if you're so clever you can figure out where it is yourself."

"Fecking useless. Can I have my cat back then?"

My heart stops. Sherly is back on the chair again. Looking up at me. Big glittering eyes, butter-wouldn't-melt. Harlot, I think. Mata Hari. And yet… And yet…

"…No."

"Excuse me? Doctor Watson, that is my cat, I have her papers. I'm paying her bloody Direct Line cat insurance in monthly instalments-"

"Sign it over. She's not going back to you."

Moriarty laughs. "You think she's there because she likes you? You don't know the first thing about pleasing a cat."

"The horrific implications of that sentence aside-"

"-I'll rephrase-"

"- Sherly isn't going back to you. She's staying here, with me."

"Does she know that?"

Scratching behind her ears, I rage at him. An idea occurs to me and I say, "Fine then. Why don't we let her choose?"
"Fine then. I'll come round as soon as the hacks get out of the way, alright?"
"Fine! I'm looking forward to it!"

"Fine! Put the fecking kettle on!"

"Fine!"