Despite his total insistence that Darry wasn't gonna let us keep the kitten, Pony seemed just as fascinated by it as I was. He crumpled up a cigarette pack and tossed it for it to chase, and we all watched, laughing hysterically as it tumbled around the yard, batting it ahead and then tripping over itself to pounce on it. By the time Darry's truck pulled up, we had moved it up to the porch to play and, after an hour or so of stalking bugs and tugging at our shoelaces, it had jumped up on the couch and turned into a fluffy, sleeping ball of orange.

Pony and Ben both looked at me when he drove up – they needn't have worried, I knew it was my problem. I was probably the most likely to be able to convince him, anyway. Pony and Darry were getting along better but also knew full well how to push each other's buttons. The last think I needed was them getting into an argument about it.

I got up and walked out to the truck, seeing that he had groceries in the back. I took a bag as he lifted it out, trying to butter him up without being terribly obvious.

"How was work?" I asked.

"The usual," Darry responded. "Okay." He wasn't usually real talkative about work. "How are you feelin'?"

"Good. Really good."

"That's good. You eat lunch?"

"Yup. And don't worry, Soda, we saved you some pizza."

"I should hope so, considering how much was left over," he laughed.

I tried to slow Darry's progress toward the porch to buy some time, but he kept trying to go around me. Finally, as we reached the porch, I put my hand across the opening at the top of the stairs.

"Wait a minute, okay Dar? I need to tell you something."

"What, Scout? C'mon, I have groceries here."

He looked at Ben and Ponyboy, who were clearly looking on with great anticipation and back at me, standing there looking nervous, and assumed the worst.

"Alright, cut it out … Just tell me," he said. "What happened in there that I don't want to see? Did you guys flood the kitchen again?" That had happened once before, though it had been Soda who'd done it, not me or Pony.

"No. Relax, Darry, it's nothing bad. Just… I found something today, in the shed."

"You went into the shed? Jesus, Scout, use your head. You know there are spiders in there. You wouldn't go in there before, and that's before you even knew you were allergic."

"No, I didn't go in. I sent Ben in to get the watering can and well, something just walked right out."

"What? Just tell me what you are trying to say, okay? I got stuff here that needs to be refrigerated."

I put my arm down, walked up onto the porch and pointed at the kitten, fast asleep. It chose the perfect time to yawn and stretch.

"Aw!" Soda cried, and Darry glared at him.

"We're not keepin' it," Darry said, taking a moment to give it a once-over, then heading through the door into the house. I chased after him with my bag of groceries.

"Darry, it's just a kitten. What am I supposed to do, just ignore it? Let it starve?"

"You know what Mom and Dad said about pets. They're a lot of work." He started putting away groceries. I pulled a chair out from the table and climbed on it, putting stuff away in the top cabinets.

"Yeah, well, Mom and Dad aren't here. You used to be on our side, anyway. I remember the whole presentation you gave them that time about why we should get one of the puppies from the Five and Dime pet department."

He turned to look at me.

"I was thirteen, or something, then… I can't believe you remember that."

"Well, I do. You wanted a pet as much as the rest of us. And this one just came to us, it's not like we had to pay for it or something."

"It's not the cost of getting a pet that's bad, baby, it's feeding it for its lifetime, getting it's shots, getting it fixed so it doesn't have a million babies..."

I hadn't even thought to look if it was a boy or a girl.

"What if it's a boy?" I asked. "And I'll pay for the food with my babysitting money. And I'll eat less so you don't have to spend as much on my food."

Darry looked at me like I was nuts.

"It's just another expense we don't need," he said. "You must be able to understand that. We're on a budget, Scout."

"It will catch the mice," I said.

"What mice? We don't have mice."

"Yeah, we do."

"What are you talking about? I've never seen a mouse in here."

"Yeah? Well that's because you didn't spend a month sleeping on the kitchen floor outside your door. Look…." I jumped off the chair, grabbed the refrigerator and tried to pull it out.

"What are you doing?"

"Just help me, okay?" I stared up at him, and he easily pulled the refrigerator away from the wall.

"See?" I said. The floor underneath was littered with seeds and mouse droppings and there was a hole chewed in the floor molding.

"Scout!" he looked at me, horrified. "You knew about this? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I knew you would trap them, and they kept me company. They weren't hurting anything. I thought they were kinda cute, actually. But I'd rather have a cat."

He just shook his head at me, grabbing the broom and sweeping up the mess.

"They go under the stove too," I said. He looked up at me and shook his head again.

"I don't get how you can be so scared of spiders and not mind mice," he said, and I shrugged. I didn't know either. I put the groceries away while he found steel wool under the sink and stuffed it into the hole.

"What does that do?" I asked.

"They don't like the feel of it so it keeps them away," he said.

"Oh." I kinda hoped they would stay out – as much as I wanted the kitten to stay, I felt bad about sacrificing the mice.

Darry pushed back the refrigerator and pulled out the stove and cleaned under it while I watched. I grabbed the dustpan and helped him sweep it up. After he pushed back the stove he looked down at me, his arms crossed against his chest.

"Please, Darry? Can we just try it? It's not like having a dog… mean, cats clean themselves, they don't hafta go for walks… and they hunt mice."

"It's gonna mess up your garden," he said. I saw the door open, a tiny bit, almost like he himself was grasping at reasons we couldn't keep it.

"I'll learn to deal with it. Come on, Darry, look at all the bad stuff that's happened to me this year – finally something good happened. I mean, the way things have been going, I was expecting a murderer to be in the shed, but it turns out it was a kitten. Maybe that's a sign that things are finally gonna get better around here."

He looked at me skeptically, then laughed.

"A murderer? In the shed?"

"I don't know why everybody sees that as so unlikely," I muttered. "C'mere," I dragged him back out to the porch, where Soda was down on his knees petting the kitten, who was still curled up on the couch. He was talking to it like he had the horses at the rodeo. I guess that was his "animal voice."

"You are a sweet little guy. Tough, too, but pretty cute." Pony was watching him, amused.

"Is it a boy?" Darry asked.

Soda picked it up and took a good look at him from below, just the way he'd look at a car's undercarriage, it seemed.

"It's either a boy, or it's a girl who's got some extra equipment," he decided. I was glad; I knew Darry'd be more likely to accept a male, so there'd be no worry of kittens – or at least the kittens would be somebody else's problem. Typical guy, I thought.

Just then Two-Bit drove up. We hadn't seen as much of him since he'd gotten his cast off and been able to drive again, and he still had that secret girlfriend none of us had yet had the occasion to meet.

"Hey y'all," he greeted us, walking right through the door and calling out a minute later:

"Nobody minds if I have the last Pepsi, do they?"

Pony was off like a shot through the door after him, and we heard the ensuing ruckus as they wrestled over the Pepsi in the living room. Furniture was banged around and, surprisingly, it was Pony who came out with the Pepsi in his hand.

"You want Pepsi, you get your own," he scowled over his shoulder, trying to hide a smile.

Two-Bit came out the door behind him, a crazy grin on his face, which got even crazier when he saw the kitten in Soda's hands.

"Who's this?" he asked. "Long lost Curtis? Way better lookin' than any of y'all though!" He laughed at his own joke.

"I found him in the shed," I said. "Darry doesn't think we should keep him." Two-Bit reached out to pet him and he hissed.

"Oh. Look at that! He's a little Greaser cat!" Two-Bit said. "He's a little Dallas, come back to visit us."

I was surprised that Pony laughed. It was still sad, to think about Dallas, but I guess we were at the point where we could laugh about it sometimes, too, remembering him. Imagining him as an ornery cat was honestly not that far off.

"C'mon Darry, you can't refuse this little Dally-cat your couch, now."

Ooh. Two-Bit was helping my cause even more than he knew. The thought of us turning anybody away from our couch just seemed wrong. Granted, it was a kitten we were talking about, but still…

I took the kitten from Soda and was about to bring it over to make Darry pet it – it had a face I couldn't imagine him being able to say no to, but suddenly it jumped down from my hands and ran up to the screen door, scratching at it and meowing. I hadn't heard a peep out of it up to that point – all of a sudden it was crying out with urgency to get inside the house.

"See, Dar? It wants to live here," Two-Bit said. Everyone laughed.

"Go ahead, let it in, Scout, before it ruins the screen. Obviously you're gonna make me let it stay tonight, at least," Darry said, and I felt a tinge of the thrill of victory. That was short lived, though, as I opened the door to find that, as a result of Two-Bit and Pony's wrestling match, the lamp had tipped over against the curtains, which, in contact with the lightbulb, had caught on fire. The entire left side of the curtains was in flames, and the fire was quickly climbing across to the right side.

"Oh My God!" I yelled, "There's a fire!" Darry burst in, followed by the others. In an instant, Darry ripped the curtain rod out of the wall by the right side and ran outside with it, throwing the whole thing out into the yard. Soda came running out of the kitchen with the mop bucket full of water, which Darry dumped over the wall around the windows. I saw Two-Bit hosing down the curtains in the front yard.

Finally, the danger had passed, and we all just stood there, breathing heavy and wide-eyed.

"Holy shit… that was close," Soda said, notably upset.

"You oughta name that cat Lassie," Two-Bit quipped as he came back inside. "That thing's got a nose for danger."

"You gotta admit, that cat just saved our house, Darry," Pony said. "If that fire'd got into the walls, we'd have been done for."

I just stood in shock. My house had just almost burned down. The kitten rubbed against my feet, silent again. I reached down and picked it up. It closed its eyes and nestled against me, purring. I looked up at Darry. He looked both relieved and disbelieving. He looked down at the kitten, then back up at me.

"Alright, Scout, you win. You can keep it, for now."

The cat, as it turned out, had come to stay.

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A/N: Even though it's a boy cat, I know, it should still get fixed. But, back in the day it didn't always happen. Thanks for your reviews and also to those of you have reviewed the first two chapters of "Seven Deadly Sins." I appreciate it.