She didn't hear the banging noise from Thomas's clenched fist at the front door as she celebrated about no longer being a stray kitty.
Momo came up to Thomas from behind and tried to hug him, but he reflexed away from her. The horrid smell overwhelmed his sinuses once more and tried to hold his breath.
"You really need to take a bath!" Thomas exclaimed.
Momo didn't catch his annoyed gesture since she was so happy for him to be a master to her.
"I will, Master! I will be groomed nice and clean!" Momo obeyed.
He went upstairs to the secondary bathroom and filled the bathtub with water and soap. He mixed the water around with both of his arms to make the soap formed into floating bubbles. Nevertheless, Momo needed to be clean from the filthy stench.
"Momo, go take a bath!" Thomas commanded her.
She appeared and changed her kimono to her lemon lime colored bikini with a black ribbon tied up as a bow between the bikini. Momo had an affinity for bows.
She walked nervously towards the bathroom door. She saw the water and was terrified, imitated a cat's "normal" reaction to the water and hissed. Momo only knew about grooming via licking her skin with her tongue.
He saw Momo on the bikini and was petrified on the tail and cat ears still attached to her. He refused to acknowledge this and still deemed her as a weird human in a serious cosplay attitude.
"It's ready." he said to her.
Momo held the doorknob for the bathroom door and didn't want to enter. Thomas walked past her and pulled Momo's hands away from the doorknob, pushing her into the bathroom as she tried to resist Thomas's physical force.
Momo's body weight was no match for Thomas's powerful arms, and he had no patience. Thomas closed the bathroom door and walked downstairs. He was aware that cats are afraid of interacting with pools of water, but he would not tolerate Momo's demeanor since she is a human. Nothing else.
Thirty minutes passed by, and Thomas checked on Momo to see how she was doing. As he opened the bathroom door, Momo still stood in the bathroom, and the smell was still there. She did not get in the bathtub to take care of herself.
"Why didn't you get on the bathtub?" he asked her.
She was gravely nervous about answering his question.
"I'm terrified of water, Master. I can't go in." she answered.
In Thomas's mind, this response was complete nonsense. Momo's body structure is human besides the tail that might come out of her coccyx and two furry ears appearing on top of her forehead. He refused to accept the ears and tails were biologically associated with Momo. Those were props to him.
"A normal human loved being around with water as it refreshed the body from sweat, dirt, and smell." he thought in his mind.
"What the hell is wrong with Momo's relations with water?".
Momo's suggestion terrified him.
"Can you clean me instead, Master?" she asked Thomas with a slight blush.
The sudden question flabbergasted Thomas with horrified shock then shook his head.
"Hell no!" he answered with strong confrontation.
Momo continued to pester him by asking the same question over and over and he had had enough. He pushed her towards the bathtub. She tripped over the side of the bathtub and fell inside the lukewarm, watery pit.
She panicked wildly as her frightened response ended up making large sums of splashes on the floor and on the marble wall.
He predicted that Momo would calm herself down and, in a few moments, she did. She sat still and eased her body from panicking. Momo despised having water around her body, but she cannot argue against her master.
Thomas went out of the bathroom and grabbed a small, white laundry basket. He went upstairs to Momo's cardboard box and placed her damped clothes into it. Momo's clothes were varieties and surprisingly "well-dress" as if she was in an upper-class social hierarchy.
Still, laundry had to be done and Momo could get fresh clothes when the procedure was done.
Eventually, the laundry was done, and Thomas placed her clothes into the basket, leaving it at the bathroom door. The bathroom light was still on, and the door remained shut. He assumed she was still there, but he went to the living room and had a rest.
Momo went downstairs and walked towards the living room where Thomas was reading a newspaper in the dim, translucent atmosphere as the clouds stood present. Momo slowly came up to Thomas and tried to scare him. It failed.
He put down the newspaper and saw Momo wearing a new attire.
"Hello Master!" she said to him, giving out an eager smile.
Momo was wearing a "Loyal Servant" attire, containing a pair of red, short heel shoes, a piece of bandelette on the left thigh with a tiny blue bow attached to it, and a red-white apron. For her tail, she had a blue-ribbon string that is designed like a bow with a red fluff ball and a jingle bell attached at the bottom. Most notably, she didn't wear her black collar with the golden bell.
Momo wanted to impress her master with such a beautiful maid dress, but he was mostly indifferent and a bit disturbed.
"Took you long enough" Thomas commented on her duration on being at the bathroom.
Momo wanted to impress him with her "Loyal Servant" maid attire.
"Do you like what I wear?" Momo excitedly asked.
"You are my master and I want to make you happy so whatever you ask of me, I will provide."
Thomas was still uncomfortable about controlling someone, especially someone who is obedient and a doormat. The master and servant concept disgusted him.
"Stop with the master and servant roleplay. It's disgusting and knock that shit off." Thomas indirectly replied to her questionnaire while making a disparaging statement.
Momo's ears frowned downward, and she stared at the wooden floor.
He got up and grabbed a notebook and pen with the intent on creating a dossier. He needed to know about Momo's origins and what her purpose was.
"I want to get to know about you" Thomas stated to her, catching her with excitement.
Momo got the chance to have a normal conversation with her master.
"Oookaay! What do you want to talk about? Hmm?" she told him, eagerly waiting for her master's question. Her tail wagged in a moderate pace and the jingle bell synchronically rang at each stop.
"What is your last name?" he asked her.
"Last name? Nooooooooo…I'm Momo" she answered with a shaking voice, not know what the term means.
Momo's answer caught him off guard. He can't believe how a person or a 'being' in this matter does not know its last name. Amnesia, perhaps.
He still saw Momo as a mentally deficient, ditzy, and scatterbrained young girl who acted like a child and tried to act innocently to garner sympathy. The curse slowly crept onto his heart, but he took a deep breath to ease his stress and wrote down the response as N/A.
"When is your birthday?" he asked another question.
"October 2nd. It's my favoritest day!" she answered with high excitement with an odd word pronunciation.
The response was juvenile, but at least the response was "normal" and acceptable. He wrote down her birthday on the paper. He then immediately noticed something.
"What about your birth year? You didn't mention about it." Thomas curiously asked with his eyebrows raised.
"I don't remember what year I was born, Master. I'm sorry." Momo replied while contemplative on what birth year even meant.
Thomas suggested she was deceiving him, and the curse was slowly creeping into his heart.
"So, how old are you?" He asked for her age.
Momo's response aggravated him, falsely validated his belief on Momo's falsehood.
"Mmmmmmmm…I'm only one years old…in kitty years" she stated with a few hesitations.
"What the fuck does that even mean!?" he hollered at her.
The sudden yelling made her stunned and leaped back to the wooden floor, landing on her backside. He coughed for a bit to suppress the curse and shook his head.
"Whatever. You're so unbelievably stupid that I can't even react." Thomas commented to shame her with disgust.
Momo was dejected and ashamed for not providing the answers her master was seeking. Her stomach growled loudly.
"Mmmmm… I'm hungry.." she told him, giving a sad facial expression to catch her master's attention and wanted to decrease the tension around the living room.
Thomas went to the kitchen cabinet and grabbed a box of cookies as he placed it on the living room table. Momo went up to the table and grabbed a few pieces of cookies.
"What a treat!" Momo cheered as her eye pupils widened before the pupils went back to their normal state.
She sat on the couch close to her master, waiting for her master's orders or requests.
"Where are you from, exactly?" Thomas inquired intensively as this question would answer everything about her origins.
"I don't know…I really have no idea. I'm sorry." Momo sadly answered.
His anger built up and couldn't control it.
"That's fucking bullshit!" he screamed at her with the top of his lungs, slamming the pen at the living room table.
Momo still doesn't understand why her master yelled at her. She didn't do anything wrong, and this sudden action terrified her.
"You're lying to me!"
The answers she told him were honest and had nothing to hide from her master.
Thomas scooted away from Momo and went to a larger sofa on the other side of the living room. He needed to take a rest until Momo came close to his body and stared at his eyes.
"How were you cursed, Master? I want to help and save you" she stated with firm confidence.
His past came back to haunt his mind and felt melancholic.
"Since you know I was cursed and you seem to know how to end it, I'll tell you what happened."
