Day Eight: Is It Good Luck to Find a Kitten in Your Tree?
When Jack got up early the next morning and went for his coffee, he found himself sharing the kitchen with a tiny cinnamon colored kitten with white splotch around its left eye. The kitten was lounging atop a pile of dish towels in a small basket on the counter and, he had to assume, had not arrived on its own to set up a bed. "You are real, correct?" he asked, seeing that the coffee pot was on and also assuming the cat had not done that.
The kitten mewled at him.
"Not really helpful but we can work with it," he said with a shrug, turning back to the coffee pot. The kitten was awfully cute and though he didn't know why it was in his kitchen, he wasn't complaining. He got milk out of the fridge and saw, or possibly only imagined, that the kitten perked up. "Do you want some milk?"
It mewled again.
Sam walked into the kitchen just as Jack finished covering the bottom of a small plate with milk.
Jack splashed a little milk on the counter when he was startled by Sam's syrupy coo of delight. "You are the one who gave it the basket of towels, right?" he asked, unable to keep from smiling as the kitten climbed out of the basket and moved, whiskers twitching, to the spill on the counter. It's tiny pink tongue darted out fast and quick to clean it up.
"Of course," Sam said, only paying half attention as she sat on the closest stool to watch. "We're the only ones here so who else would have?"
On the verge of admitting it was a good point, Jack realized there was a more important point to discuss. "Where did you get a kitten to put in a basket of towels anyway?"
"It was in the tree," she replied absently.
"The tree."
"The one you cut down with Vala and left outside to dry out." She shook herself back into focusing on the conversation and shrugged. "I was checking to see if we could start decorating it today and I heard noises. And there it was."
Jack bent down to check something as the kitten arched its back in a stretch. "Stop saying 'it.' Our furry little friend is a 'she.'"
Sam made her happy noise again, clapping her hand over her mouth as the kitten stretched her paws out in front of her, showing off little bits of white fur on her toes, and stuck her little tail up in the air. "She's so sweet! Did you not notice there was a kitten in the tree when you cut it down? How did she stay in there? I wish we could keep her…"
"I did not. I don't know. And… why don't we keep her?" he said, owning that he'd fallen as had for the kitten as Sam had. You're going to be starting that R&D program out of the Pentagon in a couple months so maybe we should take her back to D.C. She can live with us there."
Sam's breath caught in her throat. She was an adult, though, and trying to act like one despite her mind running away from her. "Us? We don't live together, Jack. Not… officially."
"We could," he said, reaching out to stroke one finger between the kitten's ears. "If you wanted to. Also I think we should name her Sugar because her white fur looks like sugar against her cinnamon fur."
Stretching to rub the kitten too, Sam glanced up to make sure she'd heard him right about all of it. "What do you think, Sugar? Do you want to come live with us in Washington?"
