Zap did not like humans.
Her Ma had always warned her: 'Never trust a human. They'll skin you as soon as look at you – especially with long fur like that, my girl.' Not that keeping out of skinning range had kept Ma from being hit by a groundcar, when Zap had been eight weeks old.
She lived with a houseful of humans these days, granted. They were useful animals, who provided food, warm places to sleep, and shelter from rain. But that didn't mean she was going to start getting enthusiastic about playing with them, the way some of her kittens did. And after a scratch or two, humans were usually intelligent enough to learn not to try to pet her.
Just because she lived with humans, she wasn't going to start being grateful or loyal, the way a dog might. She wasn't going to start thinking it was an honour to be allowed to guard so fine a territory as Vorkosigan House. She wasn't going to regard humans as her friends, or her family.
Especially, she wasn't in the mood to be a friend to humans now, when she was near to having another litter. She could recognise the signs these days: being constantly hungry (though she'd always known never to pass up the chance of a meal), feeling even more irritable than usual, and wanting to search for dark, enclosed spaces where she could make a safe nest.
She could do with a real friend, at times like these. None of her girls was expecting kittens at the moment, or she'd have suggested that they team up and take turns to kitten-sit, to give each other time to go to eat and drink, or make trips to the garden – well, maybe not the garden, especially when snow came up to the base of her tail. Modern innovations like indoor litter trays had their uses, though the soil that potted plants grew in felt nicer. But the garden reminded her that she wasn't a prisoner, and that the gate-guard would drop the invisible barrier to let her out if she wanted to leave.
The humans were showing signs of mating behaviour themselves, as far as she could tell. Humans apparently pair-bonded, like birds, with the male maybe even helping to rear the young. Zap wasn't impressed by that idea. She'd never known a tom she would trust around young kittens – especially if he couldn't be sure which members of the litter were his.
At any rate, the short, dominant young male human and his mate were going through an elaborate mating ritual which involved unpacking things from boxes. They lifted something furry – or was it someone? It had long, soft black fur, very like Zap's own. As far as she could tell, it didn't have a head, paws, or any sort of scent glands. But it smelled alive, for all that.
It didn't smell like some old tanned skin. There were plenty of those around the house, from sheepskin rugs to the collection of human scalps she had once smelled in a box kept well out of sight in the attic. Zap liked furry things to lie on – sometimes, kittenishly, she found herself wishing that she'd had a furry bed to cuddle up against and tell her sorrows to after Ma died. But there was no point thinking about that now. She was a grown cat. Anyway, fur was soft, and even if it was cat, the dead were dead and wouldn't be needing it any more.
But this one – as the female lifted it out and made noises of delight and nuzzled her face against it, it purred agreeably at her. Her mate picked up a folded piece of card and showed her the ink scratches on it, and she laughed, putting down the furry blanket to examine the ink-marked card more closely.
The blanket smelled disappointed at having its cuddle terminated – how did it manage to smell emotional, without glands? Zap couldn't explain that. But it did. It edged closer – not to the female human this time, but to the male. He murmured a greeting to it, and dutifully picked it up, but Zap could tell that he wasn't comfortable about cuddling it.
The blanket knew that, too. It purred more loudly than ever as it snuggled against him, wrapping itself around him until it enveloped him. This wasn't the friendly purr it had given his mate, or even a purr of contentment. This was a purr of pure amusement.
The short human didn't dislike cats, Zap knew. He was one of the first humans she had come to know at this place, apart from the guard who had first met her and shared his food with her. The short human respected Zap enough not to pet her when she wasn't in the mood (i.e. ever), and not to touch her kittens until they were old enough that Zap could trust them to make up their own minds, but he seemed quite fond of her, and not at all afraid.
But he was uneasy around the blanket-creature, and baffled that everyone else found it adorable, and so he was the one it decided to cuddle. Zap could completely understand its reasoning. If it thought like that, it was definitely someone rather than something – and it was someone she wanted to get to know better.
She waited until the humans had left before approaching the box and climbing in. The blanket purred a greeting, different from the way it had purred to either of the humans. Without eyes or nose, could it recognise a creature that had something in common with itself? Or was it just enjoying the warmth of her body? At any rate, it adjusted itself into a comfortable nest.
It would be a good co-parent to her kittens, she could tell. Okay, it didn't have nipples, nor a tongue to groom young kittens, but she could take care of that side of parenting. And it didn't have a mouth, so presumably it didn't need to eat.
It was warm and friendly and would be happy to babysit her kittens, yet it was itself more helpless than a newborn kitten. It didn't have legs to walk away, eyes to see where it was going, or claws to defend itself if anyone mistreated it. It couldn't even groom itself. It needed her.
She began to tidy its fur now. She felt her paws knead the soft folds of the larger creature, as if she were a kitten begging her mother for milk. Well, the blanket wouldn't tell anyone if she was being kittenish in private.
When Zap fell asleep, both she and the blanket were still purring.
Author's note: I was reading a fanfic called Hard Stop by Arachnia_QotSP, describing Elli's reaction to the news that Miles is getting married. It made me wonder what sort of life the fur blanket would have, after being sent from Elli, who likes it, to Miles, who finds it creepy in itself, apart from being an embarrassing reminder of a past relationship. As the live fur is one of the most helpless characters in the series (along with Ekaterin's skellytum tree), I wanted it to have a happy ending and get plenty of love.Zap's reasoning about whether the fur blanket is a person was inspired by a news report I read about an experiment to find out how realistic a toy rat needed to be for rats to empathise with it enough to rescue it from a trap. The researchers found that, even if a robot rat didn't look like a real rat – for example, it didn't have fur or a tail – the rats would regard it as a person if it behaved like a real rat, playing with the same toys that they played with.