Falling Stars, Rising Hopes

Cats and Kittens

                                                                                     Chapter 13

It was 3:59 P.M. on Monday, May 22, 2165, and George was about to meet the scouts. Tanya made sure to arrive five minutes early. She didn’t know the exact details of when his shift ended and how long it would take him to walk over, so she made sure to arrive early.

            “Hey.” He smiled, but rubbed his left thumb along the side of his leg even after he stopped. A sure sign of his nervousness, the only one he allowed himself.

            “Hey.” Tanya kept her voice calm, even though she was a bit nervous, too. What will he think? What will the scouts think? If this goes badly, we’re all going to be in big trouble.

            “Before you go in, there are two things you’ll need to know. One of the conditions of the visit is that you tell Dr. Ramirez all about it tonight.” She tapped the sensor and gestured for him to come closer. The door began to hiss open.

            “What’s the other one?” George asked.

            “They like to swarm visitors.” She stepped backwards as the door finished opening. George’s jaw fell open. She had timed it just right.

            There wasn’t really a sea of cats, of course. But when thirty-two cats came charging at them, it sure felt like it. Tanya had known what to expect, but she hadn’t realized quite how overwhelming it would be

            “New! New! New!” they clamored, leaping at him with claws she really hoped were sheathed. To keep the partials out of the hallway, she nudged George, and he obediently staggered into the room. Even partials were incredibly heavy when there were six of them trying to climb you. A thunderous purr filled the air.

            “All right, all right. Settle down and let our guest have some room to collect his senses,” Tanya laughed. The cats moved away, giving George enough space that he couldn’t accidentally step on their tails, then sat down neatly and stared at him. The only word Tanya could think of to describe his expression was awe.

            “This is incredible,” he managed to say. “Just incredible.”

            “Isn’t it, though.” A wave of pride swept through Tanya. He understands. “They are incredible.”

            “Yes,” one of the cats said smugly.

            “They can talk!” George exclaimed.

            “Yes. Us too.”

            “I’m talking with a cat. A week ago, I would’ve thought anyone saying that was insane,” he announced to the room.

            “Especially if they were talking to an invisible cat,” the air shot back.

            “Wha-?” George spun around frantically, looking for the voice. Tanya hid a smile. This was going to be interesting. “Where are you? Who are you?”

            “I’m right here.” He grabbed at the air in front of his forehead. Trickster must have flicked him with his tail. “And here.” The voice came from on top of a box to his right. “And now I’m over here.” it added from a scratching post to his left. “I’m everywhere,” the voice said smugly. Tanya couldn’t help laughing. The look on George’s face, part irritation, part bewilderment, was hilarious.

            “No, you’re not,” she giggled. “Don’t be silly. Be nice and show yourself to our visitor.”

            “And if I don’t want to?”

            “Then I’ll make you babysit the littles while their mothers are gone.” That ought to do it. The little kittens, the ones too young to leave their mothers, were both incredibly hard to keep track of and surprisingly full of energy for kittens that spent most of their time sleeping.

            “All right, all right.” Slowly, Trickster appeared, head first. He was huge compared to the partials, at least three feet long, even without his long, fluffy tail. He was also orange. Not a normal cat orange, but a fluorescent pumpkin orange. To complete the effect, he bared its teeth in what was supposed to be a charming smile, but looked utterly terrifying with three-inch-long teeth. Tanya’s smile grew wider. Trickster’s goal in life was to one day do something so ridiculous he got the entire base’s attention at the same time. Like, say, having the Cheshire Cat appear out of nowhere, speaking only the lines written for him in Alice in Wonderland. He’d gotten the first part down cold.

            “Pleased to meet you.” He extended one paw, the grimace never fading. “I’m Trickster.”

            “George Whitfield.” He carefully shook the offered paw.

            “Before he chose Trickster, we called him Cheshire. For fairly obvious reasons. Can’t you make yourself slightly more normal?” Tanya asked.

            “Of course,” the scout said. The smile became more natural, with a tiny smirk to it. Tanya felt a wave of foreboding. That was his I’m about to do something face. “It would be my honor.” Then he changed colors. Tanya hoped never to see neon green and bright purple in that pattern ever again. Ever. If someone had turned that into wallpaper, they would have made a fortune selling it to people decorating torture chambers. It was that bad.

            “Trickster!” she shrieked.

            “Fine, fine, fine. Ruin my fun, why don’t you?” A relieving wash of sand swept over his body, until the scout looked almost like a miniature mountain lion. “That better?”

            “Yes. Much. I swear, if you weren’t so important, I would roast you over the fire you just implanted into my eyeballs,” Tanya snapped. The partials, which both of them had almost forgotten about, made a strange coughing noise.

            “What’s that?” George asked.

            “What? Oh, they’re laughing,” Tanya told him.

            “At you.” The charmingly infuriating scout licked one paw and swiped it over his ear.

            “It’s not funny!” George informed the room. Everyone looked at him for a minute, then nodded.

            “Actually, it kind of is. Do you want to talk with Handful?” Tanya asked, delicately changing the subject.

            “Sure.” The tabby wove out of the crowd, tail waving. George crouched down, suddenly feeling very awkward.

            “Hi.”

            “Erra.”

            “She says hi.” Apparently, Trickster was there as a translator.

            “It’s hard to remember the last time I saw you.” Handful made a series of noises that George couldn’t have even transcribed, much less understood. He glanced at the scout.

            “Six months, three weeks, and two days.” Seeing George attempt to do the math, Trickster sighed. “November 29th.”

            “Okay.”

“You marry her?” Handful asked, speaking English for the first time, tilting her head towards Tanya.

            “What? No. Of course not.” For once, it looked like a question had taken George by surprise. He had the expression of someone desperately trying to come up with an answer, and not finding anything.

            “Handful!” Tanya scolded. She wasn’t sure which of them was blushing more. “Why does everyone think that!?”

            “Because it’s true,” Trickster interrupted, clearly speaking for himself. The tip of his tail twitched lazily as he sprawled across the top of a scratching post.

            “No, it’s not!” the two humans said at the same time. “Really, truly, it isn’t,” George continued.

            “Yet.” The scout maintained his casual air, but smugness was leaking through.

            “What would it take to convince you?” Tanya demanded. Her embarrassment was turning into anger. What right do those matchmakers have to tell us what to do? And why are they making up these lies, anyway? For their own entertainment?

            “You can’t. Everyone on the base has made up their minds. On the plus side, it means you won’t have to deal with people flirting with you,” Trickster offered.

            “Would walking through the base shouting ‘We’re just friends’ into a microphone do it?” Tanya asked, trying to keep her anger out of her voice.

            “Probably not.” The scout calmly began washing his face, as if they were having any old conversation. Well, they weren’t.

            “Big posters everywhere?” she suggested, somewhat sarcastically.

            “Nope. Where would you find the materials, anyway?”

            “Can we please change the subject now?” Tanya could feel her nerves fraying, and didn’t want to find out what would happen if they snapped.

            “Why? This is some of the best entertainment I’ve had in days.” Trickster licked his paw again, and a wave of fury washed through Tanya. She wanted to smack him. But that was a terrible idea.

“Just stop!” she yelled, and stormed off to the kittens’ room. How did this go so wrong? she wondered. It was supposed to be this big, happy, exciting thing, not a huge argument! Why did Handful have to bring up that silly idea in the first place? She pulled her pair of night-vision goggles off the rack in front of the kittens’ door and turned them on before opening the door.

“You’re back! You’re back!” the kittens chattered, scampering over to greet her. They were blurry red shapes in Tanya’s vision, surrounded by green halos. She couldn’t help but smile.

“Yes, I’m back.”

“Will you stay long?” Wildfire asked. Tanya recognized her voice, even higher-pitched than most kittens’.

“Possibly.” Tanya sat down on the floor, careful to avoid the kittens, and they swarmed closer, rubbing against her back and arms. Insider even curled up on her lap. The room filled with happy purrs as Tanya did her best to pet all of the kittens she could reach.

“You do realize you’re spoiling them,” Samuel said, coming over to her.

“Am I?” she asked, rubbing behind a particularly insistent kitten’s ear. Purrs vibrated up her arm.

“They’re supposed to be soldiers, not pets.”

“We’re not pets!” the kittens chorused. One of them climbed up Tanya’s back to her shoulder, and she gently pulled it back down.

“You’re too big to do that, Squirrel,” she said. Then she glanced over to Samuel. “You do it too. I’ve seen you sprawled on the floor petting however many kittens you can reach while the rest rub against your clothes. You’re just as guilty as I am.”

“Did you, now?”

“Yup. Went to ask Dr. Daniels a question after my shift and saw you on the floor on my way back. Grabbed my goggles to see what was going on, and saw the whole thing.” Before Samuel could reply, there was a knock on the door.

            “Tanya?” George called. Trickster must have told him where to find her.

“Come in,” she called. “I would warn you to watch your step, but it doesn’t matter.”

            “We want to see! We want to see!” the kittens called, scampering over to the door.

            “The rest of the scouts?” George guessed.

            “Yup.” He opened the door slowly, then fell over as one of the kittens pounced him.

            “You could have let him come in first!” Tanya scolded, attempting to remove it from his chest, but wasn’t very successful. It kept rubbing its face along George’s and kneading its claws excitedly. Tanya could see George’s shirt moving up and down as the kitten’s claws grabbed and released it.

            “At least let me see you!” she yelled, exasperated. With a pointed shimmer, Wildfire appeared. Of course it was her. She may have been the youngest kitten in the room, but she was one of the most adventurous. George adjusted his arms and pushed himself up. The kitten fell backwards onto his lap. She huffed and stalked off, tail lashing.

            “I wanted to see!” she whined.

            “And so you did.” Tanya helped George to his feet. “But now the others can see him, too.”

            “They don’t get yelled at,” the kitten pouted.

            “Because they obey the rules. One of which is to let people come in before you greet them.”

            “Humph.” She began pointedly washing her extraordinarily long tail.

            “That’s a long tail,” George said.

            “We called her Monkey before she learned to control her fur. Now, she’s Wildfire.”

            “That makes sense. Where are the others?” Tanya shrugged.

            “Around here somewhere.”

            “Shadow’s there, and Toothpick’s over there, and Highwayman, Slinky, and Insider are all snuggled up together over there, and Cape’s up there with her littermates…” Wildfire’s tail flicked like crazy as she pointed out each of the invisible cats. Samuel sat down in the nearest chair designed for humans.

            “How does she know?” George asked.

            “Heat sensors, like snakes,” Tanya explained.

            “Okay.” Colors flashed as the scouts revealed themselves. Somehow, Toothpick looked even ganglier than he had when Tanya left fifteen minutes before. Slinky showed no qualms about demonstrating her slightly freakish flexibility, turning her fur blue with yellow and pink stars like an acrobat’s leotard as she leaped, twirled, and contorted herself into seemingly impossible positions.

            The visit went well, he thought. Everyone was looking forward to Jasper’s return, including the humans. Although that was apparently more because they missed Dr. Daniels than because they missed Jasper.

            “Poor Parmina. She’s his top assistant, and she is being run ragged trying to keep up with everything,” Tanya explained. After things had clamed down a bit, she introduced George and Samuel to each other, and the three of them talked for a while with each other and the more curious scouts. Then Tanya heard a little voice.

“Jellicle cats, come out tonight. Jellicle cats, come one, come all.” She groaned.

“Not again,” she said. “Can’t you go one day without playing that game?” The invisible kitten ignored her.

“The Jellicle Moon is shining bright. Jellicles come to the Jellicle ball!”

“What game?” George asked.

“Someone introduced them to The Song of The Jellicles, by T. S. Eliot. And, because they’re kittens, they turned it into a game.” As she spoke, so did the kittens. More of them were chanting the poem.

“Jellicle cats are black and white.” They flashed into visibility, five black and white scouts standing in a circle. “Jellicle cats are rather small.” They hunched down to make themselves look smaller. “Jellicle cats are merry and bright, and pleasant to hear when they caterwaul!” And they tried to prove it, yowling only somewhat harmoniously at the ceiling. Tanya winced. Scouts were definitely not Jellicles, whatever those were. The song, with its hopping, color-changing, and terrible dancing, continued, ending in a chorus of “For the Jellicle Moon and the Jellicle Ball!” and more dancing, which ended at some unspoken signal. The kittens returned to their previous antics, shimmering into invisibility.

“Didn’t seem so bad to me,” George said.

“You’ve only heard it once. They were merciful this time. Usually, they go through it at least twice before they get tired of the game.” She explained more about the kittens’ lives, with Samuel commenting here and there, and before they knew it, her watch beeped.

            “Time to go,” she sighed. “See you tomorrow!” she called to the scouts.

            “You too.” They arranged themselves neatly, and Tanya stroked each one before leaving. George followed.

            “So, that’s what we’re doing here,” Tanya said. “What do you think?”

            “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever done in my life. And I’ve had my little sister compliment me.” She laughed.

            “Yeah, most of the time I would have done pretty much anything to avoid complimenting my brother.” They reached Adira’s office.

            “Go on,” Tanya said, turning to go. “I’ll be in the mess hall.”

            “Okay. Thanks for the visit.”

            “You’re welcome.”