Stories by: Mirri

The Tall Tails of Catwood

Chapter Se7en

 

Tika opens the elevator door and steps out of the hall into the living room where Mika is sitting, as usual with the TV close to the loudest volume.

”MOOM!”

Mika turns around, a bit startled, then turns the explosions a bit, ”Hi Tika. Did you get everything on the list?”

Tika goes into the kitchen and sets the bag down, ”Almost, yeah. Couldn’t find those..” He checks the note again, ”Kreborkian beans..”

Mika nods, ”That’s okay, just set it on the table and I’ll put it away later.”

”Right. Where are the others?”

”Upstairs I think. Haven’t heard from them since they went up there.” She turns the volume up again and resumes her TV watching. Tika takes it the conversation is over. He walks up the stairs, opens the closed hatch and steps up into the empty exercise room.

”Hmmm..”

He steps over to his own room and opens the door. Empty, ”Uh oh..”

He hears a sound and rushes into the bathroom to see a striped form writhing under the drizzling water behind the blurry glass.

”Hey Tika, do you mind?!”

”Sorry sis.” He closes the door again and walks into Mirri’s room where his friend is sitting on the bed with his tongue sticking out his mouth in concentration and playing with a small cube. The cube has five rows on each side of it and six different colors; the object is of course to gather each color on a different side of the cube. Tika sighs and snatches the cube away. *clickclickclickclickclickclick*

”Hey.. I almost got two colors right, the blue and the--”

Tika throws the thing in the corner, colors matching on every side.

”How the hell did you do that?!?”

Tika sits down, completely indifferent to what he just did, ”I just turned the right rows. Now, what have you and Mirri been doing while I was away?”

Kesonam swallows, ”Umm.. well, after you left we started training the staff fighting thing.”

”And then?”

”And, well, I kinda accidentally smacked her across the room.”

Tika grins and nods, ”Cool.”

Suddenly a striped intruder makes his way into the room and sniffs around curiously. Kesonam smiles and rubs the tiger behind his ears, making him rumble happily. Tika frowns and pushes at the tiger’s side, ”No, Sen. Get out.”

Kesonam awwws, ”He just wants attention.”

Senajit rolls to his back and paws up at them, making the big lion laugh and rub the tiger on his belly.

”Better not do that, he might jump at you or something. I’m still not sure why he likes you so much.” Tika pushes the tiger to his paws again and shoves him out the door, ”Go on. Shoo.” He sits down again and sighs, ”Where were we? Okay, what happened after you slapped her across the room?”

Kesonam tries to delay it as much as possible, ”And then she healed herself and we kept fighting.”

”And then?”

”Uhhh.. and then she kinda accidentally landed a blow to my crotch.”

Tika winces, ”Eeegh.. she hit you?”

”I would say so, yeah.”

”And then?”

Kesonam puts a paw to his chin in thought, ”Well, I was whining of course, but she helped heal me.”

”And then?”

”And then we kissed.”

”And th--... WHAT!?!?”

Kesonam gulps and scoots a bit away from the leopard on the bed, ”I couldn’t help it. She had me pinned down.”

Tika just stares at him, jaw gaping, ”You did.. you kissed my sister!?”

Kesonam tries to think of something to say, ”Well, kinda.. it wasn’t really like a real kiss in the ordinary TV sort of sense.”

Tika exhales, ”Thank goodness..”

”More like tongue wrestling inside our mouths.”

Tika buries his face in his paws, ”Gah...”

Kesonam lays a paw around his friend’s shoulder, ”I’m sorry. I guess.. But she was really persistent. And cuddly..” He gets that dreamy look again, ”..wow...”

Tika just sits and stares into the wall. Somehow, he knew this would happen no matter what he did.

”We’re still friends, right Tika?” The lion looks at him a bit nervously.

Tika sighs deeply and forces a smile, ”Yeah, sure buddy.”

Kesonam grabs him in his powerful paws and hugs him tightly, ”Good. Wouldn’t want it any other way.”

Mirri steps in, looking incredibly happy and newly washed, ”Hey, am I interrupting anything?”

Tika lets go of his friend and shakes his head, ”No. Just being friends.”

Mirri smiles cheerfully, ”Oh, that’s good! So.. you guys wanna do something?” She sits down beside Kesonam on the opposite side of her brother and leans against him, resting her head on the lion’s shoulder.

Tika looks at her silently, his inner still in a wild turmoil, but eventually the idea that things are better this way appears in his mind and he holds onto it, ”Uh.. I dunno?”

He forces himself to keep staring at the two others as their muzzles meet in a kiss, ”Maybe we could chase mom away and watch a movie in the living room on the big TV?”

Mirri smiles and purrs softly, ”That sounds like a great idea.”

They all get up, go downstairs to chase their mom away and make her do dinner and then sit down in their beanbags, Mirri and Kesonam together in the big one of course.

At a point during the movie, Mirri looks over in the kitchen at her mom who winks back at her. Mirri smiles and cuddles closer to her mate. She has never felt this safe and warm with another fur before.

In the end, Kesonam has to go home the last day before school and all three stand in the mild evening air, waving goodbye. Mika hands the lion a small lunchbox for the trip, ”Bye now, come back anytime.”

Kesonam bows and smiles, ”Thank you very much. I will be sure to hold you to your word.”

Tika and Kesonam clap hands in their usual buddy-way, ”Take care, Kes. See ya tomorrow.” They hug each other and the lion moves on to the last one.

Mirri grabs around his neck and hugs him close to kiss him goodbye. She licks up the side of his muzzle and whispers in his ear, ”See you tomorrow, love.”

Kesonam grins and paws at her cheek, ”Yeah.. take care y’all.” And with that, he turns and walks out of the jungle, following the path back towards the city.

Mirri sighs dreamily after him and hugs herself close to her mom. Mika chuckles and hugs her daughter back, ”Looks like you got yourself a real live mate now, hmm?”

”Yeah.. isn’t he wonderful?”

Tika follows the others up again and slumps down in a beanbag. He feels like he just lost everything, but somehow they are still there and want to be his friends. The thought of perhaps getting a girlfriend for himself crosses his mind, but there is not really anything he can do about it right now.

Senajit comes up to him as he watches TV and rubs against his legs, purring happily. He sits down beside the beanbag so he can be scritched behind the ears. After a few minutes of this, he moves over to his empty food bowl, sniffs it and sadly moves back to his blanket under the stairs.

Tika looks after him, idly thinking it must really be boring sometimes to be locked inside the house all day, every day, ”Mom, can I take Sen for a walk?”

”Sure, hon. Just don’t let him wander off or anything.”

Tika moves over close to the stairs and slaps his knees to get the tiger’s attention, ”C’mere Sen, let’s go for a walk.”

Senajit rises to his paws and follows Tika curiously. They both exit the elevator and naturally Senajit tries to make a run for it first chance he gets. Tika grabs him by the scruff of his neck and growls at him, ”NO, Sen!”

The tiger bows his head and obediently pads alongside the leopard. Tika knows it is highly unlikely he will try to run off again and just relaxes his vigilance.

Tika suddenly freezes and ducks low, pointing ahead in the clearing where a small creature about the size of a hare sits quietly, ”Look Sen, a Mrawi. Think you can catch it?”

Senajit crouches a bit and very slowly stalks closer to the green-gray thing with the tail as big as it itself. Tika keeps low and quiet as Senajit does his thing. The tension builds: Senajit crouches low within range of the Mrawi, tenses his muscles and pounces at the thing with a mighty roar, claws and teeth bared and ready to rip.

The Mrawi turns its head quickly, gives off a frightened *yip* and leaps 40 feet in the air, landing on the side of a tree trunk and then leaps just as high up on the tree beside it and so forth until it disappears in the leaves above. Senajit just stares after the thing in disbelief.

Tika giggles and walks over to the tiger, ”Yeah, they’re pretty fast.” He notices the tiger’s sad expression and starts feeling bad, ”You probably feel like you can’t even hunt anymore because we keep you trapped in the house.” Tika thinks for a moment and then grabs his pet by the neckfur, ”C’mon, I know a place where some rabbits lurk around. I’m sure you can get one of those.”

Mika is preparing dinner as a droopy-eared tiger treads past the kitchen and hides under the stairs in his place. Tika comes in, looking nearly just as sad, ”Mom, Sen can’t hunt anymore. I think we must have tried hunting every animal in the jungle, but he just couldn’t get a single one. Worst of all it seems to make him very unhappy.”

Mika frowns, ”That’s not good. Maybe your father could take him out once in a while and train him a bit?”

”I think he’d have to. Sen’s really depressed about it.”

Mika nods and whips the salad, ”I’ll talk to him about it. Maybe you should try playing with him a bit more. You *have* been neglecting him a lot lately.”

Tika hmms and rubs his chin, ”I guess I have. Okay, I’ll try to keep him happy.” He runs out under the stairs and very reluctantly gets the tiger dragged out from his hiding place and upstairs to the exercise room. The first few stick throwing and rolling-on-your-back attempts fail miserably, but gradually the tiger’s mood lightens a bit and when Mirri announces dinnertime, the two are laughing, growling and wrestling around on the floor just like old times.

Tika and Senajit finish their meals first and run upstairs to play some more. Mirri finds them tumbling around and growling at each other playfully as they take turns pouncing. She just shakes her head and closes the door to her room firmly.

Eventually Tika falls on his back and exhales, ”Okay, that’s enough playing for today, Sen. What do you say we go watch TV the rest of the evening, hmm?”

Senajit sniffs his chest and licks his face.

”Great,” Tika giggles and walks into his room, closing the door and turning up the TV. He positions himself on the bed, leaning against the wall with the remote in his paw and zaps between channels, Senajit laying on the bed at a 90 degree angle from Tika with his head in the leopard’s lap and watching with interest too.

Darkness has already engulfed the jungle and left the birds silent outside except for a few nocturnal ones. Tika sits on his bed, trying to keep his eyes open and scritches soothingly behind the drowsing tiger’s ear.

Mika suddenly barges in, startling both the semi-awake furs, ”Time for bed!”

Senajit moves his head just enough for Tika to get up and fix himself in the bathroom, and he is already asleep again as Tika comes back and sits on the bed again, turning down the volume a bit so his parents will not find out he has not gone to bed yet.

Tika zaps across a nature program with tigers and Senajit suddenly seems to wake up fully, following the animals around with his head curiously. Tika smiles and lets him watch the show for a few minutes right until they start showing how they catch the wild tigers and skin the majestic felines, ”Oops.”

*zap*

Senajit looks up irritated at the leopard, ”Mmrrrrf.”

”Sorry, buddy. Can’t let you watch that.”

Tika zaps across a few more channels and half-heartedly watches an old movie, his eyelids getting heavy again. He drifts off to sleep, images of his two closest friends cuddling flowing past him. Why did they have to like each other? His thoughts are interrupted by Senajit who suddenly pushes himself up and jumps off the bed. The tiger paces around the room a few times before lying down beside the bed and curling up in his usual way. Tika watches a bit puzzled, but knows it will take a bulldozer to move the tiger once he has decided that he wants to sleep right there. The leopard sighs and wraps himself in his blanket to go to sleep as well.

A loud noise awakens Tika. He sits up in his bed and looks around the room, startled. A sort of frustrated *mraw* greets his ears and he turns on the table lamp. On the floor lies a tiger, striped with all the colors of the rainbow. The small table in the corner that Tika keeps all his spaceship models and little cans of paint on has been knocked over and apparently fallen on Senajit as the tiger must have been on his way out of the room.

The tiger stares up at his master in the way he usually does when he is not sure if he has just done something wrong. He sort of stands and waits for judgment.

Tika groans and lashes out at his pet’s head, batting him hard on the cheek, ”You clumsy tiger. Bad Sen. Bad.”

The tiger bows his head and crouches down a bit. In an attempt to make up for what he did he jumps to his hindlegs and licks up at Tika’s face, only to be met with another harder slap as the tiger just smeared paint over the leopard too.

”Aww, man!” Under different circumstances they would both actually have looked rather funny, but not at.. Tika checks the alarm clock, ”4.30am.. and school day tomorrow.” He pokes his striped friend’s side and tears a Ramalion Class-4B off his back, ”C’mon Sen, we’ll sneak out to the shower.”

The sleepy tiger follows a bit reluctantly, looking just as tired as Tika feels like. They get into the shower and turn it on as quietly as they can. Tika starts cleaning both of them thoroughly with the sponge and lots of shampoo.

Senajit is tired enough as not to complain too much about getting bathed like this and just stands still, eyes closed and ears against his head to avoid the drizzle. Tika cleans off Senajit first and then starts on himself, shoving the tiger’s head away as he tries to help by grooming, ”You’ve done enough damage, Sen. Stay.”

The tiger stays in place and waits more neatly than Tika has ever seen him do before. He does not even complain when Tika has to wash him over and over and over again. Paint for models is not supposed to come off that easily. Tika is cleaning with both eyes half-lidded and he has no idea how long this takes, but eventually when the paint is out of both their furs, and Tika has dried them both up real good, none of them have the energy to go back to sleep in their beds. They just curl up beside each other on a few towels spread on the floor in the bathroom and fall asleep exhausted the moment they close their eyes fully...

 

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