18+ONLY

"It's soaked,” you protest without looking back at him.

"It lives outside, it’s used to it."

"It's a kitten, Si," you complain.

"Kittens live outside too."

You extend a careful hand under the car and the screaming stops, which you choose to interpret as encouragement. "Hi," you say sweetly to the curled-up-black-mass. "Hello. You are very loud, did you know?"

You stretch out your index finger to gently pet it’s cheek and the kitten bites you — not hard — just a test bite, checking if your finger is food, probably. Then just as quickly, it stalks out from under the car and you learn he’s orange, drenched and too skinny for your liking.

It walks directly past your outstretched hand to sit beneath Simon, right in the space between his bulky boots, its probably ten weeks or so. 

"No," Simon says to the cat.

The cat looks up at him and screams again.

“We can’t leave him in the rain. He’s so skinny, Si. Look at him, let’s at least feed him. We just bought plenty tuna.”

“Yeah, and it’s for me,” he grumbles. 

——

You do everything on your own that first night while Simon remains at a distance with his arms crossed, providing pessimistic commentary.

"Cats are unpredictable," he says while you dry between the kitten's ears.

"Uh-huh."

"Carry fleas. Tha’ one's got fleas, guarantee it."

"He's been rained on for days, the fleas have drowned," you turn the kitten over and start to dry his belly, finding confirmation there that he is, in fact, a boy.

"They scratch furniture," he continues later from the sofa while you crank open a can of tuna in the kitchen. "Piss in shoes, bring in dead things," he lists. "We’re not keepin’ this cat."

"Nobody said we were," you sing-song through the doorway, scratching at the kitten's chin, cooing at him where he’s sat on the countertop. 

"Puttin’ it on the record, s’all.”

The kitten eats some tuna from your hand and drinks some water out of the saucer you place on the floor. After, he ignores the box you lined with blankets completely, and opts to fall asleep in the middle of the living room floor, just in front of Simon’s socked feet. 

——

In the morning you make a list — litter, cat food, flea treatment to ease Simon’s mind — and leave the two of them alone together. 

——

The kitten follows him around immediately and everywhere, at a peppy rolling trot. The kitchen, down the hallway, he shuts the bathroom door just to find a paw under it seconds later, sweeping side to side.

When he comes out the kitten falls in at his heel again.

"You've got the whole flat," Simon tells him.

The kitten looks up at him, wide-eyed, and says nothing, which is somehow worse than the screaming, Simon thinks. 

He starts the kettle on the stove and the kitten jumps — scrabbles, mostly, all back legs — onto the counter and sits down next to him.

"No," Simon says. "Off."

The kitten stares at him.

"Y’not meant to be up here, mate. Counters are for food."

Simon picks him up one-handed and sets him on the floor.

The kitten is back on the counter before the kettle boils. Simon sets him down again.

By the third try, the kitten nearly sticks the landing, wobbles, and headbutts Simon's forearm, and Simon stands there and has a quiet think.

"Well,” he slides the kitten away with his hand. “Not near the hob, then," he decides. "Gotta draw the line somewhere, yeah?"

By the time your home, they're both in the front room — Simon on the sofa, the kitten on the armrest, both facing the telly. 

"Checked. Shelter’s open Monday," he says before you've even got your shoes off. 

You look at the bag of litter in your arms, then at the cat right at Simon's side.

"Right," you say, rolling your eyes. "Monday."

——

To your surprise, Monday comes and goes without a complaint. When you return from work and find the two of them on the couch again, you choose very deliberately not to ask. 

Tuesday there's a proper bowl on the floor in the kitchen, stainless steel and weighted, because ‘the saucer kept sliding’.

Wednesday you come home to a litter box with a hood on it, tucked behind the bathroom door.

Thursday it's a scratching post — sisal, with a platform bed on top — and a small mouse toy, already disemboweled in the hallway.

You… did not buy any of it. 

The kitten has started to become a resident. He has routines now: he sits in the counter's approved quadrant while Simon cooks, supervising. He does laps of the flat at three AM like a lunatic and sleeps until ten like the king of this place. 

Two weeks later, he is, visibly, day by day, less kitten and more cat.

You're both on the sofa, your feet in Simon's lap, nose in a book, some film on in the background that you’re not sure Simon is even half-watching because there is an awful lot of shifting going on behind your novel. Then a small rhythmic thump against your ankle. Then another. 

Thump. Thump-thump. ThumpThumpThump. 

You lower the book.

Simon has pulled the string of his hoodie out to dangle over the armrest, swinging it side-to-side, round-and-round, and the cat is up on his back legs boxing at it, every lunge sending an orange ball airborne, ricocheting off your shins.

“Really?” you ask fondly.

“‘e started it,” Simon says, eyes still on the cat.

He flicks the string and the cat leaps, misses, and slides halfway down the armrest with a scrabble; Simon catches him around the middle with one hand and sets him back up top.

The kitten catches the string at last — teeth and claws sunk in, back feet kicking, growling at it like prey. Simon lets him keep it, the corner of his mouth tugging sideways, satisfied; charmed, even.

You watch them over the top of your book — your enormous, cat-hating man, losing a tug-of-war to one.

“Should probably name him,” you try, hiding your grin, pushing your feet under his thighs.

“Been callin’ ‘im Nigel,” he says, not looking over. “Decided that’s what ‘e wants t’be called.”

You sit up so fast you lose your page. You furrow your brows. “Nigel?!” you complain. “We’re not calling him Nigel!”

“S’too late, love,” he grins down at Nigel. “Look at ‘im and tell me tha’ s’not a Nigel.” He nudges his foot under the cat and he climbs up his leg right away, as if the trick has been practiced.

The pair turn and look at you at the same time, heads tilted exactly the same.

You tilt yours back, the corner of your mouth twitching up.