By the third day, January had accepted that he was probably going to become a crazy cat guy.
He’d been talking to the cat since he’d first seen it, and the habit had, if anything, only gotten worse once the cat became a permanent resident.
It made his house feel less lonely, as if he had someone to come back to instead of just dust and empty corners.
Every time he came home, the cat would come and greet him. Sometimes slowly, if it had been taking a nap – he would hear the thump of the cast landing on the floor from his room, and then the cat would eventually appear to blearily blink at him while he started dinner in the kitchen. Other times, though, it would already be waiting for him at the door, to get underfoot right as he stepped inside, batting at his shoelaces while he worked to take off his shoes.
Once, the cat jumped onto the kitchen table when he wasn’t looking. By the time he turned around, it was sitting next to the cup of water he’d placed there, and was clearly succumbing to instinct.
A few bats of the paw, and the water cup was right on the edge of the table.
“Hey! No! Bad!” January said, too loud, and the cat startled and jumped off the table. Its cast caught the cup as it went down, and then there were two thunks and a yowl as cat, cup, and water all splashed down on the kitchen floor.
January lunged forward and grabbed the cat, pressing it close to his chest as he carried it to the living room. He sat on the small couch and held the cat in his lap as he grabbed the nearest blanket to dry it off.
His hands were shaking.
January glared at the cat and pinned it between his legs and his left arm while he dried it with his right.
The cat was wriggling and wailing about having gotten wet, but most of the water seemed to be on its back. The cast had escaped with only a few droplets of water, which January carefully wiped off before turning his attention to its dripping fur. “That was bad,” he told it, and there was nobody human to notice that his voice wasn’t as steady as it usually was. “Bad, okay? You can’t go knocking things off counters. Especially water. Water’s bad for your cast, and it could—you could get hurt. Water would ruin it.”
