#scfic

“I think it would be… messy. And loud. And…”

And something shaggy and black and white, maybe a Husky or a Border Collie, was lying on its back while Patrick laughed and rubbed its belly. It pawed the air in delight.

David cleared his throat.

“Besides,” he finished. “We don’t have room for it in the apartment.”

“It doesn’t have to be a dog, you know,” Stevie pointed out. “Me, I’m thinking about getting a lizard. Or maybe a ferret. Like old Felix here.”

She swung her arm around, revealing a mouse-brown ferret with a white bandit mark across its eyes, wrapped around her arm quite contentedly. David yelped.

“Oh, God! Why??” Eye twitching, he reined himself in. They had customers to think of after all – not that most of them didn’t already know of his lack of affinity for animals by now. Most of them found it funnier than he cared for, to be honest. Still, he pulled out of the dive. “Why- why- why is Felix, um, here?”

“Because I wanted to try out these little hats,” Stevie said, plucking a tiny green-and-red elf hat from the table and arranging it on Felix’s head. He sat up, attentive, almost appearing to clap his hands. If he didn’t have such a rat-like face, it almost would have been cute. And dare he say it, David had an idea to make it even cuter.

“… We also have matching scarves.”

Resigned to his fate, and to sacrificing himself for the art, David picked a green one from the selection and pressed the stud so that it sit comfortably around the ferret’s neck. Felix wrapped a tiny hand around his finger in return.

“Aww,” Stevie said. “He likes you.”

“That’s nice,” David replied, withdrawing his finger with a half-hearted glare. He had intended to be sarcastic but actually, it did feel kind of nice - there was a reason after all, he supposed, that humans had domesticated animals for the last few thousand odd years. Why people then proceeded to abandon the little monsters in droves, he would never understand.

(Maybe he would have, not so long ago. But he tried not to think too hard about that.)

Instead, he focused on doing the best he could for the store. He peddled the dog treats, and cat treats, little booties and hats, collars, toys; everything. He encouraged people to take photos, tag them on Instagram, buy gifts for friends, and of course donate to the shelter. A handful of times, Patrick offered to cover, but since that meant David helping out at the shelter drive as his replacement, David declined. Besides, they were doing well, but it wasn’t like things were flying off the shelf. He got plenty of downtime.

Plenty of downtime to think.

Plenty of downtime to think about the apartment, the budget, the hints that Patrick had been dropping. The shop in Prague, whose resident cat Luna had once got him to buy what remained to this day his favourite mug. Maybe it wouldn’t be all bad.

(Maybe he was already vision-boarding outdoor sun-boxes and cat runs and reading about something called ‘cat mint’. But he wasn’t going to tell Stevie about that.)

Still, by the time the day’s festivities were winding up, David was in a much more pensive state of mind. He packed up their remaining supplies (there weren’t many; as always, he’d planned well) and wandered over to the shelter’s pens to wait for Patrick. Ted was there, explaining some flea drops to Twyla while Alexis made kissy faces at her friend’s new ginger cat. That, David told himself, is what caused him to wander over to the feline side of the selection.

Most of the pens had been cleared out by this point, and most of what were left were the older cats, the scarred ones, the ugly breeds or sickly-looking ones. David frowned; it was, he supposed, to be expected, but somehow if anything, that made it even more sad. His eyes caught the bright yellow ones of a black cat at the end of the aisle. There were a few of those left, too. This one had a scar on his shoulder, a bit of knotted fur where it was healing, but otherwise he was quite a handsome devil. Even if his gaze was a little too insightful for comfort, it kept David’s attention so thoroughly he didn’t in the slightest notice Ted sneak up.

“Hey, bud. How’s things?”

“Uh, good,” David replied, stammering to keep from jumping near out of his skin. He straightened up from his cat-examination angle, and found that a question seemed poised on his lips.

“I see you’ve meet Maccabee,” Ted pointed out, and bent over himself to greet the cat and pull him out for a cuddle, before turning his attention back to David. “He’s been in rescue for a year this Christmas. It’s sad, really; black cats are already least rescued because of some superstition, and with his scar and FIV on top of that –“

“What’s FIV?”

“It’s… like HIV. For cats.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Ted took a deep breath, and sighed it out. “He’s asymptomatic at the moment, but it still means he can’t live with other cats, or go outside where might run into them and get himself into trouble. It’s kinda limiting. Which sucks, ‘cause he’s a sweet little guy now that he’s had his testosterone – you know, permanently lowered - and some people won’t even pet him once they find out.”

Try as he might, Ted couldn’t hold back a little smile at David, who had already offered a knuckle for Maccabee to sniff and couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the little man. It took a solid few seconds for David to notice that Ted had stopped talking, and what he was doing, at which point he dropped his hand and cleared his throat.

“That’s, um. That’s a bummer.”

“It is. Especially because, you know, people can’t get it from cats.”

“Like, not at all? Are you sure?”

Somehow, David’s hand had found Maccabee again, and was scratching absently at the back of his neck. He watched for Ted’s answers closely, apparently unaware of what his fingers were doing.

“Not even if he bit your whole hand off,” Ted swore. “Certainly not if he… I don’t know. Sat in the same room or maybe, rubbed past some clothes…”

Something deep inside David was thinking, as Patrick jogged up the aisle to greet them. He saw who Ted was holding, and pouted.

“Mac’s still here, huh?”

“Yeah,” Ted sighs.

“And David- David, is here?” Patrick didn’t mean to sound so surprised, let alone hopeful, but he had been dropping an awful lot of hints that he was interested in getting a pet. He’d just assumed David hadn’t been picking up on them, or had misinterpreted them as the idea to come here. Either way, it seemed he had a foot in the door, if he trod lightly.

“Can I hold him?” Patrick asked Ted.

“Sure,” Ted agreed, passing him over. “I’ve gotta start crating the others anyway. Just bring him down the front when you’re done.”

As Ted walked away, David frowned.

“I thought you said you were allergic to cats?” he wondered.

“They make meds for that, David,” Patrick assured him, and cooed at Maccabee, letting the cat rub his face into his hand and paw at his shoulder.

“Okay.” David nodded and, more conscious of what he was doing this time, resumed scratching Maccabee between the shoulder blades and around the back of the neck. It seemed his mind had been made up for him – especially as he started to feel the tiny sputtering rumbles of a hesitant purr beneath the coarse black coat.

“Hey, Patrick?” David began again.

“Yes, David.”

“Did you know that Maccabee is the name of the group of Jewish warriors who took back the temple from Antiochus and lit the oil that started Hanukkah?”

Patrick blinked in surprise. “I kinda assumed it was something biblical but no, I didn’t know that.”

“So you didn’t set me up to meet this cat a week out from Hanukkah?”

“No.”

“And you didn’t name him Maccabee?”

“David. I met him this morning.”

“So you haven’t been conspiring for me to get you a furry four-legged friend these last few months.”

“Well…“

“And you didn’t bring Stevie, Ted, and/or Alexis in on this little gambit.”

“I wouldn’t say I brought them in. But yes. I think it would be nice to have a pet! I always had a dog growing up and Rachel had a cat – I miss being around them. And these little guys, they need a home. Mac needs a home, David.”

He lifted Maccabee’s face beside his own, glowing yellow eyes and pleading blue making a point together. Now that David thought about it, maybe they should add some kippot to their holiday hat collection.

“Come on,” Patrick continued. “You said it yourself, it’s basically fate – it’s divine intervention-“

“It’s a fundraiser set up for the sole purpose of helping the shelter adopt out animals,” David corrected. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

But the thought of putting Maccabee back in that sad little cage at this point and walking away was almost too much to bear. The thought of him sitting on the shop counter by Patrick as he worked the books, or batting him away from the menorah and the tinsel, or waking up to him on the end of their little bed – now that, David thought, suddenly felt like it had always been part of this little world he’d envisioned for himself.

And judging by the look on Patrick’s face, Patrick was envisioning something very much the same.

David took a deep breath, pretending to be much more laboured about the decision than he now was; he had a reputation to maintain, after all.

“You promise to clean up his poop?”

“I promise,” Patrick vowed.

“And you promise the allergy thing won’t bug you?”

“Literally got antihistamines in my bag.”

“Then I think we should do it,” David announced. “I think we should bring Maccabee home.”

“Really?” Patrick’s eyes lit up, and he held Maccabee a little tighter to stop from shifting him too much in his excitement. “Great!”

He bounded back up the front of the shelter stands, David following behind with the patient long-suffering smile for once. Ted was waiting at the back of his truck, one last crate awaiting, register and kitty (pun, as always, intended) long since packed away. His smile told David and Patrick he already knew exactly what had transpired, and he handed the spare crate and a manila folder over to David.

“That’s his welcome package – medical records, FIV info, council registration, stuff like that. Take a look, and if you have any questions, you know where to find me.”

“How much-“

Ted shrugged and waved them off.

“All sorted,” he said. “Happy Hanukk-cat, David. Merry Catmas.”

“Thanks,” “Thank you,” David and Patrick replied – and then Patrick added for good measure –

“And a Happy Meow Year.”

They could hear Alexis groan from the front seat of the truck. Ted laughed and joined her, calling as he went –