The child felt dejected. Calley was afraid of her. He wouldn't even let her scratch his ears.

>>"Blow up that towel, please.”

"Uh... sure." There was very little certainty in her voice. Kaitlyn sat cross-legged, as if meditating, and stared at the towel in her hand.

...What do I do now?

Maybe if she stared at it really hard, it would blow up. That just might work. The girl held on to the towel as tight as she could until her knuckles went white. Her eyebrows were as furrowed as they could possibly be. Her eyes focused on the same spot on the towel for the whole time. She blinked only rarely.

>>"2 people"

The girl looked up from her towel to find... somebody writing notes and muttering to herself. She looked up from her towel to stare.

>>"Felis silvestris catus is not a cat but family of a cat. Cat's have a family. Hi Calley, Hi Kaitlyn, have a nice day."

Kaitlyn returned the wave with a sheepish one of her own, not saying anything until the strange girl had left the laundry room. "Who was that?" she whispered to Calley, inching her way to his hiding spot behind the washing machine. "How did she know my name?"

Dark blue cat eyes watched as the girl entered. Dark blue cat eyes watched as the girl left. Dark blue cat eyes were connected, down the length of a ginger-stripped back, to a tail that twitch, twitched.

>> "Who was that? How did she know my name?"

“That,” the cat said, its voice somewhat muffled as it crossed behind the washer, “was a Homo superior, of the Erratic lunaticus variety.” His whiskers emerged from the far side of the drier, again at a comfortable distance from the creeping child of the Erratic explodus variety.

“You did not explode anything when she appeared. Wasn’t that ‘surprising’?” He inquired, paws creeping around the edge to cordially invite a lint ball to play.

"What's a Homo superior?" The girl asked, "I thought that all of us were Homo Sapiens." She remembered this much from her science classes. Humans like herself and Calley were Homo Sapiens, or at least this is what she had been lead to believe.

>>“You did not explode anything when she appeared. Wasn’t that ‘surprising’?”

Kaitlyn considered this in silence.

"I guess," the kid said eventually, peeking into the crack between the wall and the laundry machines where the cat-person-mutant was hiding, "But... I think it was more confusing. I still don't know how she knew my name."

>> "What's a Homo superior? I thought that all of us were Homo Sapiens."

The cat deigned to give her such a polite look, such a thoughtful gaze of benevolent understanding, that his gracious nature could not be in doubt. “You are a Homo Superior. I,” he reminded her, with the fond sort of gentleness most effective with lesser beings, “am a Felis silvestris catus.”

Her forgetfulness was not only forgiven, it needs must be forgiven: she was only a biped, after all. And a biped naturally inclined towards brawns over brains, if her mutation was an early indication.

>> "I guess.”

Her head neared: the cat, by its own coincidental volition, drew back out of sight amidst a tangle of electric cords leading to an unseen outlet.

>> “But... I think it was more confusing. I still don't know how she knew my name."

His voice came from atop the washer; his new throne. His tail swished behind the machine as his paws perched regally above the water capacity knob. “The nature of reality,” he calmly stated, “is, on occasion, best left unquestioned.” The girl was some kind of psychic, was his personal guess. Some kind of odd, note-taking psychic. At least she had gotten his title right. That, perhaps, put her into the feline’s good graces.

Under him, the washer gave a last raucous rattle, and crashed to a stop.

Beeeeeep, it pleasantly announced.

“Move these items into the drier, please,” the cat politely commanded. “After that, turn around, and close your eyes. While holding the towel still, please.”

>>“You are a Homo Superior. I am a Felis silvestris catus."

"...Oh." Kaitlyn gave the cat a quizzical look. He didn't answer her question; she still didn't know what a

>>“The nature of reality is, on occasion, best left unquestioned.”

There's a weird answer. It wasn't really an anwer, though, was it? He could have just said 'I dunno,' or something along those lines if he didn't know. The cat could have even shared a theory with her. Such as, 'she's a mutant.' That would be a good example of--

...Oh. She's a mutant. Duh. Maybe that's his nice way of telling me not to ask stupid questions.

The girl did as she was told in silence. When the clothes had all been transplanted from one machine to the other, the child took several paces away from the washing machines and turned around, one hand covering her closed eyes while the other held onto the towel.

The cat watched as she switched the clothing from washer to drier; there was a familiarity there that spoke of regular practice. Then she turned around, and closed her eyes. She really, truly did.

She was a most suggestible biped.

The cat quietly stepped down from his thin machine-back perch onto the main surface of the machine. He settled his paws under himself, just so. Then, with nary a word of warning, he drew in a respectable breath, and shifted to a stripped cat somewhat larger. She seemed to be having trouble harnessing her mutation’s trigger: he only aimed to help.

A tiger’s growl in a laundry room is, some would say, surprising.

Let it be known that a laundry drying machine can operate even if placed on its side. Such dryer operation is not recommended, however, as it tends to make unpleasant noises. The dryer which contained Calley's clothing was almost bouncing around on the tile floor, and the resulting noise would be enough to drive anyone crazy. It's better to keep one's dryer upright, if at all possible.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

With her vision of the cat successfully obscured, Kaitlyn had begun to think. Why, exactly, did she need to turn her back to him? What was he doing? Transforming into a human, perhaps?

It would actually be kinda cool to see a cat turn into a person. I would wanna show people that, if I could do it. Unless... well, cats don't wear clothes... and... okay I'm just not gonna look. I'll just stay here and keep my eyes shut, and I won't look beh

This uncomfortable train of thought was suddenly derailed.

Kaitlyn spent a moment contemplating the displaced drying unit. Nobody had even turned it on. Maybe the blast had broken it, knocked it into an endless cycle. The dial even said "off." They'd have to unplug it or something to make it stop. More problematic was the washer; something disconnected somewhere, and now the water was spreading .

Abnormal laundry machines were much more pleasant to think about than, say, the undetonated towel that remained in her grasp. Or the laundry room's extensive, unscheduled redecoration. Or a certain scary man-eating tiger who probably wouldn't be happy about any of this.

The tiger. Was not very happy. About any of this.

One of its paws twitched. Its stripes absorbed water from the growing puddle. The clattering racket of the overturned drier made its head pound, pound—

She’d pounded him into the wall. That was not very nice at all.

“Apparently,” the large cat rasped, as it slowly (carefully, with deliberate, non-startling movements), “you were correct about your trigger. I must, however, politely disagree with you theory that holding an item results in a small boom.” Had he placed too much emphasis on ‘small’? Perhaps. Was that surprising? Given the situation, he certainly thought not.

People were beginning to gather in the hall, now, drawn by the heatless explosion and the death throes of the machines. The tiger began edging towards them, one soggy paw at a time.

The tiger was talking. Comments about how her power did and didn't work.

The pieces fell together: Calley had scared her on purpose. He wanted for her to blow stuff up. He just wasn't expecting that "stuff" to be everything in the laundry room, including him. It would have been okay if she had just blown up the towel, like he was expecting and she said would happen. That would have been fine. This wouldn't have happened.

"Sorry," the girl said, watching the wounded, soggy tiger as he walked away. She tried not to pay attention to the vocabulary-expanding grumblings and exclamations of the rubberneckers in the hallway.