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>> "Y-you…. you…"

Cheshire clasped her hands behind her back, and leaned in right close to h-h-his face, a thoroughly delighted grin on her lips, even if it was wasted on Mr. Cover-Your-Eyes.

"Oh my gosh," she cooed. "You blush gray! Your ears blush gray! Your ears blush!"

Any potential fear she might have felt for a man two feet taller than her was washed clean away in the rising tide of his stuttering, blushing, horribly endearing display of modesty on-her-behalf. He was like one of those over-sized teddy bears she could win at a fair and the poor chump she could convince to carry it, all rolled up into one package.

>> "We should probably fetch you something more permanent, if you're going to stay... looking human for a while."

He offered up his robe like the moral future of the free world was at stake.

"Aww, Mister, I couldn't," she said, as she did. She grabbed the robe out of his hand and rolled herself up into it like diving under an especially comfy blanket. It was a gajillion sizes too big for her in every possible way. It slid down her shoulders, pooled over her hands, puddled over her feet. She tied it as tight as she could, and had enough belt left over to lasso a whale. The fabric was so thick and poshly plush, it felt like she was wearing a force field of fluff.

It was the coziest thing ever, and it was on her, it was hers, and he wasn't never getting it back. She didn't need none of them permanent clothes he was talkin' about.

Unless they were better than this.

Could clothes be better than this?

>> "Please let me know when you are, uh, decent."

She paused in the middle of swinging the belt ends while his cats watched. She stared up at his shut eyes, and grinned. "Just outta curiosity, what would you do if I didn't ever say I was? Would you just keep on standing there with your eyes closed? Even if, say, there started to be some alarming noises comin' from your kitchen?"

She tip-toed back over to his fridge as she talked, and took this opportunity to start loudly rummaging inside.

"Got any more of that chicken? I ain't had anything but a sparrow since yesterday. All the good little birdies lay low when it's stormin' out, makes it real hard for a girl to get a bite in."

The wonderful earth-smelling man talked like a book. Not one of those new books with the forbidden vampire-werewolf romance on the cover. Like an old book, like something her English teacher would say was classic.

That was the word for him. The robed man was classic. And since she was riding on his shoulder, Cheshire fancied herself classy by proximity.

It helped that he knew how to talk to a cat. More than that: he knew how to feed a cat. That chicken was normal cat food around here?

Cheshire darted down the length of his arm and grabbed the edge of the container in her teeth and rolled, hitting the floor with bare feet. Bare human feet.

The rest of her was pretty bare, too. The same black-tipped ears and tail the little cat had been sporting were still there, but the rest was suddenly somewhat lacking in the modesty of fur. Unless the lint counted.

She looked up (and up, and up). Cheshire had expected to feel a little taller in this form, but… not really. This guy was huge. Not really a problem when he was 90% softie. No one who said 'my stars' was gonna give her troubles. Still: she stood up extra tall (and a little on her tip-toes), just so he knew she wasn't gonna be intimidated by all that extra height.

"Thanks, Mister," the cat girl said, taking the food container out of her teeth, and popping a piece of chicken into her mouth using fingers with rather sharper claws that usual. "Hey, can I have one of them robes, too? Looks comfy."

She could have run away as the man started calling out. She didn't.

She could have moved to a less obvious perch, perhaps. She didn't.

She could have, perchance, interrupted the tongue-bath of her right paw. She didn't.

The tabby was yowling at her. This sort of challenge needed to be met with the greatest of distain, so as to inform the tabby of her new place in the hierarchy as swiftly and condescendingly as possible.

>> "Aren't you a pretty thing. You'll have to excuse Gertrude... she's the lady of the house."

Cheshire gave one last lick to her paw, then set it daintily down. The man was half-right and, having identified her outstanding beauty, deserved her full attention so that she might promptly correct him on his latter error. And so she looked up from her own fine self for the first time since he had entered the room—

--and continued looking up, for quite some time. My, he was a large one. Her tail half-foofed and her pupils dilated just to let him know that she could be quite large, too. But he smelled of cats (other cats), which simply would not do. Particularly not with Gertrude watching.

And so it was that the little white cat with black spots here and there stood up to meet the coming hand, and rubbing her cheeks all over it, and blissfully closed her eyes to the sound of Gertrude's protests. Ah, humans. They knew not what wargames were played around them.

…But was he human? Sniff. Sniff sniff

He smelled of the cats, of course, and now her as well. Good. Underneath, particularly on his hands, was the smell of paper and ink, the smell of turning pages in a book for so many hours that the ink begins to rub off on one's fingertips.

She bunched up her legs, and leapt to his shoulder in a cloud of scattering lint. Light little paws balanced on his satisfyingly plush robe. She rubbed her forehead against the side of his neck. A bit skinny for his size, what were his cats feeding him? Had they even bothered to put any mice on his bed? Another sniff. The smell under it all, the smell that was him, was like clay. Not quite finished clay, fired and glazed. More like green clay that had been dry for a while. Perhaps a little dusty, but still moldable.

Where she came from was hardly a question of any import. She was here now.

It was an extremely agreeable smell, and the new queen of the house took the moment to stare down at Gretrude from her lofty perch before dismissing the peon. At which point there was only one thing left to do: she twinned around behind the man's neck (giving him a proper benediction of wet lint and wetter cat fur), settled into cat-scarf mode, and licked his chin.

Hers.

It was drizzling. Drizzling on her. The audacity of the sky astounded Cheshire at times. The little white cat with black spots here and there sat under and overhang, her feet tucked under her, her tail tip twitching.

She was watching a townhouse. It had been quiet all morning, as its neighbors walked past windows and slammed car doors and carried small screaming children past windows. Either the person inside didn't have a nine-to-five job, or they weren't home.

But the cats were. The calico-spotted white had peeked out the window at her, and disappeared. Every once and a while she'd circle back and stare, and Cheshire would stare back, but it was the friendly sort of you-are-outside-I-am-inside-why-is-that-friend stare.

The tabby, now. The tabby had been sitting in the window for a half hour straight. Staring. Cheshire's soggy tail tip curled up. The tabby's fluffy dry tail swish-swished. Neither of them blinked.

Chess got to her feet, with a completely unconcerned arch of her back. Then she padded across the—ah car ah!—then she waited with regal patience for a gap in traffic, and padded across the street.

Swish-swish, went the tabby's tail. Cheshire's nose was in the air as she totally-didn't-watch.

Around the side of the townhouse, past its excellent blue doors, and over to—ah yes, her very favorites of places to break in. This was New York City: doors and windows were locked. In the bad neighborhoods, bared. But the one place no one ever had extra security?

The laundry vent.

Bat-bat-bat and there went the insect cover. She stuck her nose in the duct. Warm air, but not too warm. And more importantly, no rattling breeze of a drier still running. From out the duck wafted the lovely smell of warm foofy clothes that hadn't yet been graced with a layer of her fur.

Well. Time to fix that.

Shift, and the vent was an easier fit for a mouse, and her brain made the flip to his brain. His claws clicked along the aluminum. He slid down the little curve of the anti-rain drop, and skittering down the darkness until his whiskers touched the metal grate separating the duct from the main drum. Oh foofy clothes inside, how he longed to roll in you. But alas, the mess was too thin. Which left…

Sneeze

…The lint trap. An easy enough thing for a mouse to climb and wiggle out of, but goodness did he get dirty. Annnd this was a cat household, so shift back immediately.

And that is how the little white cat with black spots here and there ended up on top of the drier, with what felt like a half-pound of lint stuck to her soggy fur, being yowled at by a tabby as the calico-spotted cat ran back and forth in the room outside.

Scritching: satisfactory.

Speech: meritorious only of unblinking cat eyes.

"Don't you dare not make excuses for yourself." Thus ordered the cop who was a cat who had broken into her apartment and was now sitting on her table. "And don't you tell me who to hate, either. I hate being told who to hate."

He chased after her fingers when they moved, cat paws and cat body and cat tail indiscriminately entering table space irregardless of objects already occupying.

There were zero hisses or scratches, but the weather man predicted a high chance of imminent flower vase on her floor.

This was supposed to be less awkward as a cat. That was the whole point of coming as a cat instead of showing up with scuffing feet on her doorstep. The cat lay still and stared up at the vase that he really hope her hands were solid enough to not drop on his head, and refused—on principle—to let this be awkward. Cats were never out of their element, other people just weren't excepting their reality to a satisfactory degree. Such people needed correcting.

The ginger tom sat up, directly in front of her hastily acquired chair. He curled his tail around his paws. He yawned, exposing delicate teeth and a fair showing of tonsils.

“Ghost,” the feline rejoined. “My left ear is unsatisfactorily itchy, and Cafas is a cheating bastard who, upon reflection, I do not hold you accountable for.”

He had not quite meant to say that last. But as a cat means everything it says, he demonstrated his unconcern with a head butt to her arm, his whiskers flicking to free themselves of trailing flowers. The aforementioned ear twitched its demand.