Fully absorbed in the task of examining his domain, sat he.
At first, he did not much care for the pungently sweet odor hanging in the air, but once he got used to it, it was no big deal.
He fancied taking a lap around his territory.
No enemies in sight.
He looked up at the door he’d departed from. Though to him illegible, it read: “GARICH DREUR HAÏDER, CASTLE OF THE LITTLEST NOBLE IN THE EMPIRE.” It was the Manor of the Count of Hyde.
He sat in a well-behaved fashion, and urged for the door to be opened for him. He had been sleepy for a good while.
Yet no sign came of the door’s imminent opening.
Several times he prompted for it to be opened. At last, he resorted to growling in protest. But it opened not. It appeared the housemate was away from home.
With nothing else he could do, he decided to once again commence patrolling the lay of the land. He had discovered a handful of lovely crevices. Surely he could simply enjoy a nice nap nestling into one of them.
With his short fur, solid and sturdy limbs and torso, largish head, and relatively round face, he was the picture of a pedigreed and honorable Abh cat.
One characteristic of so-called Abh cats was the variety of colors and patterns they came in. The Abh language of Baronh had many a word for feline fur patterns. He was a ctilüarh, a “striped.” That is to say, he was base-brown, with dark stripes all over.
While his mother had sported a fetching stump-tail, his father hadn’t, so his own tail was long. Tail standing upright, he began ambling forward, his gait exuding the calm poise of a galactic overlord.
It had only been 1,500 years since his breed had been dubbed deucec, or “Abh cat.” His lineage traced its ancestry to the housecats that lived on a certain arch-shaped archipelago on Earth.
When the humans set off for the sea of stars, they brought along his ancestors as a matter of course, and so they settled on more planets than one.
On one such planet, they crossed paths with the artificially engineered bio-droids with blue hair and frocragh spatiosensory perception — the Abh.
In some ways, that fateful encounter was actually a reunion. After all, the humans who had made the Abh also hailed from the selfsame archipelago the cats did.
A few dozen cats had been handed to the Abh, who, at that time, were flying through space on an enormous city-ship. The largest interstellar vessel ever built by human hands, it proved to be nothing less than the ideal hunting ground to their feline friends, for rats and mice had long ago been allowed to come aboard.
Of course, the Abh had had methods of thoroughly exterminating pests and vermin on hand already. The most often used means was to evacuate the humans before sucking the air out. However, though it was the simplest way to do it, it was also the most over-the-top, and came with its fair share of risks. Moreover, no matter how many times they implemented this solution, more would sneak their way in every time they engaged in exchange with a landworld. It didn’t take long at all for the Abh to conclude that letting their cats follow their instincts constituted the most elegant measure to keep the numbers of unwanted stowaways down.
Even in this current age, long since the Abh obtained faster-than-light travel and constructed a mighty interstellar empire, their feline fellowship continued unwavering. Abhs even purposefully set prey rodents loose upon building new structures to dispel their cats’ boredom, (though obviously not every time).
The Abh did keep other animals, but these little carnivores were the Abh’s favorite pet. Their most appreciated and welcomed trait was how they maintained a certain distance from their owners.
Naturally, cats themselves had no concept of “owners.” To him, the human who lived and slept in his room was his housemate, and nothing more...
He did rather enjoy his housemate’s company.
The housemate did, at times, forget to prepare his meals — that much was true. Defending the realm from hostile outside forces was his end of the bargain; the housemate’s was fixing the food. Yet he was a magnanimous malkin, and quite capable of overlooking such shortcomings.
There was another act of his housemate’s, however, that he could not abide by. The fiendish act of sudsing-up his beautiful coat with bubbles, and then to top it all off, dumping tepid water over him. That alone he was not magnanimous enough to forgive.
Regardless, he found he could be at ease when his housemate was around. His throat felt good when the human stroked it.
Furthermore, he’d become able to sniff out whenever the housemate was plotting soon to spring the vile sudsy act of villainy, so in that small way his life had taken a turn for the even pleasanter. When he was serious about keeping himself concealed, the housemate’s sluggish arm could never, ever take hold of him.
The alluring crevice held its mouth open in invitation. It was just the sort of gap that could be hiding a mouse or two.
In one refined motion, he leapt at the hole, and crawled through the narrow opening. In the wide space he found himself in, (or at least, wide in the eyes of a cat), there were no mice.
There was instead, one human, seated in a chair at the room’s center. It wasn’t the housemate, but for some reason it smelled familiar. He purred and rubbed himself against its legs.
“Dyaho.” He understood, albeit dimly, that this specific mash of sounds humans uttered seemed to be his name.
Out of the blue, he was picked up by the scruff. Memories rushed back to him of his time as a kitten carried by his mother, and his limbs drooped languidly down.
“It’s been three years, yet I see you still haven’t a stoic bone in your body.” The human peered at his face. He had a vague sense he’d been insulted somehow, but Dyaho cared little. Once he was curled in its lap, he felt the pull of his drowsiness return, and his eyes closed.
After a while of nearly drifting off, the human who was offering him its lap spoke again, and so Dyaho’s ears pricked up. “Jint, your cat is here.”
“Jint” was his housemate’s name. Dyaho looked up, and confirmed that that human standing there was his housemate.
“Ah, my bad. Little guy been annoying you?” he spoke.
“It’s no matter; my shift is rather uneventful,” responded the human named Lafier despondently. “I must say, however, that I’m shocked by your lack of sense. We’re about to head into the battlefield. Wouldn’t it be cruel to bring the cat?”
“It’ll be fine. When all of the crew abandons ship, I’ll be responsible and take him with me.”
“Must you say such foreboding things?” said Lafier, her tone barbed. “Besides, that’s not what I’m saying. It’s just that he has no romantic prospects here, nor mice to hunt. That’s why I’d feel sorry for him.”
“What else can I do? My starpilot quarters on this assault ship named the Basrogrh (“BAHSROYR”) is the only ‘house’ I’ve got.”
“You’d need to give it to somebody to look after for the time being.”
“It’s not against military regulations, is it?”
“Only because no one with sense would do such a thing,” said Lafier sharply. “The atmosphere aboard ship would turn more... lax.”
“Well, I hear Abhs used to take their kids onto battleships.”
“That was during a time when there was no line dividing battle from everyday life,” said Lafier. “But that was then, and this is now... At least, for now.”
“All right, all right. I’ll drop Dyaho off in Lacmhacarh when I get the chance. Only, I can’t think of a place to leave him. All of my quartermaster academy buddies are on the warfront.”
“If you’re counting on my royal palace, why don’t you come out and say it?” Lafier teased.
“You’re a life saver. I totally was counting on you.”
The topic of their conversation was picked up by the scruff once more. His rest perturbed, he issued a light moan in objection.
“C’mon, Dyaho,” said the housemate, holding him to his chest.
Dyaho didn’t understand the first thing about this tendency of his housemate’s. A rational being would only say the words “come on” if they expected the addressee to do so of their own accord. Yet the human had vocalized that sentiment only after scooping him up, an action that took no account of his will.
“Looks like your aunt doesn’t want your company,” said Jint, striking up a conversation (with whom, he knew not, for it clearly wasn’t aimed toward him).
“Stupid,” pouted Lafier at Jint’s little dig.
Though Dyaho was unaware, both he and Lafier were born in the same orbital mansion, the Royal Palace of Clybh. Dyaho’s lineage had lived there since his grandmother, Horia’s, time.
When Lafier was very young, she’d once been made to believe that her genetic mother was Horia, the cat. The lie was her father’s doing — a silly little fib, he claimed — but she had been young enough to believe it, and the resultant trauma was no small affair. Of course, if Horia really were her mother, that would make Dyaho her nephew.
“You’ll be returning home after three whole years, Dyaho. You psyched, or what?” said the housemate.
But Dyaho had no recollection of the Royal Palace of Clybh. He was familiar only with the student dormitory of the quartermaster academy he and his housemate had lived in, and he remembered its every nook and cranny.
That being said, any place was fine by him, so long as there were lovely little holes to explore. And if his new home housed chubby rats, all the grander.
Dyaho nodded off to sleep in the housemate’s arms, and dreamt dreams of bustling droves of mice.