MARZ Saga - 3 joins the household

Reg occasionally had lucid moments. This was not one of them. He'd been settling out of driving mindset for the last 11 minutes into... not much more than a vague semi-awareness. There was something he was missing, something related to the murmur and movement that usually occurred in this place.

People, the other voice offered.

Reg failed to comprehend. He wondered if it were important.

Hmm, probably not. Work is important. Check your work folder for what has to be done.

Reg opened the folder on the near, right-hand corner of his desk. The diagram, with all of the project's components carefully sketched in place, filled him with a comforting familiarity. The project itself sat half-finished one story below. He would go to it and work in the cold comfort of tools and metal.

Reg was only peripherally aware at first of something small and black darting under the sofa. When he checked again 33 seconds later, it was still there. And he felt some odd attraction to it. It smelled frightened and needy and warm. It was the warmth that appealed to him... warmth had something to do with the thing he thought he might have forgotten. He shut off the light and closed and locked the door, and then sat in the chair across from the sofa.

Just stay still, the other voice instructed him. Just wait.

So he waited. He waited in the semi-darkness, in the room with the dusty carpet smell and the gentle whrrr of electric current coursing through cables in the walls, that was occasionally drowned out by tapping and movement from directly outside the office door. The warm thing waited too, unmoving... then moving... the fear was still there but the need outweighed it. It came to Reg's feet, but Reg continued to wait. It came to Reg's lap, and Reg reached out his hands to touch it, like he used to do immeasurably long ago, when he was as young as the other voice.

It was warm and soft and its mass pressed against him and twisted and shifted. He ran his hand along the grain of its back, noting each individual hair. It reached up and touched his face and it was warm and cold simultaneously. And then it was still, except for the internal rhythm emanating from it into Reg, and a second, audible rhythm originating from a spot in its throat.

Connor was ready to leave. Zephyr headed back to his office to grab the necessary paperwork, and discovered Shauna and Mariluz hovering and shouting outside his closed door.

"Hey, what's going on?"

"The cat's in your office, Zephyr."

"And Reg, he lock the door."

Zephyr took a minute to digest this information. "You're saying that Reg locked himself in the office with the cat?"

"I believe so, yeah."

"Well, he must have had a good reason. Excuse me, ladies, I need to get in there."

"May I enter and get Lucita back?" Shauna asked uncertainly.

"Um..." He was inclined to say yes, but something in him encouraged him to check out the situation first. That something was probably born from plenty of experiences with Reg's unpredictability. Sometimes one simply had to tread carefully.

He unlocked the door and eased it open. The lights were off and Reg sat in the easy chair, perfectly still, which in itself wasn't that unusual.

"Reg," Zephyr whispered. "Everything all right?"

Reg didn't answer, but his hand moved, which Zephyr took as a sign that he was still alive. Then he noticed that the cat was under said hand. How cute, Zephyr thought. If he'd had a camera and a moment to spare, he'd take a picture. Instead, he tucked the case folder under his arm and turned to leave again.

"Have fun, man," he whispered, and locked the door behind him. And to the anxious women, he said, "Leave them alone. They're fine. Time to get some work done."

Its fear reached inside Reg and gradually dissipated. Reg opened himself up to it, and it accepted and approved. It... she... had been overwhelmed by the confusion and the sheer bigness of the world. She didn't understand or like the loud, volatile beings that had surrounded her. It hadn't always been like that... at the beginning of time, there was a great Mother and she was third of a group of small equals, and the world was pleasantly warm and dark and small. At first she gradually became aware of more and more in the world, and it was curious and fun. She had liked discovering things. But then the new bigness spiralled out of control. She craved sameness and stillness. Reg sympathized deeply. He often felt the same way.

He called her 3 and she called him safe.

Two hours, four minutes, and 27.12 seconds they sat in stillness together, one resting on the other's lap. Then the door opened and light poured in and along with it noise and stress and apprehension. 3 tensed in fear and leaped away as something large came close... there was screeching and 3's once-calm rhythm increased maddeningly. Then Reg couldn't find her anymore. The noise ended... he still smelled fear, and discovered that it was his own.

I lost 3, he informed the other voice.

Slow down. You have too much energy buildup.

I lost 3!

I know. Stay calm and we will find her. Stay calm. Keep your energy down, or I'll have to start shutting things down.

I had her and we were together and... I don't...

I'm going to have to divert some energy. Hang on.

There was a deep, steady noise, like a shout, from somewhere around him. Or in him. There was movement and it was his own. There was someone...

It's Zephyr.

Zephyr was good. It was good that Zephyr was there. He felt Zephyr's hands on him, felt the familiar, slightly irregular rhythm, felt himself being guided downward and let Zephyr guide him into the chair. Then Zephyr was talking to him. 3, he thought. 3. 3. 3.

"What's 3? Reg, what are you talking about?"

Cat, the other voice offered.

Cat.

"Ohhhh. Wait right here, man. I'll be right back."

Reg was tired.

****

Zephyr turned to leave, and there was Shauna directly outside the office door. How convenient, he thought.

"Do you have the cat?" he asked her.

Shauna blinked at him. "Well, yeah. Mariluz gave her to me. She didn't get along with the kids, so I offered to take her."

Damn, Shauna was hard to intimidate. "I want it. Give it to me."

"Excuse me?"

"Reg wants to keep the cat. How much do you want for it?"

"Zephyr, she's not a toy or an object. She's a living thing. You can't just give it to him because he's throwing a temper tantrum."

"I know that! And you should know that under that uncomprehensible facade, Reg is a human being! A perfectly good one! 'Temper tantrum' my ass... give me the fucking cat."

Shauna just gawked at him. It occurred to him that he wasn't going about this the right way.

"Look, I'll learn how to take care of it. I'll do the research... there's a vet near my house who I'm sure will be happy to give me advice. And give it shots and stuff. Reg has never, ever grown attached to a living organism like this: cat, dog, person, whatever. There's something special about this cat. And the cat likes him too. You saw it! If they want to be together, then dammit, I'm going to try to help."

"Hmmm," Shauna said.

"Now, may I please have the cat?"

"You know, Reg, you haven't done any work all day. I hope you realize that once the cat gets home, it stays home."

Of course she would... 3 didn't like the office at all. Reg was just waiting until 6:00 PM so he could take her out of this place for good.

"You want to just go home now? I can save everything else I have to do for tomorrow."

But it wasn't 6:00 yet. It was only 2:46:22. Oh well, if Zephyr wanted to change the schedule - again - he wasn't about to object.

"Right. All right, come on, Reg. Come on, 3."

Zephyr had convinced Reg to put 3 back in the cat carrying case in order to bring her home. Holding a cat on his lap while driving a convertible would have been a disaster, Reg grudgingly agreed. As a compromise, Zephyr agreed to hold the carrying case on his own lap, although it broke his heart to have to hear the animal's wails all the way home.

Once home, however, things got better. Reg carried 3 into the house and sat attentively on the sofa as she gave herself the grand tour. Zephyr wondered what information she was gleaning from all that sniffing she was doing, and half wished he'd had a chance to shampoo the carpet. And sweep the floor, and wash the drip stains off the doors of the cupboard under the sink.

But wait; it was only a cat, he reminded himself; not his mother. His mother was the one who was using his sexuality as a weapon against him, even though he knew she wasn't the least bit homophobic. She probably didn't even believe in God. He was sure that joining her fiance's church hadn't changed her opinions at all. It just changed her rhetoric. It would have been more in character of her to say, "What kind of gay man are you, leaving splatter stains on the countertop, and why do you keep this awful old brown sofa? Don't you have any sense of style whatsoever?" And she probably would say just that, given the chance, especially if her new church buddies were not around.

Zephyr settled down on the awful old brown sofa next to Reg and watched the cat until it occurred to him that she might have some basic needs to tend to. There was tuna fish in the pantry that she could eat until they got some proper cat food, and maybe he could scrounge up a tray or something she could use as a litter box.

There was an oil pan in the garage. "Will this do?" he asked her as he presented it to her. She seemed repulsed by it and hid behind the end table. Zephyr left her there and kept looking.

The bucket seemed too high for her to climb into. Finally, in the basement, he found an old plastic tray that was about the right length and height, if a bit narrow, and didn't smell like much of anything. Now he just had to fill it with kitty litter. Hopefully sand would suffice until he got the real stuff. They had quite a bit of sand. Now... where to put it? The bathroom was too small. The garage would be okay if 3 weren't so dead-set against setting foot in it. Same deal for the basement. He finally put it in the hall/foyer area between the garage and the kitchen.

Now to feed her. Was she supposed to have a bowl, or could she eat the tuna straight from the can? He'd have to ask Mariluz or Shauna at work tomorrow. At the moment, though, she seemed awfully impatient to get the tuna, so he gave up searching for an acceptable bowl and just gave it to her.

"Water," said Reg.

"Oh, right." Zephyr was impressed; all of those attempts to convince Reg to stay hydrated were paying off. Reg now associated water with food. A cup was too narrow, but an old margarine container would suffice. He filled it halfway with faucet water and put it next to the can of tuna... where 3 proceeded to snub it.

"You need water, cat," he told her, but she pointedly ignored him, and instead disappeared behind the end table again. "Huh. Okay, you'll see... sooner or later you'll go back to that water and drink it, or else you won't be feeling so good. Don't say I didn't warn you."