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Charles wakes up from his mid-afternoon nap to Erik chasing Wade through the cattery and yelling blue murder. After a few seconds, the giant dog the humans call Cable lopes after them. Charles rolls over and thinks, not for the first time, that large dogs are scary and should not be allowed near the kittens, of which there are a great many.
“Have you seen Wade?” Cable asks, blinking his one eye at Charles.
“He went that way,” Charles replies, pointing gingerly in the direction Erik disappeared off to. “But I think he might have annoyed some of the cats,” Charles warns, because large dog though he may be, Cable probably doesn’t need more battle-scars than he already has.
“Thanks,” Cable woofs, before carrying on his way. He nudges the swing doors open easily, and there’s a sudden, dreadful yowl. A few minutes later, Erik comes back in through the cat-flap, looking awfully pleased with himself.
“You didn’t hurt him, did you?” Charles asks, worriedly. Insane, disfigured and strange though Wade may be, he’s still a cat, and Erik usually prefers cats to all other species (he accepts dogs as a lesser life form, and largely tolerates them, as long as they don’t irritate him too much).
“I bit him on the nose,” Erik says, smugly. “He was stealing your fur again.”
Charles sighs. “It’s not as if I really need my fur, Erik,” he says, reproachfully. “I just sick it up again.”
Erik gets an awfully snotty look on his face, and is doubtlessly about to start on one of his rants about how long fur is the height of all good things cat – Charles has never found a good moment to ask about Erik’s fur, which is short and somewhat curly – when the door opens again briefly, and Cable sticks his head in.
“If you could not bite Wade, I’d really appreciate it,” he says, glaring at Erik. Both cats flick their tails; Erik because of the presumption of a dog to censure his actions, and Charles because his tail is itchy and also distracting. It’s so fluffy.
Charles flops over on his back and starts batting at his tail. Cable snorts, but has probably seen worse from Wade, so Charles ignores him in favour of trying to pin his tail down. It’s very bad, so he bops it and has to blink when it bops him right back.
Distantly, Charles hears Erik saying something, but he’s quite distracted by trying to subdue his naughty, naughty tail.
Charles wakes up again at dinner time to find he’s been drooling on his tail. Probably Emma and Erik will get very annoyed at him for that, so before they find out, Charles hops down to the dining area. Some of the kittens obligingly move aside; Charles has seniority, even though he’s really quite happy for all the kittens to eat first.
It’s Duck in Gravy tonight; truly, humans are a wonder. One day, Charles will finally convince Erik of that, but it will probably take a while. Erik likes hunting for mice more than eating the food the humans give them, even though mice tend to be scarce and underfed.
“Have you seen Erik?” Charles asks Raven after dinner. “We were having a conversation but I got distracted.”
Raven snorts, because she is not an elegant cat, even if she is a beautiful one. The dichotomy tends to ruffle Erik’s curls, especially because Raven adores draping herself over the nearest convenient human to get stroked.
“He was taking the Brotherhood out hunting, and said I could only come if I renounced human food,” she replies. “Sometimes I love him, but sometimes he’s just crazy.” Raven shakes her head sadly.
“Oh,” Charles murrs, wilting slightly. He didn’t mean to fall asleep during conversation, it was just his bed was delightfully soft and Erik was very comforting just having around. Wade had come in cackling once, saying that all the humans were absolutely terrified of Erik, and that no-one would ever adopt Charles because they’d have to take Erik too. “Thank you anyway, Raven,” Charles continues.
“Call me Mystique,” Raven replies, because ever since she found out that’s what the humans called her, she wouldn’t shut up about it.
Charles morosely climbs back to his bed and has to wait three more hours before Erik returns and dumps a mouse in front of him.
“I caught it for you,” Erik says when Charles wrinkles his nose at it. “You should eat mouse more often. It’s tasty.”
“I really prefer liver, if it’s all the same to you.” Charles nudges the dead mouse with his nose, and pretends not to hear Erik’s put upon sigh.
“There’s mouse liver, Charles. Really, you are the most useless of cats,” he grumbles. Then he eats the mouse, because he missed dinner and he’s probably hungry.
Erik sleeps with his nose tucked against his bottom, so Charles has to wriggle quite a lot before they’re both comfortable, and even then, Erik has to keep waking up to sneeze. Long fur really is a chore, even though Erik refuses to see it.
Naptime passes peacefully enough; Sean falls off the window ledge and yowls loud enough to get the kennels barking, and there’s a brief but distressing moment when Kurt, Raven’s sole surviving kitten, tries to crawl out one of the windows. Luckily Raven is intelligent enough to grab him and plonk him back in bed, and they barely even wake Erik up at all. Erik’s apparently in a good mood come morning, because he deigns to eat breakfast with Charles.
The humans make some of their strange meows whenever Erik does this; Erik is convinced it’s because they want him to stop eating mice and birds. According to Wade, who claims he can understand human meows, they’re saying “Oh god, that means he’s going to puke all over the carpet again,” but Erik takes staunch offense to that.
“Today,” Erik announces, “we are going to wage war on every human who comes in here. Any cat who does not attack on sight will be punished.” Some of the younger cats nod enthusiastically, and sharpen their claws on every available surface.
“Erik,” Charles mews, reproachfully. “You really shouldn’t. Some of these kittens could go to good, happy homes.”
“Nonsense, Charles,” Erik replies. “Their home is here, with us.” His tail flicks angrily. “We all remember what happened to Angel, don’t we?”
Charles makes a moue of disappointment, and clambers up to one of his favourite cubby holes, where he determinedly puts his head under a blanket and refuses to pay Erik any more attention. It’s the only way to deal with him sometimes. He used to be such a good, nice cat. But then sweet placid Armando the dog had disappeared, to places unknown, and Angel had been rehomed and returned so many times it had rather distressed Erik, to say nothing of the indignities he’d been forced to face himself.
Show cats, Charles thinks, privately, were probably the unluckiest of all cats. It was just unfortunate that Erik had been one for those first few years of his life. It did explain why he liked hunting so much, Charles supposes.
“Charles,” Erik says, “take your head out from under that ridiculous blanket and pay attention.”
“No,” Charles replies, his voice somewhat muffled. “I won’t until you tell everyone to behave normally and have a nap with me.”
Erik sighs, very loudly, and is obviously going to say something cutting that will make Charles have to bop him most viciously, when Wade falls out of the ceiling vent and bellows “Haha, I’ll get you this time Wolverine!” He lands perfectly on all four feet, glances around at the startled cats, and then calmly sits down for a wash.
Erik wrinkles his nose and scowls. “He’s a disgrace to cat-kind,” he grumbles, but his heart obviously isn’t in it. Charles shifts over a bit, and Erik joins him under the blanket.
“There’s lovely,” Charles purrs, snuggling closer to Erik, who allows it with the minimum of fuss.
“Just for today,” Erik warns, but he’s already on the road to sleep, and he tends to be grumpy when he hasn’t had enough naps, so Charles ignores him and purrs louder.
Naps are always an option after all.
