Art Pact 100
It was the morning in the suburb, and fire sprites danced from rubbish-bin to rubbish-bin, leaving behind them melted plastic lids and the acrid scent of smoldering waste. Cats watched them from the safety of the spaces between double-glazed windows and net curtains, feline breath misting up the glass in front of them as their eyes tracked the bright spots from one bin to the next, ever alert. In the Wilkinson's house their own cat Damson let her tail flick idly as she watched, sending ripples up the fine lace material of the net to her back, and thought more about her plan to catch one of the things.
Damson the Tortoiseshell, her peers called her, or if they were of that set of disrespectful half-growns who thought of all older cats as irrelevant furniture, Damson the Tortoise. She herself preferred Damson the Calico, since she had been born in the new world before the Wilkinsons had moved their family back to their old house in the grey drear of Slough, and she liked to pepper her speech with Americanisms to remind her of her birthplace and to annoy those of the more stuffy neighbours who mocked her accent (slight, after all these years) and presumed to offer their opinions about the intellectual and moral superiority of Europeans - a shaky theme at best, considering the current situation, but one to which a few of the local blowhards returned time and again.
"You've no chance," a voice said behind her. Whistler.
"Keep your opinions to yourself, fossil," she growled.
"Just saying. No chance. Leave it to them." The word was full of scorn.
She turned to face Whistler. He was on his middle perch, flicking his head from side to side to observe her in turn with one eye and the other. It was too early for the central heating to come on, so his breast feathers were puffed up into a ridiculous ball.
"When I want your opinion I'll break in there and eat it out of your skull," Damson told him. He let out a bored chirp, but jumped up to the high perch - a sign, she'd noticed, of nervousness.
Laughing to herself silently, she leapt down from the window ledge and padded through the quiet house to the kitchen. At the door between the kitchen and the utility room she waited, nosing it open until she could just see the little plastic square where the biggest Wilkinson had cut out a section of wall and replaced it with a cat flap. She was a little earlier than she'd planned, but after a few moments of silent crouching the flap began to flip inwards and a head poked through - tentatively at first, then the whole thing to the neck, craning the soft grey-furred face at the front of it from left to right. When that sweep was done a forepaw came through, then another, and it was at that point that Damson stood up and walked into the kitchen.
"Hello, Popsicle," she drawled.
The other cat, caught half-way through the flap, frozen for a second in surprise and then attempted to back out, flailing with his front paws on the slippery surface of the utility room floor. The flap was designed to be travelled through in one direction at a time, though, and the bottom lip of it caught on his collar, trapping his head. On the other side of the door he must have been pushing with his hind-paws - if he'd only stopped he might have been able to free himself, but Damson's ambush had frightened the wits out of him, leaving him incapable of measured thought. He mewed plaintively, and tried to dodge as she bounded forward suddenly and caught him a cuff on the nose.
"Let me out!" Popsicle cried. "No, let me in!"
"So you can steal my food again?" she asked.
"I'm begging you! Damson, have mercy, they'll hear me!"
"They will," she told him. "They'll be here in a second to burn off your tail."
"Oh god!" Popsicle yelled in terror. "Not my tail!"
She let him blubber for a few seconds, but she had already decided that she would let him in. If he hadn't mentioned the sprites it might have been different, but with him half-in and half-out of the cat flap and waving his arse around like a flag it was very likely that one of them might spot the opportunity to leap in through the open space, burning poor Popsicle to a crisp on the way. She wouldn't wish that on him, and she certainly didn't fancy the disaster of a sprite loose in the house with all the Wilkinsons asleep. Even if they were awake a single sprite might be capable of burning the whole place down around their ears.
She stepped back, and Popsicle scrambled gratefully inside, letting the flap click shut behind him into its draft-proof frame. He crawled underneath the metal shelf that held all the Wilkinsons' paints and rubbed his nose with a paw.
"You didn't have to hit me so hard," he complained.
"I wasn't hitting you," she said. "I was hitting the you of tomorrow, and the day after that. You I can talk to, I might not be near enough to talk to them. I had to give them a souvenir so that when they come around they'll think twice."
"I could have been burnt to death."
"Oh don't be such a kitten."
She sat to cleaning paws, washing off any hint of the scent of the younger cat that she might have picked up while hitting him. When she was done she took a few unenthusiastic bites of the dry food that had been left out for her last night and in a fit of uncharacteristic generosity sent a few of the little shapes skittering across the floor to where Popsicle huddled beneath the shelf. He ate them nervously, as though expecting that they might at any moment explode.
"Good," she said. "Now you've had something to eat, you're going to help me fight the demons."
Popsicle looked up at her, eyes wide, staring as though she'd grown another tail.
Damson the Tortoiseshell, her peers called her, or if they were of that set of disrespectful half-growns who thought of all older cats as irrelevant furniture, Damson the Tortoise. She herself preferred Damson the Calico, since she had been born in the new world before the Wilkinsons had moved their family back to their old house in the grey drear of Slough, and she liked to pepper her speech with Americanisms to remind her of her birthplace and to annoy those of the more stuffy neighbours who mocked her accent (slight, after all these years) and presumed to offer their opinions about the intellectual and moral superiority of Europeans - a shaky theme at best, considering the current situation, but one to which a few of the local blowhards returned time and again.
"You've no chance," a voice said behind her. Whistler.
"Keep your opinions to yourself, fossil," she growled.
"Just saying. No chance. Leave it to them." The word was full of scorn.
She turned to face Whistler. He was on his middle perch, flicking his head from side to side to observe her in turn with one eye and the other. It was too early for the central heating to come on, so his breast feathers were puffed up into a ridiculous ball.
"When I want your opinion I'll break in there and eat it out of your skull," Damson told him. He let out a bored chirp, but jumped up to the high perch - a sign, she'd noticed, of nervousness.
Laughing to herself silently, she leapt down from the window ledge and padded through the quiet house to the kitchen. At the door between the kitchen and the utility room she waited, nosing it open until she could just see the little plastic square where the biggest Wilkinson had cut out a section of wall and replaced it with a cat flap. She was a little earlier than she'd planned, but after a few moments of silent crouching the flap began to flip inwards and a head poked through - tentatively at first, then the whole thing to the neck, craning the soft grey-furred face at the front of it from left to right. When that sweep was done a forepaw came through, then another, and it was at that point that Damson stood up and walked into the kitchen.
"Hello, Popsicle," she drawled.
The other cat, caught half-way through the flap, frozen for a second in surprise and then attempted to back out, flailing with his front paws on the slippery surface of the utility room floor. The flap was designed to be travelled through in one direction at a time, though, and the bottom lip of it caught on his collar, trapping his head. On the other side of the door he must have been pushing with his hind-paws - if he'd only stopped he might have been able to free himself, but Damson's ambush had frightened the wits out of him, leaving him incapable of measured thought. He mewed plaintively, and tried to dodge as she bounded forward suddenly and caught him a cuff on the nose.
"Let me out!" Popsicle cried. "No, let me in!"
"So you can steal my food again?" she asked.
"I'm begging you! Damson, have mercy, they'll hear me!"
"They will," she told him. "They'll be here in a second to burn off your tail."
"Oh god!" Popsicle yelled in terror. "Not my tail!"
She let him blubber for a few seconds, but she had already decided that she would let him in. If he hadn't mentioned the sprites it might have been different, but with him half-in and half-out of the cat flap and waving his arse around like a flag it was very likely that one of them might spot the opportunity to leap in through the open space, burning poor Popsicle to a crisp on the way. She wouldn't wish that on him, and she certainly didn't fancy the disaster of a sprite loose in the house with all the Wilkinsons asleep. Even if they were awake a single sprite might be capable of burning the whole place down around their ears.
She stepped back, and Popsicle scrambled gratefully inside, letting the flap click shut behind him into its draft-proof frame. He crawled underneath the metal shelf that held all the Wilkinsons' paints and rubbed his nose with a paw.
"You didn't have to hit me so hard," he complained.
"I wasn't hitting you," she said. "I was hitting the you of tomorrow, and the day after that. You I can talk to, I might not be near enough to talk to them. I had to give them a souvenir so that when they come around they'll think twice."
"I could have been burnt to death."
"Oh don't be such a kitten."
She sat to cleaning paws, washing off any hint of the scent of the younger cat that she might have picked up while hitting him. When she was done she took a few unenthusiastic bites of the dry food that had been left out for her last night and in a fit of uncharacteristic generosity sent a few of the little shapes skittering across the floor to where Popsicle huddled beneath the shelf. He ate them nervously, as though expecting that they might at any moment explode.
"Good," she said. "Now you've had something to eat, you're going to help me fight the demons."
Popsicle looked up at her, eyes wide, staring as though she'd grown another tail.
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