Page 43 of A Fae in Finance
I froze, and breathed in. Lene?
Oh. Cat lady Lene. Why was she here?
“Coming,” I said, starting for the door.
She, in the grand faerie tradition, opened it and entered.
“Hello—” I said, but she wasn’t looking at me. She’d gotten onto her knees and started crawling toward the bed, over heaps of shirts.
“Pssssst pssssst pst,” she said, crawling past me, and then “Tsk tsk.”
“I’m sorry, are you looking for something?” I asked, nonplussed.
“Ofcourse,” she exclaimed, and stood. “The cat who inspired such affection! I must see this creature.”
“Oh… uh, Doctor Kitten is by the window,” I said, pointing.
I stared over her head at Doctor Kitten, who sat in a loaf on the windowsill, staring back at me. Doctor Kitten is a cat and doesn’t have telepathy, but from the look he gave me, I knew in the depths of my soul that he suddenly despised my existence.
Lene leapt over the bed in a ballet split and landed on all fours on the far side.
“Hello, cat,” she said, and followed it up with a torrent of sounds that I could neither describe nor transcribe.
Doctor Kitten stood up, his back arching, and hissed at her.
I started toward the two of them, bumped my thigh into a bedpost, growled a curse, and stepped between them.
“Lene, I don’t think he likes that,” I said, putting my hand palm down toward his nose.
“Shush,” she said, and made another type of sound. I watched her face; her reflective eyes were intent on him.
Doctor Kitten unbowed his back and straightened his ears. Then he opened his mouth—so wide I could see all of his teeth—and yowled.
I put a hand on his back. “It’s okay,” I said.
Across from him Lene had opened her own mouth and started yowling, too.
“Please, Kitten,” I started.
“Shush!” Lene said again, somehow without ceasing her own yowl or closing her mouth. I scooped Doctor Kitten into my arms but the noise didn’t stop.
“Please, what are you doing to him?” I gasped, hugging him to my chest.
They both quieted.
“We’re talking,” she said, frowning at me.
“At the same time?”
Lene sighed. “Obviously at the same time. May I?”
She held out her hands for my cat. I didn’t move. Doctor Kitten wriggled in my arms.
“What, you want to go to her?” I asked. Lene came closer, and I carefully tipped him toward her. He calmed down.
“What did he say?”
She blinked slowly at me. “He likes chin scratches,” she said. “There are many birds here. He wonders how they taste. He told me that he exposes his stomach and you try to pet him and he bites you.”
