Cat-quisition [Peter Parkman]

[Quinten Kearney (DELETED 6516)]

Quinten was accustomed to spending the majority of his time alone; there were plenty of things to keep him occupied and for the most part he'd never had a problem with his isolation. If he ever started to feel morose, all it took was an hour in a busy public space to remind him why he generally avoided people.

Having relocated back to Harper Rock for the foreseeable future, however, he found himself at loose ends. He’d gone on academic leave for simplicities sake, he was quickly running out of books he hadn’t already read, and he couldn’t exactly continue his job remotely.

It was a personal low point that found him on Youtube, a journey that quickly spun out of control and devolved into cat videos, which lead to researching the evolution of felis catus, the multitude of breeds—Munchkin cats; why?—common health issues and required care, and ended with him pulling up the location of a local shelter on his phone.

He hadn’t ever had a pet, had never felt compelled to get a pet, but—it might be nice to come back to an apartment that wasn’t empty.

[Peter Parkman]

Peter might not agree with all the new breeds that people liked to produce, or the way in which they went about doing it, but he didn’t judge the creatures on the mistakes of their creators. They were all living things. Completely innocent, too. He far preferred animals to people. They were easier to understand, even if he did sometimes wonder if there was any way to figure out exactly what they were trying to say.

The shelter was where Peter spent a lot of his time, given that he preferred animals over people. Although he got a few customers, he didn’t get as many as they would get during the day when he was not there. In an hour or so he’d close the doors for the night; but the sun had only recently set and he was happy to be open for a while. At least to cater to the nocturnal sort. He knew there were a few of those in the city.

It was dinner time. The animals were noisy at this time of day – they were eager for their food. Peter was in and out of the enclosures, tending first to the dogs and then to the cats. One of his employees was out back, dealing with the rest. Mostly, though, the shelter was home to abandoned dogs and cats, and litters of puppies and kittens that could not be cared for elsewhere. Soon enough he found himself at the front desk, sorting through some of the paperwork from the day before.

[Quinten Kearney (DELETED 6516)]

The sun was setting when he exited his apartment building. Quinten blinked in surprise, squinting against the glare to look at his phone. He hadn't been paying attention to the time; the internet was dangerous that way. A quick search confirmed the shelter would be open for a few more hours though--he supposed that made sense in a town with such a strong nightlife--and that gave him plenty of time, even factoring in public transit.

It was well and truly dark when he finally arrived at the shelter, and he spent a solid five minutes staring at the store front and quietly freaking out. What did he know about cats? This was rash. He could barely take care of himself. He'd come back another day. Maybe he wouldn't come back at all. This was the time for careful deliberation.

"Er, hello," Quinten greeted the man behind the front desk with an aborted wave--he was really trying to stop that habit; it wasn't endearing, regardless what his coworkers said--and made sure the door closed behind him. He was apparently possessed.

[Peter Parkman]

Peter was dressed in jeans and a plain, dark-grey button-up. The buttons were silver, and the sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. The collar was perfectly pressed and perfectly straight, and the shirt itself was tucked into the jeans with hardly a crinkle. Although Peter liked to wear his hair long, these days, it was neatly brushed back with a brush that must have evenly spaced thistles. Only the slightest amount of gel was applied to the hair to make it stay; it fell in a way that it didn’t fall in Peter’s face. The pale-brown locks were tucked neatly behind his ears, and his eyes, green as meadowlands on a stormy day, lifted to greet the person who walked through the front door.

”Hi,” he greeted, his voice deep but the casual smile added to it the melodious welcoming lilt. No, Peter didn’t much like people, but they were a necessary evil. And some weren’t so bad. He ran a business and it paid to be polite. Not that he was in it for the money. This particular business he was in because his own home was starting to turn into a pound. Six dogs and a cat. Much better to own the business where he adopted all these pets from, rather than continue to take them home.

The man that walked through the door was human. Peter could immediately tell. This didn’t inspire any kind of lust or thirst in Peter; the very thought of blood made him sick. Humans weren’t a lesser species to Peter like they were to some others of his kind. They just… were. They were something he used to be. It was just an observation. He was human. And he lacked any kind of carrier or pet. He wasn’t dropping one off. He was here for another reason.

”How can I help?”

[Quinten Kearney (DELETED 6516)]

Quinten shifted awkwardly, taking a moment to observe the man behind the counter. The clothes might have been casual, but Quinten couldn’t remember the last time he’s seen someone so impeccably dressed outside a shoot. There was nothing wrong with it, just unexpected; he’d expected people working at a shelter to be—softer. Not that he had any prior experience with shelters, or the people who worked there.

It made him uncomfortably aware of his own state of dress: he hadn’t bothered to look before he left, but he’d spent the day rolling around on his bed googling things and he felt like he looked it. His button-up was un-tucked, the sweater vest was distinctly wrinkled, and he didn’t want to even think about what his hair was doing right now; it tended to turn into a nest, given enough time. Five years ago he wouldn’t have given it a second thought—it didn’t matter what he looked like, or how he dressed; it was a social prerogative that had nothing to do with him—but he’d spent a lot of time in recent years interacting with a group of people who’d beaten at least some sort of residual awareness into him. They’d probably disown him if they saw him right now.

That was neither here nor there, however; he very much doubted a cat cared, and the thought was oddly comforting.

But he’d been asked a question. “I’m—well—I’ve never had a pet, but I’m considering a cat,“ Quinten replied, “And considering the lack of provincial-wide legislation regulating the sale of animals in pet stores, and that an associate solely concerned with profit is unlikely to provide honest information, I concluded a shelter would be the better option.”

[Peter Parkman]

The customer’s dishevelled appearance could have been enough to put Peter off. Although none of these animals really stayed long enough for him to grow attached, he was still attached. They were innocent creatures whose ancestors might have been wild, but they themselves, now, were victims to the human need to tame. To tame the wild, to control everything. Why did humans feel the need to control everything? Didn’t they know that soon enough, entropy would win out?

Not that Peter could talk. He was the worst instigator of control. Everything had to be just so, otherwise his world would tilt of balance. It was never good when his world was off balance. It leaned too much toward the precarious and the dangerous. If he felt that tell-tale lean, he retreated into a small box of his own making.

But his world was just fine. The dishevelled customer soon soothed Peter’s wariness with his excellent grasp of the English language. And wasn’t that always the case? Sometimes, the dishevelled ones were not the irresponsible ones. They were the ones who took better care of their pets than they did of themselves. Peter straightened, and nodded. He had a goal.

”Honest information,” Peter repeated, the phrase turning over his tongue curiously.

”What kind of information are you after?” he asked. ”We have cats, and we also have a few kittens left from a litter left with us last week. People always want the kittens,” Peter said, unable to keep the hint of frustration from his voice. They always wanted the damned kittens. It was the cats that he felt sorry for; those that might have memories of better days. Those that were abandoned because they were no longer cute or fluffy. He almost wanted to take them all home himself. The dogs probably wouldn’t be too pleased.

[Quinten Kearney (DELETED 6516)]

Quinten had the unfortunate habit of rambling when he was nervous, providing statistics and relevant information to whoever happened to be present. It was apparently one of those moments.

“It was only in 2013 that the CFHS began having shelters report intake statistics by age, and those initial findings found thirty-eight percent of cats were juvenile, compared to seventeen percent of dogs. However, the latest report did not differentiate between the ages of the forty-seven percent of cats adopted. I assume from your comment that it’s safe to assume the majority of adoptions were of younger animals.”

Quinten made himself pause—he was talking to someone in the employ of a shelter; they were probably aware of the statistics—and felt himself begin to flush.

“I would prefer an adult,” Quinten continued hesitantly, “As a first time owner, I don’t feel properly equipped to provide for the needs of a kitten.”

[Peter Parkman]

Peter was not sure how to feel about the customer’s admission. Whether he should feel happy that he was confident enough to admit to his faults—a policy of complete honesty—or whether he should feel a little ill at ease about handing a cat over to someone who’d just admitted to complete incompetence. In the midst of his imbalanced feelings, Peter merely nodded at the utterance of statistics. Statistics were normally his thing, and the number soothed his nerves. Again, it was the grasp of the English language, and now upon numbers, that strengthened Peter’s trust in the scraggly man in front of him.

Peter didn’t exactly keep on top of the statistics. As much as the numbers might take him to his happy place, the implications could also frustrate him. It was a fine line between logic and emotion. A line that Peter trod every day, the one setting off the other in weird and fantastic ways. Which was why he chose to keep mainly to himself. People were the defining factor of discord. They didn’t like his logic and their reactions to it only heightened his emotion. No, best to keep people out of it.

In the end, he decided that everyone had to start somewhere. Not everyone had been a pet owner all their life.

”Cats mostly take care of themselves. Where do you live? Will the cat be an indoor cat or outdoor, or a mixture of both?” he asked. Logical questions. Already, a list of names had started to list themselves in his head; certain names would be struck clean depending on the customer’s answers. By answering them, he’d narrow down the selection of cats in the shelter that he could possibly take home and which would be the easiest to take care of given its owner’s limited experience.

[Quinten Kearney (DELETED 6516)]

“I have a third-story apartment,” Quinten answered, “So indoors. Even if I were ground floor though…while the odds of survival for an outdoor cat in the city are slightly better than those in rural areas, I still don’t feel comfortable with the odds.”

It felt a like a job interview, and that he wasn’t quite up to company standards. His own misgivings were coloring the interaction, more than likely. He hadn’t particularly planned to own a pet anytime in the near future, but the notion wasn’t exactly new. One of his co-workers had a cat that he’d become acquainted with—Sheba was as regal as her name implied, and any time she deigned to be touched it felt like a victory—and that interaction had planted the seed. The decision to do something about it today was certainly rash, though.

“Coloration isn’t something I’m concerned with either,” he added as an afterthought, having noticed in his research that people tended to find animals more or less desirable based on coloration. Personally, Quinten found personality and temperament to be much stronger motivators.

[Peter Parkman]

Peter shook his head.

”More cars in the city. More cats get run over in the city than in rural areas. They’re attracted to the warmth of the engines, especially in Winter,” Peter answered, turning from the counter to lead the customer toward the cat enclosures. There were separate rooms, and they all led out into a caged area where they could run free in the wilderness, if they wanted to. Peter was merely stating the facts—rural areas were better for outdoor cats, in his opinion. Only the really savvy ones survived in the city.

But, indoor he could do. He monitored the cats that he kept; knew which ones preferred to stay inside rather than try to escape, as a few of them do. There was one in particular Peter was leading the customer to. A female tortoiseshell he’d dubbed Menhit, after the Egyptian Lion Goddess.

As soon as Peter opened the door, the cat was up on her feet, her meow a welcoming chirrup. She wasn’t hungry. She just liked the company. Peter smiled down at her, her purrs ricocheting around the room as he bent to pick her up.

”This is Menhit. She was found scrounging for scraps underneath a pub in Wickbridge. The owners brought her here to us,” he said. There was a line of fur missing from around her neck.

”She must have been stray a while – she’d grown past the limits of her collar. It scarred her skin some, but she’s healing nicely,” Peter said, scratching beneath the cat’s chin. She seems to grin at the attention, blissfully.

”She rarely goes outside, though. And she knows how to use the litter. And she’s affectionate,” Peter explained. ”Unless you’d like one that’s less affectionate?” he asked, lifting a curious gaze to the customer. It would seem odd, if someone wanted a pet just for the sake of having a pet. One would think they would like the company.