I’m not misspelling procrastination, alright, I am a master wordsmith. But I’m totally unable to write while this story unfolds.
So my dad is a very smart, quite reserved man who loves animals. He maintains that he is not fond of our very needy cat, who is basically shaped like a feather boa with little stubby black fox feet. She’s stupidly long and soft and fluffy, and they are Not Friends.
Okay, guys? They are Not Friends. This will be important.
So she had a paralysis tick and gave everyone a scare, and while she’s recovering, she’s on The Good Shit and not particularly mobile. And still very needy. So she doesn’t want to be alone but can’t follow people around tripping them the fuck over or ambushing them with her fluffy body the second they sit down. So she takes to mewling sadly while in a collapsed puddle of fluff, her soft belly fur turned up in that weird cat-doughnut shape.
Okay, right. So I come to visit and this is sad. This is a sad thing to happen to a cat I love, so I pick her up. Wait, why is she still mewling? How curious. Am I not good enough for you, cat? Guided by rising or falling levels of purring, I find myself standing next to my dad. The mewling is now incessant. The cat is basically vibrating off my arms. My dad is looking especially reserved and pointedly looking away from me and this cat he Does Not Like and Has Never Liked, Thank You, No I Don’t Find Her Little Fox Stubs Adorable.
I place the cat on his shoulder, where she promptly shifts around until she’s basically a scarf draped around his neck and falls asleep drooling on his ear. Purring. My dad is still refusing to look at me at this stage, but it’s hard to pull off Stoic Man while be-catted.
“Dad,” I say. “Can’t help but notice that she’s only interested in hanging out with you.”
“Not my fault. Don’t even like this damn cat,” he says in a manful fashion, walking quickly off. Wearing his scarf-cat.
From her hysterical cries when someone tries to remove her, it quickly becomes apparent that the cat is only interested in being with my dad. She becomes inconsolable when she can’t see him and my dad, who you would think would be resistant to this, has taken to wearing her as a scarf-cat and lovingly hand-feeding her through her convalescence. There’s nothing stopped her from eating under her own power, just so you know.
Turns out they are actually Best Friends. My dad has been hiding this with remarkable consistency for almost a decade now. He’s been living a double life since we got her nine years ago.
She’s totally fine now. He’s still wearing her like a scarf and if you give him a funny look about it, he will absolutely pretend he is not. This is the hill he will die on. Wearing our fluffy feather-boa cat around his neck.
Idk which version is better but I think I’m leaning a bit more with the instagram version. The filter makes it kinda dreamy like. Looks like an ol’ prom or wedding photo
Yup, that’s the point you just stay still and let it do whatever the fuck it wants that doesn’t involved you getting eaten.
REALLY FUN FACT for big cats cheetahs are fucking docile as shit
my grandfather ran a cheetah sanctuary in south africa and he’d just lie with them and sleep among them and they’d rub against him and chirp at him they’re big fucking babies
Another Fun Fact: Cheetahs are incredibly nervous animals. One of the (many) reason’s they’re going extinct is that cheetahs are so sensitive and nervous, some of them are literally too nervous to breed. Others will breed, but stress themselves out so much, they’ll lose their cubs.
So zoos with breeding programs had to figure out how to make cheetahs comfortable enough to first of all, get laid and secondly – not spazz themselves into miscarrying.
So what’d they do? They gave the cheetah’s their very own Service Dogs!
The dogs make them feel safe, protected and secure!
date a selkie, but don’t hide her cloak. let her go home and visit her family now and then, knowing that she’ll come back and hang her seal cloak in the closet like she always does. trust is important.
The first time she lets the redhead take her home, she’s diligent about hiding her cloak. She folds it carefully against tears and rips and abrasions, and hides it in a sea cave whose entrance is concealed by the tide.
She does the same, the second and third and fourth times, careful, wary, mindful of her mother’s lessons. Remembers the way her mother’s hands had chafed on her soft cheeks, rough with cooking and cleaning for her fisherman husband, the way her mother’s peat-dark eyes had been tense and harsh with the lesson.
“Mind me, Niahm. Never let them find your cloak.”
The way her mother’s mouth had curved, a sickle of dissatisfaction and relief and envy, as she had escaped into the waves.
So she minds her mother’s lesson, and she takes care with her cloak.
Would that she had taken as much care with her heart.
The fifth time, she wears the cloak to the girl’s door, clutched about her throat, dripping along the darkened lanes.
She enters the home, welcomed with soft kisses and gentle touches and kindling passion. She drapes the cloak, artful in her carelessness, across an old wooden chair, the one that creaks and tilts slightly if you don’t sit just right.
When she wakes, in the wee hours of the morning, even before her lover, the cloak still rests, supple and dappled by the sea, on the back of the chair.
She frowns into the softening dawn, dons the cloak, and returns to the sea.
And again, the sixth time. And the seventh.
The eighth time, she finally breaks, prickling and hurt with longing, gripping a handful of russet hair in her hand, firm with emphasis.
“Surely you know what I am,” she says to her lover, the cool froth of sea foam and the call of gulls curling around her voice.
“Of course,” her lover responds, soft and tender in the dawnlight, throat arched willingly, pale as the inner whorls of a shell. “You taste of the sea,” the girl whispers, reverently.
She shakes her lover’s head gently, fingers tangled still in russet locks. “Why?” she demands. “Why won’t you keep me?”
A long silence that waits and fills, like a tidepool, stretches between them. Cool as a current. Deep as the Channel.
Her lover’s eyes are dark and tender. “Must I trap you to keep you, my heart? Is that the shape of love that you desire?”
She sinks into the thought, struck and stymied, remembering her mother’s harsh hands, her cold eyes. Her hand eases into russet waves, caresses where her grip had punished. Her lips press cool and damp as the sea against the arching curve of her lover’s shoulder. “What shape of love will you give to me?”
The answer is easy, quick, certain. “Myself. Only myself, whenever you should wish it. Your cloak by the door, your body in my bed, and the freedom to go, whenever you must. As long as you wish.”
It’s not an answer a fisherman could ever give, nor would think to.
The ninth time, she hangs her cloak by the door, draped in careful dappled folds next to a drying oilskin jacket.
Steel Phoenix Studios 