Snapshots | ✓

Fourteen: Micah

Monday, January 12th, 2015

His phone rang over the Bluetooth system and he quickly answered without checking the caller ID. "Lauzier."

"I can't believe you actually answer your phone with just your last name," Hayes said.

"What?" He shook himself as he readjusted from a work mindset to a home mindset. Hayes texted for everything, even urgent things, so it startled him to hear her voice through his car speakers.

"There's a cat in the apartment and I don't know what to do."

It took him a moment to process the statement. "What?"

"You know the black one that's always on the stairs between the third and fourth floors? It is in the apartment."

"What's it doing?"

"Nothing. Just sitting there. It's not even looking straight at me."

Micah ran a hand over his face. "How did it get in?"

"It was meowing at the door so I went to feed it and it ran past me," she said.

"And where is the cat now?" he asked. She didn't respond and his frown deepened, alarm filling his chest. "Hayes, where is the cat?"

"It may be sitting on your pillow," she replied, voice low.

"Can you move it?"

"It gets angry whenever I get close to it," she said.

He sighed. "Just don't name it and I'll move it when I get home."

--

By the time he walked into his room he had a bad feeling about his chances of getting rid of the cat. It was curled up on his pillow and didn't even twitch when he walked in. Hayes was stretched out on his bed, carefully out of reach from the cat, watching the animal with soft adoration.

"I named the cat," she admitted without looking at him.

He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, not at all surprised. "Why?"

"I was trying to convince it to leave, and then I was trying to convince it to let me pet it. I didn't succeed with either."

"Do you want to go talk to the cat lady and tell her we have her cat and would like her to come take it back?"

"I want to keep the cat."

"We're not keeping the cat."

"Please?"

"The cat already has an owner."

"But she has so many cats already!"

"No Hayes."

"Please Mickey?" she whined.

He steeled himself against her pleading eyes. "No."

--

Half an hour later Hayes perched on the arm of the couch. "She says we can keep the cat."

"We don't want to keep the cat," Micah said. He didn't want to keep the cat. She very clearly did, and was amping up to her full begging face. He could already feel his resolve crumbling before her.

"She says she's moving soon into a place that doesn't allow pets so she has to find people to adopt the cats or she'll have to give them to a shelter."

"So the cat goes to a shelter."

"Did you know that 71% of cats sent to a shelter are euthanized?"

"Do you have any idea how to care for a cat?"

"She said she'd teach me," Hayes replied, leaning towards him and widening her eyes to plead with him.

He tried to resist. He really did. But she threw in a lower lip tremble and he was a goner. It annoyed him how pliable he was in her hands but he didn't know what he could do to reverse whatever had been happening since they'd met. She seemed to have him figured out, knowing exactly what buttons to push to get what she wanted. Even Misha hadn't mastered that. Some part of him wondered if there was something else that made him so willing to do anything to keep Hayes happy but he shied away from thinking about that other option too much.

He threw his hands up in defeat. "Fine. But it's your cat and you have to take care of it."

She emitted a high pitched squeal of delight. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

"And get it out of my room!" he called after her as she darted away.

"It's a her! And her name is Bastet like the Egyptian goddess!"

He frowned. That had to be some sort of blasphemy.