Cat Boy

08 | joshua's theory of feline favor

"The food containers are in the cupboard over there, and so are the bowls. When you feed them, make sure everyone gets to eat. Cobalt can be surprisingly greedy."

The worker at the cat shelter is thin-lipped and languid-eyed, with fine bones and bleached hair the color of milk. He stands almost as tall as the doorframe, and rattles of instructions with the speed of an auctioneer, so fast that Vernon's sleep-dispossessed brain barely manages to catch them.

The blond flips a pen between his thin fingers with ease, while Daehyun watches enviously. "You can clean the cages when the cats are inside, but it's not advisable," he says in a droning voice. His eyes are half-lidded, alert beneath the guise of drowsiness, but Vernon can't help but feel even sleepier as he looks at him. "Most of them don't scratch, but I don't know if that holds in all cases. We don't usually have volunteers around, so they might be aggressive to new faces."

"Um." Daehyun half-raises her hand, doubt struggling with the awkwardness in her voice. "You said most of them don't scratch. Is there anyone in particular we should know about?"

When Vernon glances at her, he feels like someone's injected caffeine into his system. A single glance is more energizing than the cup of Joshua's hurried latte he had before leaving the café, but looking for too long makes him feel like he's burning up. He looks away, focusing on the bleached-blond worker with difficulty, significantly more awake than he had been a few moments ago.

"Oh, yeah," the worker nods. J, the sloppy handwriting on his tag reads, but the rest of the red marker had been long since wiped away by who knows what. He raises a hand and points at a cage in row one, housing a tabby who seems to glare at them with bright green eyes. "Ruth can be pretty violent, so try not to get too close to her. She really likes the Pokéball soft toy, though, so you can use that as a peace offering."

Vernon takes one look into Ruth's eyes and feels even more awake. Cats can be scary, especially large ones with their mouth permanently set into scowls. "Will it work?"

"Probably not," the worker says casually, then tosses him the keys. Vernon almost drops them, and looks up at the boy with rounded eyes, but the blond seems uninterested. "Lock up when you start cleaning. I've had more cat escapades on my record this month than I'd like."

"Anything else?" Daehyun asks, eyebrows raised.

"Stay alive," the boy says, completely straight-faced. He turns around and leaves, shutting the door behind him, and they watch him as he saunters away, disappearing behind a five-foot cat standee.

"Very funny," Daehyun mutters, but there's a shake in her usually steady voice, and Vernon allows himself a tiny glance. Her hair is tied up, but strands of it have escaped the hair band, curling behind her ear, jarringly dark against the untanned patch of skin.

He looks away, breathless, and locks the glass doors. The keyring is the cat Marie from The Aristocats. Vernon smiles a little, and holds out the keys to Daehyun, who blinks at him in surprise.

"Don't you want to open the cages?" she asks, and he glances into Ruth's cage again with a look of misgiving.

"No, you do it," he says, and drops the keys into her open palm. She shrugs and kneels next to one of the cages and starts opening.

"I thought you liked cats," she mutters. The room is smaller than he expected, even smaller than his bedroom. One wall is covered with stacked cages, and the tall perches and scratching posts stand in front of the other, leaving a narrow space on the floor in between. He's pretty sure he couldn't even lie down fully on the floor. "Cause—you know, since you're the cat boy and everything."