Our Pet

by S M Matthews

  I find Abner in the main control room of the ship. I want to shout about what I’ve discovered, and I can feel my tails going, but I calm myself for a moment. Must try not to scare her again. “Abner”

  “Hey Tark”, he says without turning from the screen he’s studying.

  I do the ‘come come’ motion to Maisy, and she comes a little closer, I point to Abner for her benefit, and say “Abner” again. He thinks I want his attention so he turns this time, and he’s quick enough to see Maisy point at him and say “Abner.” She does a much much better job of his name than she did of mine; his tails flop and his ears point straight up. Any other time and I might have laughed.

  Abner, of course, comes back with a logical explanation. “She’s just repeating; copying. Tark, do not get excited.”

  MAISY

  I think I am starting to warm to this...thing. Giant cat thing. I really don’t think he has any intention of hurting me.

  I don’t actually know that He’s a dude, but I’m rolling with it.

  He’s fed me, and I think he was really taking my preferences into consideration with that. He’s sort of learnt my name, and I know his but I can’t really say it, it’s like a feral bark and I just can’t make my throat make that noise. Abner is much easier to say. I was pretty sure I was on some sort of ship. Spaceship.

  He’s just led me out onto the deck and now I’m sure of it. As in, I can quite clearly see space through the window. They are talking to each other now. I haven't seen the giant third one again.

  The view I have out this window is pretty spectacular, so I move closer.

  They are absorbed in their growly conversation, so I make myself comfortable in what I presume to be a pilot’s chair. It’s pretty comfy, but I have to climb up into it, everything here is built for them, and they are easily two foot taller than my very average five foot seven.

  Space is beautiful. And with only the dull light of the ship behind me, and not the overpowering light pollution of living in a city...I can see it. Really see it. And there’s just so much of it. It’s overwhelming...and just looking at it makes me realise how vast it is. My home could be anywhere. They might not know, and if they do know, how do I even start trying to communicate with the giant cat men?

  Why would they even help me, I am effectively a prisoner. I am only working on the assumption that they didn’t kidnap me in the first place because I do have that hazy memory of being in a cage with other people, and the Green Creature seems to have been in charge of that shitshow.

  The view of space is totally overwhelming, and although it might be the most spectacular thing I’ve ever seen, I start to cry, I try to control it but I can’t help it. I wasn’t leaving much behind, family I might speak to for Christmas and Birthdays, and a couple of friends that I will miss. But it was my home, and my life that I’d started to put together. I was saving to buy my own place, I liked my job. I had a small life but it was mine. And now I might never see something as simple as a tree ever again.

  The tears come harder, and then a racking sob comes out of me.

  And then there’s a big furry face in front of me, he stills in front of me for a second, then touches my arms gently. I can’t really see because I’m sobbing so hard, but apparently crying is also something we share because he just crouches there, in front of me, stroking my arms. Like he’s trying to calm a frightened animal. Which to him, I guess I am at the moment. I’m vaguely aware of a conversation going on between them, and then, even though it is utterly stupid, I’m consumed with embarrassment. I’m trying to wipe my tears away and get my shit together. He passes me a mug which has appeared from no-where. Whatever is in there is thicker than water and has a creamy consistency, and sort of the natural sort of sweetness that makes me think of cream and honey. I sip at it and start to feel better, and then he’s wiping at my face with a warm damp flannel that he’s magically produced from somewhere. Oh, Abner appears to take it back again. He’s the delivery cat. That thought makes me snort laughter. Tark snorts too, and shakes his head in surprise, making his ears flap. That makes me laugh again, and he’s making a chuffing laugh right along with me. Something else with no language barrier apparently.

  I turn and thank Abner, but he just cocks his head at me, then shares a meaningful, and somehow weary, look with Tark.

  Tark stands back and waits for me to find my feet, I slide to the edge of the chair but I feel so utterly deflated I just sit there for a minute. Tark must come to some sort of decision and he leans back in with his arms out, he pauses then, so I can see his intentions. I think I have given up, because I give myself over with only a moment’s hesitation, and he lifts me, one arm under my back, one beneath my knees. Newly-wed style. I snort again to myself at that thought. He carries me seemingly with no effort at all, and his arms feel strong beneath me. We arrive at one of the other rooms which branches off the central corridor, the ship really doesn’t seem that big, there only appears to be this main passageway.

  The door slides open for us. Abner says something sharply behind Tark, and he turns in the doorway for a moment, still holding me; so I’m looking at Abner too. His ears are flat, and whatever they are quietly growling about sounds bad, but then Tark cuts him off with something a bit louder and angry sounding, and we carry on into the room. He puts me down at the foot of the bed, and pulls the covers back. Abner has followed us in, and he says something behind us. Tark just nods and does his ‘come hither’ motion, he shows me through the only other door. I’ve got to be honest I’m pretty delighted with this turn of events because it’s pretty clearly a bathroom. I nod enthusiastically at Tark and go in, the door swishes shut behind me.

  I can hear them talking out there, but it’s very muted by the door. I use the facilities, and it flushes automatically when I stand up. Some sort of chemical was released, and it smells strongly but not objectionable. There's a cubical which I am pretty sure is a shower, and the sink is a simple runnel in the side with a tube projecting out of the wall. There's no obvious way of operating it so I wave my hand around the opening. Nothing. I touch the panels around it, and the one above it lights up and the water starts, once I’ve activated it, I realise that that tile does look different to those around it. It’s lukewarm, but it’ll do. I rinse my hands, there's no soap, and I wash my face again. Realising there's nothing to dry with I use the end of my over-large shirt and then touch the panel again. The water goes off.

  There's a mirror, but I don’t look in it for very long. My hair is a dirty, matted, frizzy mess. My face pale, my freckles standing out starker than usual. My eyes look a bit sunken, but then I’ve had a crying session. Also I’ve been asleep for an indeterminate amount of time, and been put through who knows what. I push that thought straight down. I do not want to contemplate how long I was kept unconscious for, and what might have happened in that time.

  I leave the bathroom, and Tark and Abner suddenly go quiet. They both look hellish guilty. Something else that's universal, I guess.

  Tark comes over and points to a panel, then at himself. He presses the panel, and something on him beeps. I nod, I get it. Call if I need him. They are going to leave me I realise, and then they do.

  Fear wells up, but I don’t really see what I can do. I don’t think there’s any more than the three I’ve seen on board. No one’s tried to hurt me. I can call Tark if I need something, and I feel terrible. Sick and overwhelmingly tired.

  It’s been a really, really rough day.

  ABNER

  We get back out into the hall, and I have got to try again.

  “Tark she can not just have that room!”

  “Look, I get it alright, I do, I get it. But we don’t have a mate. We don’t have any prospect of a mate. Now if they were lining up for us I’d get it, but they aren't, and they won’t. We aren't saving that room for anything, are we? Letting her have it for the time being makes literally no difference. Does it? Or do you have a hoard of females waiting around that you’ve just failed to
mention?”

  I sigh, and rub at the bridge of my nose, “I know you’re right, logically, you’re right...but it just feels wrong.”

  “Not as wrong as forcing an intelligent creature to sleep in a lizard hutch on the floor. You saw what just happened, she went straight for the bathroom, she knew what it was. I don’t think she’d appreciate using the tray of sand under my bathroom sink, do you?”

  “Yes, yes alright, I'll just have to get used to it...for now. Let’s go and see Pate...but maybe don’t say where she’s sleeping just yet.”

  PATE

  They had both turned up together, I could already see Tark was almost beside himself with excitement, but he was looking to Abner to do the talking. I haven't moved from my desk chair, and they are both sort of just hovering there.

  “We think she may be intelligent. She’s trying to communicate.” Abner spits out.

  And what did they want me to do about this exactly?

  “Can we run the lingual identifier and see if it picks up anything?”

  “You know that if she is, she will have rights? We’d have to release her to the authorities for return?”

  Tark’s tails drop so fast they make a little thump on the floor. I can’t have him not thinking ahead with this, but it’ll just hurt more later if I don’t say.

  “It’ll be cruel though, won’t it? If we keep her like this, and don’t try?”

  Tark’s answer actually surprises me, the cub is growing up a bit. Finally.

  “Then running the analyser is the only thing you can do.”

  Tark and Abner shrug at each other, then Tark nods, “We will try it tomorrow”.

  ◆◆◆

  I can hear Tark in the galley with Maisy. The door slides open and it looks like one of every item on the ship is in the room. Tark’s pointing, and then identifying what it is. Then Maisy says something. Then they do the same again for something else, and then again.

  “Do you think this is working?”

  Tark stops a minute to speak to me, “I don’t know yet, hopefully identifying things will come easily enough, but I need to get her talking for sentence structures and stuff. I am pretty sure she knows what we are doing, but I don’t know how to get her to just…talk.” I gesture aimlessly.

  “Abner” Maisy says.

  “Oh yeah, she’s definitely got the pointing game,” I can’t help but chuckle. “She doesn’t smell scared anymore.”

  “No, I think she’s getting over that pretty quickly.

  “You should find her some clothes you know, and have you provided the essentials for her room?”

  “Not yet, but it is part of the plan, I was going to take her into storage and see if she picks her own. And she can then call out the names.”

  I nod, she’s watching us talk, her head flicking back and forth.

  I put my hand out to her and hold it there, she looks at it for a few moments, and I can almost hear the thoughts. Then she puts her hand out and rests it on top of mine. I touch a finger with my other hand, and say it out loud. She copies me. Then wrist, elbow, shoulder, neck, the top of her head, and then I hold out some of her fur. She touches it and says something. Then she tries to reach for my face, I kneel right down to let her, apparently her bravery is coming in leaps and bounds now. She ruffles my mane and says something, so I follow. We are playing the same game now but in reverse. I am vaguely aware of Tark watching us.

  She walks around me and I jump when she touches one of my toe pads. It didn’t frighten her though, as I thought it would have. She just laughs and touches it again, but I’m ready this time. She says something, but it’s not just a single thing. Her legs and feet are very different to ours. They go straight down, knee, ankle, and then a flat foot that sticks out forward with pointless little toes on the end. No claws. Ours bend back at the knee, and our feet are relatively small, with protective footpads and claws for grip.

  She grabs one of my tails, the top one. I scramble forward and am across the room, Tark is doubled over, barely able to breathe; he is barking a chuffing laughter. Maisy has her hand over her mouth...and she’s changed colour.

  “Tark, you sure she’s not poisonous, venomous, whatever?”

  That brings him up short and he goes over for inspection. “She’s gone red.”

  She’s holding the sides of her face with the backs of her fingers, and then she starts fanning herself. “Maybe she’s just hot” Tark says as he tries to lift the edge of her shirt to take it off. She shrieks and slaps his paw while backing away. He holds his paws out and backs away too.

  “Look,” I tell him, “she’s gone back again” if anything, she’s even paler.

  “Maybe it’s some sort of emotional response?” I query “She did seem to be growing more comfortable with us.”

  “Yeah,” Tark replies. “She definitely didn’t like me trying to take the shirt”

  “Well yeah, how would you like it if a stranger tried to steal your clothes?”

  “Oh yeah, of course, I don’t know why I didn’t see that.”

  MAISY

  We’ve been playing the Name Game for most of the morning, or what I’ve thought of as the morning, we’ve stopped for snacks, hot drinks and cold. Some of it tasted grim, but most of it was pretty good. One tasted like peanut butter milkshake and honestly I am starting to see the positives of this little adventure. Tark and Abner actually seem like pretty good...people. Once you get past the claws and the fangs and the cat-like heads. Abner had me identifying body parts, and their fur is incredibly soft. They have large, pointed, very expressive ears that taper to a tuft, two tails that darken toward the tips. Abner seems to be a bit ticklish on his foot pads, which were just like that of a domestic cat, just massive. He also seems to have a very sensitive tail from the way he leapt across the room, I mortally embarrassed myself with that one. The way Tark laughed at him was very...human. The way he then tried to steal my shirt was not. But they must be very intelligent creatures, and he didn’t push the subject. He must have felt at the time he was doing the right thing? And he backed straight off as soon as I made it clear I didn’t like it. Still no one has tried to do anything unpleasant or actively hurt me…I wish they would take the damn collar off though.

  The three of them vary in shade and fur length and height and build. They are very easy to tell apart, and now that I’m growing more comfortable, they are very pretty to look at. Like a tiger at the zoo, but this one’s wearing a tight-fitting space age uniform and trying to talk to you.

  We are going so fast I have not a hope in hell of learning the growly noises that Tark spits out when he points at something, and he’s making no effort to say what I’m saying either.

  I’m hoping there’s a point to all this.

  We have what seems like a lunch break and he’s fed me some more strange bits and bobs. I feel like Alice in Wonderland just eating and drinking random things and waiting for something to happen. I chuckle and Tark tilts his head at me curiously. “It’s nothing, this just reminded me of a story from home.” He makes a circling gesture with his paw...almost like a carry on? So I start telling him the plot of the movie of Alice in Wonderland, or what I can remember about it. I tell him that I never read the book, and somehow it’s nice that he doesn’t understand. He’s not judging. He’s nodding at me. I know he doesn’t have a clue what I’m saying but it’s nice, sitting here talking and eating. It’s nice, and strangely...normal.

  I finish eating whilst I’m talking, and then he stands and does his follow gesture, so I do. He takes me a few doors down, and we immediately go down some stairs into some sort of cargo bay, I guess. There’re hundreds of things stored here by the looks of it, things in boxes and crates of all sizes.

  He starts rummaging through boxes and moving crates around, he then sits an empty lidless crate next to me.

  Then he starts producing clothes. Lots of clothes. He hangs them carefully over the sides of boxes and indicates me toward them. I pick through them, some things wi
ll obviously never fit, if for no other reason than I don’t have eight arms or four legs, and I’m not four feet tall or ten feet tall. But I find a few things that could be cinched in to make workable dresses, a pair of trousers that would work if I roll them up, and a couple of almost jumpers that have slits right up one side. If I make that the back and tie the ends, it’ll be fine. It looks like it was made for something with wings. Seemingly no underwear at all though. Tark points at the things I’ve chosen, one at a time, and barks a noise. Oh yeah, back to the Name Game, and I dutifully name them, more or less. He puts away my rejects and then puts my chosen things in the empty box.

  Then he takes out piles of large material. It’s very soft and warm feeling, and he lets me choose a few colours and sizes. I don’t know what they actually are, but I’m thinking I could use them as towels or blankets at a pinch if he’s letting me have this stuff. I’m starting to see this as a shopping expedition as he puts more things in the box.

  Then comes a brush and a comb, which we both name, what looks like a toothbrush and a bottle of pills. I shake them at him frowning.

  He scratches his head a minute, a very human like gesture, and then taps the bottle, holds up one clawed finger and then mimes brushing his fangs with the toothbrush.

  Oh right, I nod enthusiastically. I guess it’s toothpaste.

  Then he produces wrapped bars and puts them one at a time to my nose, I choose the one that I like the smell of the most, although I couldn’t describe the smells because I have nothing to compare them too. It was kind of floral, but lemony at the same time.