by P D Singer
Purring filled my silence as I wondered if he’d understand how important this really was. We stroked my furry buddy—would he get along with the other furry residents of this little studio?
“Dante,” I said, just to hear it out loud, “you like cats.”
On Call: Cat Clinic
Dante woke me with kisses, his full dark lips finding mine with sweet precision. I rolled us over, his long warm body covering mine, skin to skin all the way down. We hadn’t put anything on last night after hours of making love—we hadn’t seen each other all week. I think he’d only slept enough to recharge; his cock lay stiff next to mine. A quick inventory to decide what to do made me pause, but he had already done that. Patting my legs apart, he rubbed a gooey handful of lube between my thighs, and another on my erection. I trapped his cock between my legs when he repositioned, and squeezed him tightly. I wanted to hold this man every way possible.
My own cock lay trapped between our bellies, the skin slipping against his stomach, rasped by the light coating of hair that decorated more than covered him. Every morning I woke up with Dante in my arms was a fresh day of wonder. I opened my mouth under his.
We thrust together, growing more frantic when he nibbled down my neck, settling in to work the big strap muscle on the side. I stretched to let him reach, and clasped his cock more firmly below. The direct circuit from neck to cock woke my orgasm—I clenched everything against the growing eruption, which shook me from head to toe, boiling through my groin. Dante held me through it, one strong hand on my ass, bucking harder when he was sure I’d finished. Maybe I held him too tightly—he collapsed against me once his own exquisite shudders had passed, leaving a warm stickiness that I was too sated to do anything about just yet.
“Mmm. How ‘bout we clean that up, take another little snooze, and I’ll make pancakes?” I offered, once he showed signs of functioning. I upped the offer with little fingerstrokes up and down his spine.
“Wish I could.” He glanced at the bedside clock. “I have to get up. It’s Shelter Clinic Day, Keith.”
“It’s Sunday, Dante.” I nibbled the edge of his little flat ear. “And I’m not on call this weekend.” Our social life had to accommodate my medical practice. His veterinary practice put the occasional spanner in the works, too.
“It’s my pro bono day at the shelter. You can sleep in if you want.” He peeled off of me, to the annoyance of my fat gray Harpo. No respecter of good sex, that one—he’d jumped up on the bed to flop on our legs before we’d finished the aftershocks.
I did want another hour of sack time but not alone, and not covered with cats, either. A small marmalade cat followed Harpo onto the bed, pussyfooting up to touch my nose with hers. Dante stroked her absently on his way to the bathroom.
“Uh, Dante?” I examined the little orange kitty. “This one isn’t one of ours, is it?” We had an ever-changing cast of characters, some regulars like his Domino and my Harpo, who was sixteen pounds of love and opinions, and some clients, who came upstairs with us—Dante hated to “keep them in jail because their families went out of town.” Dante also temporarily adopted kitties, usually before finding them homes with his clients. Waking up with a strange cat wasn’t entirely out of my experience.
He poked his head back into the bedroom, a toothbrush paused in his mouth. “No, Bitsy is a boarder, she’s going home tonight.”
She buzzed in my hands, accepting the caresses, and when I put her down on the floor, she scampered over between Domino’s feet, rolling to bat his legs. He squashed her down with a paw before toppling and swatting without claws. This happened frequently enough that we referred to it as “the floor show.”
“She acts like she’s home.”
“Yeah, she does. Are you coming?” Dante dug jeans and a scrubs shirt out of a drawer. “You don’t have to.”
“Sure.” We hadn’t been dating so long that I wanted to let him out of my sight for a chunk of Sunday. Maybe in a few months, or if we moved in together, I’d have enough time with him that a few hours wouldn’t gape like a wound.
Not that I understood quite what I’d do when we got there. Probably give rabies shots.
We pulled up at the shelter, a cinder block building visible from the west-bound highway. The office area we entered was sufficiently soundproofed that the barking was about ten percent of the sound that beat on us once we passed through to the animal area. Every cat in the place had to have had at least one nervous breakdown so far.
“The cat area is soundproofed!” Dante bellowed over the cacophony. “So is the surgery!” He led me into a restricted section, and the relative quiet let me breathe again.
“Hey, hey, Dr. Dante!” Volunteers in green shirt and staffers in blue greeted him like an old friend.
“This is my buddy, Keith.” Dante introduced me around. “What do we have for him to do?”
On of the staffers grinned. “Chad called in, family emergency. Keith, you could take over for him.”
“Okay, no problem. What do I do?” I could find the big muscle in the rear leg easily enough for vaccinations; I’d done it before when Dante was pressed for time.
“You get kitty-box patrol. I’ll show you where the stuff is.”
Just because I had years of experience and could also wield a pooper scooper quite adequately didn’t mean that’s what I wanted to do. Dante smiled though. “You don’t want to be assisting in surgery today, anyway, Keith. I have a couple spays and, oh, eight neuters.”
“You got that right.” Brrr. No. I knew it was part of his work, a backbone of his practice and probably the one hope these animals had of finding homes, but that didn’t mean I wanted to watch, or worse, help. Bring on the cat litter. I left him to scrub up and followed the staffer back through the din to the cat room.
It wasn’t rocket science, of course. The bank of cages had twenty-three occupants in twenty- two of the twenty-four cages, and every last one had a dirty kitty pan. I set to work.
Okay, it wasn’t what I usually did when it was a matter of volunteer work—I tended more toward the Peoples’ Clinic days that needed medical help for the species I specialized in, but hey, this needed doing and I’d volunteered. So far, two hissers, one back-out-of-reacher, several that permitted me to stroke them, and one that not only accepted caresses but dove into my hand.
Don’t rat me out—I stopped the latrine duty long enough to play with that one, a two year old blue cream (weird description on the tag—she looked gray and peach to me) female kitty with a shaven belly and dotted scars that meant Dante or a colleague had done a spaying recently. Damn, she was cute, playful, and loved my shoelaces. I hated to put her back in her cage, but there were so many yet to do.
“I’ll take you out after I’m done with the others,” I promised her, clicking the cage door shut. She stropped the bars, anxious for me to release her again.
People came through the cat room while I worked, meeting the kitties and starting the process of falling in love. I could hope both that my little blue cream friend would find a family and that she’d still be there to play with once my tasks were done. A few kitties left with people and a staffer, and two didn’t come back. I wished them long happy lives and lots of lap time. Harpo had come to my life from a shelter much like this one and I wouldn’t trade him for anything.
Done at last. I washed my hands in the utility sink, for the twenty-fourth time—handwashing is THE best preventative for spreading disease and don’t let anyone tell you different—and spoke again to the blue cream cat. “Ready to play, kitty?” She draped herself over my neck and licked my ear with her sandpaper tongue. I brought her to one of the “interview rooms” where she proceeded to demonstrate her great skills in scratch post use, toy swatting, and lap sitting. Her purring method was on the loud side. I didn’t want to put her back in the cage.
Dante found us there, dancing the feather on the stick over the floor for pounce training. “Having fun?”
“Yeah. Pawlina is a sweetie.�
� I patted the feather on my lap; she jumped in and nipped the string on the toy.
“Oh, you’ve named her.” Dante sat next to me on the bench. “That’s bad.”
“Bad? Oh. You mean, do I want to keep her?” I did. She purred so loud. Harpo would sound like a freight train with her. I could scritch one with each hand and get the most amazing noise.
“You’re already keeping her in your head, Keith.” Dante took the toy away from me and stroked her gently. She collapsed across my knees. “There’s a million cats out there, and a lot of them will tug at your heart. So many of them are anything but the Cat Who Walks By Himself. A lot of them really like people, and you’re going to meet one every time you walk in here. Are you going to want to bring somebody home every time, or am I going to have to leave you home on kitty clinic days?”
“Your viewpoint is skewed because you’ve spend your day castrating dogs and cats.”
“I’ve spent my day preventing kittens and puppies that have no hope of finding homes. There’s more animals than homes, but the ones I’ve neutered today have a chance. Keith, listen to me.” He turned my face to his, giving me dark solemn eyes. “You can’t bring back every appealing animal you see. I don’t keep every appealing animal I see, and a lot of them pass through my hands.”
“I know. You sleep with me but you’re a slut for cats.” Fluffy, marmalade Bitsy wouldn’t be there tonight. Would Pawlina?
“Keith, think. We have an established dominance hierarchy between Domino and Harpo, and the transients respect that. The ones that don’t stay caged. The fighting is minimal—it’s mostly floor show. Bring another permanent cat into that and we may never see peace again.”
“But…” I couldn’t promise to leave both cats at my place when I came to stay with him, and would NOT give up my nights in his bed. A chance met cat wasn’t worth my relationship, however young, with Dante. Sweet, smart, sexy Dante, who made my heart vibrate harder than purrs. “I’ll put her back in her cage.”
“You don’t have to.”
“You just said…”
“I did. But Keith, I can see it in your face—you’ve fallen in love. I won’t take that away from you.” He put his arm over my shoulders and pulled me near enough to kiss first the side of my head, and once I’d gathered enough wits to turn my face to his, my mouth. “We’ll bring her home and see if she can get along with everyone else. If she can’t, we’ll have to see.”
“I think she’ll do okay, and if not, we’ll know.” I wanted this kitty, but I understood exactly what he meant, and had to agree. We did have amazing stability with the pets, and I had hopes of combining our households one day. Dante was more important than any cat.
We rose to our feet and I pulled him tightly to me, finding his mouth and then his tongue. Homecoming would be all this and more. Dante was right—I had fallen in love. Twice.
Only once was with the cat.
On Call: Dancing
“Let’s go dancing tonight, Keith.”
I looked up in surprise at my new boyfriend. Dante hadn’t shown any interest in nightlife in the six weeks we’d been seeing a lot of each other. He was throwing some things into a pan in the kitchen, letting me lounge on the couch to play with his sugar glider. The little animal was climbing my sleeve while I twisted around to put her upside down—she’d right herself almost faster than I could reposition my arm. It had seemed a good entertainment for the evening, at least until it was time to take Dante’s clothes off.
“Dancing?” The thought filled me with fear. “Not one of my favorite things.”
“We don’t have to go all the time, but once won’t hurt you.” He flipped the contents of the pan with the spatula—the smell of sautéing peppers was wonderful. “You aren’t on call tonight; I don’t have any animals that need tending. We never go anywhere.”
I sat up and the sugar glider raced off to see what was on top of the python’s tank. Dante’s apartment looked like furniture in a pet shop—his career as a veterinarian followed him home every night, which was a matter of climbing the stairs from his clinic. My big gray tabby, Harpo, hopped up into the vacated space, shaking the entire couch. That cat did the opposite of pussyfoot—at least he washed his face like a normal feline.
“We go to the gym, we go out to eat, we go to the movies,” I reeled off. “Why dancing?”
“Those are all places where we’re really alone, if you think about it.” Something else hit the pan and sizzled. “And I like to dance.”
This was not good news. If I distracted him, maybe he’d put dancing off to another night. Snuggling up behind him, rubbing my groin against his ass, nibbling his little flat ear, got me a full body rub. “I like this kind of dancing,” I purred. “The prelude to the horizontal tango.”
Twisting in my embrace, Dante put his arms over my shoulders, waving the spatula behind my head. “It’s all a prelude to the horizontal tango,” he murmured between kisses, “but the music is better at Shenanigans.” The pan required his attention again, which was fine with me. I liked to press against his back.
“What if the white boy can’t dance?” I rubbed my cheek against the black fuzz of his hair.
“Everybody can dance. Don’t pull a stereotype on me.” He sounded irritated and took it out on the peppers he stirred.
“I’m not,” though I had, and thought I’d better switch tactics. “I’m a physiological marvel; they said so at med school. The only true and documented case of being born with two left feet.”
Dante wasn’t listening. “White boys can’t dance. Blacks have rhythm and big cocks. Stereotypes. I thought we were doing without those, Keith—we both know you aren’t a klutz and I don’t have a giant cock.”
“It sure felt big enough jammed into my ass last night,” I suggested. His thick six inches felt damned good in my mouth, my ass, my hand….“Let’s stay home and investigate.” I’d bottom for the next two weeks if it kept me off the dance floor.
“We can investigate after.” He turned to face me again, treating me to an appraising look from those deep brown eyes at close range. “Are you embarrassed to be seen out with me?”
“If I was, I wouldn’t go to church with you.” Diagnosing was a doctor’s business and I’d just found a relationship killer that had to be treated, stat. “What do I wear to Shenanigans?”
That earned me a smile. “Those tight black jeans will work, and wear the black ankle boots.”
“What about a shirt?”
“When you dance for me later, you’ll do it topless, but for the club, you can wear one of my silk T-shirts. It’ll fit like skin.” He rubbed a hand up and down my back—I responded by grabbing his butt. We kissed, but some little part of me was distracted by the knowledge that after he’d watched me dance, it would be he who was embarrassed to be seen with me.
All through dinner, Dante was cheerful, making me glad to have buckled on something that clearly made him happy. Whatever misgivings I had about the sort of figure I’d cut at the club were a lot less important than pleasing him, and his good mood was infectious. We laughed over little things and exchanged hot glances, each one a promise for what would come later. Besides, it might be a very short evening at the club—I had visions of some other doctor hauling me off in an ambulance, planning to pump me full of anticonvulsant medication at the hospital because he mistook my dancing for seizures.
I did the dishes while Dante dressed, a good compromise because he came out looking like a vision in a pearl grey V-neck silk T that showed off his buff body. It clung to the ridges of his lats and didn’t quite show every ripple in his abs, but it made me gulp. The tight black pants showcased his ass and muscular thighs, and he smelled wonderful.
“How many fights am I going to get into when the other guys start hitting on you?” I asked with my nose buried into the curve of his neck. “If the way you look doesn’t draw a crowd, then the way you smell will bring the hordes. It’s even better when you get sweaty.”
He dug strong
fingers into the tense muscles of my back. “Jealous?”
“Territorial.”
“I’m pretty good at saying no.” He bit my neck softly. “Except to you.”
Only the knowledge that he really wanted to go to the club kept me from dragging him to the floor right then and there, but one deep tonguing was all I took before we headed out the door. Harpo stayed the night with Dante’s cats when I came to stay with him—my cat gave me an ear flick on our way out, which I chose to interpret as “Have a good time.”
“I’m covered in cat hair,” Dante observed. His brown and white cat, Domino, had rubbed his shins in farewell. He brushed at his legs for most of the two miles back to my place, leaving traces of Domino in the passenger seat.
“I have a sticky roller; we’ll get you defurred.” That was the only downside to Harpo, too—there was always a cat hair on me somewhere.
Dante followed me into the apartment and lounged on the bed, watching me change clothes. “You clean up nice, too, you know,” he said as I pulled on the tight jeans. “It might be me getting into fights over you.”
“Yeah, right.” I made a face at him and dove into the black silk T-shirt he’d brought along.
That brought a throaty chuckle. He stood up in order to help me tuck the tails in. I wanted him to pull them out again—his hands on my hips and his mouth on mine fueled my desire. “Look at yourself.” He turned me toward the mirror and stood behind me, his dark face visible over my shoulder. “Better haircut, looks good.” He trailed a hand over my cheek. “Getting a lot of loving: happy face. All that gym time shows, lots of definition here, and this nice tight shirt to show it off…” He ran his hands down my torso to my hips. “Don’t you dare start sending signals like you might head to the back room with anyone, or there will be fights.”
“Clinging like a barnacle to your hand won’t send that sort of signal.” That was another thing that concerned me: what kind of gaffe would I commit? I put my hands over his where they rested near my groin. “Hey, are you going to want to dance with anybody besides me?” I met his eyes in the mirror.