An alien meets human's pet cat and has an existential crisis dealing with the fact that their seemingly sane friend keeps a tiny ferocious predator around and thinks it is cute. -- Anon Guest
"[GENDER PRONOUN] is just an old softie," should definitely be classified as words of impending horror. Brex had just been told not to mind Meep, and then spotted a low, fast shape zip through his peripheral vision. Human Pod had assured him, "He's just an old softie, really."
It was at that moment, several doors and opening procedures away from the airlocks, that Brex remembered that Humans regularly make pets out of predators. That was why he scanned the room for safe retreat areas and said, "He's not going to attack me, is he?"
Human Pod looked up from inspecting various vessels. Ze hadn't said anything about small fast streaks of motion in random corners. "Huh? Oh, he might find your feathers interesting, but if you stay still, he'll get bored pretty quick."
Brex looked for a high perch to roost on and came face to face with what had to be Meep. His first thought was, Oh [EXCREMENT] it can climb! It was staring with slit-eyed avariciousness at Brex's crest.
"Can he see movement?" asked Brex, trying very hard to take slow, shallow breaths and not move anything... even involuntarily. The creature before him was mostly black, with patches of brown, so it wasn't a Skitty. Yet it shared many common features with the Skitties' appearance. Compact quadrupedal anatomy, flexible tail. Claws and sharp teeth.
"He hunts movement. Don't worry, Meep has at best one brain cell. Give me a moment." Pod rummaged in a box and brought out a small device. A click, and a wiggle of the Human's finger and a small red dot was jiggling on the wall nearest to Meep but away from Brex.
Meep turned to stare, then attacked the dancing dot, much to the amusement of Human Pod. Brex took the opportunity to back away from the beast.
"It's okay," Pod cooed, aiming the dot closer and closer to hirself. "I'm going to let him kill it and then you can make friends while he's busy with the dried anchovy." A tiny stick of a fish between Pod's fingers. "Once he sees you as a friend, you'll be fine. Chin scritchies win him over every time. Well. Chin scritchies and dried anchovies..."
It took some convincing. This predator was fast, agile, and potentially deadly... and apparently could lose an intelligence test to a house brick.
"When you knock around various space lanes, you really want a dumb [INTERCOURSE] cat. This guy has nothing behind the eyes and I love him."
Meep was currently studying the dried fish in Brex's fingers. It knew one of these things was food, and the thing holding it had to be friend. Meep was currently using all of his limited mental power to work out which was which.
"Scritch him on the chin," urged Pod. "He'll work it out quicker."
Quicker, Brex would learn, was a relative evaluation. Meep truly did not possess much in the way of brains.
It was still unnerving, pre-applied soft paws or not, to have a predator grasp his hand and run over his skin with a tongue made to strip flesh from bone. On the other hand, reaching out to touch a predator and have the creature appreciate that contact was an experience that could last Brex a lifetime.
He was still trying to figure out if that experience was positive or negative.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / swillklitch]
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