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1. Minette
He was tired. He was always tired.
It was far too loud here.
Below him, the streets echoed strangely with the riotous turmoil of Paris’s thousands. Noise, with nowhere to go, bounced back and into itself in a dizzying cacophony.
He’d been in the city for almost a month, and the noise still set his teeth on edge. There was no escape from it.
His apartment was worse than outside.
People - moving, cooking, humming, shouting, crying. No matter how softly they existed, there was no relief for him - not with his accursedly good senses. Any sound from the other residents seemed to spiral up to meet him, to echo around the empty room he now claimed as his home. The clattering of dropped dishes, the sounds of water, the rustling of bedsheets and blankets, the creaking of old floorboards.
The only true peace was long past dark, when everyone who resided within the rotting pile of apartments were sleeping exhaustedly.
But even then, there was still noise. The sounds of the building itself, as it creaked and groaned, trying and failing to adjust to the dropping temperature which came at the end of each day. The scratching and gnawing of the mice, running rampant in the walls. Though they had begun to avoid his walls - something about him seemingly driving them away, some prey instinct too ingrained into their small minds to ignore - he could still hear them in the rafters and the hallway outside, scrounging for food to feed their screeching young.
And even in the depths of night, there were still the noises of the residents, even if they mostly dissipated - snores, quite conversation - other louder sounds he tried desperately to ignore.
He’d given up trying to read, his thoughts too scattered to pretend he was making any progress. The couple in the rooms below his were arguing, and the disagreement had reached a fever pitch, shrill and grating, before they’d resolved whatever it had been about with a different sort of passion, which showed no signs of slowing, even past dark. He’d heard the angry complaints of other residents, someone shouting up the stairs from the first floor for the two to shut up. But even if the argument was now only mildly disturbing for everyone else, he could still hear every word from his space.
If he wasn’t so tired himself, he’d probably be cursing his creator for subjecting him to this new sort of torture. But as it was, he was too exhausted to do much but sit with his back to the chimney stack, ignoring the aching muscles in his body and the pain behind his eyes, trying to push out the noise.
He hated this city - his existence.
(He should have let himself die in the arctic. He deserved such a fate - What sort of fool was he, to try and carve out a pretend life among men? He was - Him.)
He wanted to sleep. He wanted to be able to sit and read and not have his mind drawn towards any noise, instincts still driven by paranoia and fear at being seen, even if he knew how to hide, now.
He had not slept in several nights - there was always too much noise, and no way to drown it out. Not by determined thought or written word or his own crawling apathy.
He hated how his ears would not let him ignore the sounds of drunken singing, coming from several streets over, or the sounds of a door slamming, a bottle rolling across cobblestones, rats and other such creatures fighting in the alley nearby, a strange and faint noise of rumbling -
The rumbling noise was new. He raised his head tiredly, wondering if this was at last a sign of his sleep-deprived misery.
He looked up and saw a cat.
He blinked, several times, not sure if he was actually seeing reality. Perhaps this was some sort of hallucination.
The cat was sitting on the edge of the roof tiles, head turned towards the alleyway, across the roof from his place.
It was very small, its pelt a sort of ghostly white broken up by splotches of black and orange that reminded him of fall leaves. Its sides were heaving, in and out, keeping a smooth rhythm.
He must have moved, because its head turned to look at him, blue eyes staring straight at him.
He realized, his slow mind finally catching up, that the sound was coming from the creature before him.
It was purring. The noise filled his ears, and the cacophony drifted away, almost without him noticing.
He stared, entranced. He wasn’t sure if he was awake or not. He’d read about a cat’s purr, about the soft noise and the comfort it brought. He hadn’t realized it would be so warm a sound - something like sunlight, of contentment and the soft absence of worry.
The tiny calico flicked an ear, rising - and he half-moved before freezing, not wanting it to leave.
(He’d never been so close to a cat, and it was foolish to believe the creature would not hiss and run from him in terror, it was foolish to believe the cat might see him as human enough to trust, but he wanted it to, the desire almost painful.)
The cat watched him for a long moment, its long speckled tail waving slowly though the air. He didn’t dare to move again.
And then the cat jumped down onto the roof. Closer to him. The rumbling sound, if anything, got louder.
He watched, not daring to breathe, as the cat regarded him solemnly, still purring.
And then it shook itself, mewed (the sound loud enough for him to flinch) and then it started to walk towards him.
It padded, still purring across the roof on even strides, tail swaying behind it. It paused in front of him, and mewed again.
He didn’t dare move. If he moved, he might scare it, and he couldn’t bear the though of scaring it.
The cat blinked slowly, and (still purring) leaned forwards.
He gasped, breathlessly, as its head gently bumped against his leg.
The purring of the little thing was very loud, this close.
When he still didn’t move, it pressed itself fully against his legs, rubbing its cheek against the fabric of his pants.
The cat mewed again, something almost accusatory in its tone, butting into him again in the next moment.
His hand trembling, he reached out towards it, slowly, eyes wide. It would likely run, but - maybe if it was this close already -?
The cat noticed the encroaching limb, immediately skipped towards it - And then bumped its head directly into his palm.
He was pretty sure he made some wordless noise, because the cat began purring, somehow, louder.
But instead of running, the cat moved forwards so it could thoroughly rub its face along the edges of his fingers.
Moving as slowly as he could, he curled his fingers, gently running a shaking hand down the cat’s spine. It arched its back to meet his hand, creating the pressure he didn’t dare attempt for fear of hurting the creature. It mewed, he thought, happily, turning around below his hand so he could pet it again, hand still trembling.
If it feared him, it would have run by now.
Something like awe in his chest, he carefully pet along the cat’s spine as it continued to purr, leaning into every careful touch as though it liked him, as though he was a trusted friend -
(He was pretty sure he was crying, at this point.)
The cat’s fur was unbelievably soft, its whiskers firm, its body warm. He could feel the bones of its spine and the edges of its skull as it pressed against his hand eagerly, its purrs echoing around him.
(He wished he had food he could give it - perhaps that might seal this tenuous connection, might let him experience this feeling of rare joy again.)
He gradually let the cat guide him into stroking down its sides, and noticed they were round - mores than he would think to be normal. He discovered the cat was a she, and the thought struck him at once -
“Are you going to have kittens?” he asked, almost breathless, fingers stilling over her rounded sides.
The cat blinked up at him and mewed, loudly, and then rolled onto her back beside him, paws kneeling at the air as she presented her white belly to him, still purring. He carefully, so carefully, stroked a hand down her stomach.
(He felt tears welling in his eyes, at the knowledge that a cat, let alone a possibly pregnant cat, would trust him to this degree - he’d done nothing to deserve this joy, yet found himself striving to keep it, for as long as he might. )
He didn’t know how much time passed, as the cat continued to purr below his hands. He discovered she particularly liked when he scratched his fingers delicately along her tiny jaw, and that she had an approximately equal number of black and orange spots, with one particularly vivid orange spot over her left eye.
Eventually, the cat tired of his petting, and stood up, mewing at him with an insistent tone. He blinked back, unsure of what she wanted, until she tried to climb onto his lap.
A moment later, she had curled into a soft ball and settled into his lap, still purring.
He ghosted fingers over her spine as her purrs ever so slowly tapered into silence.
(Somehow, the noises of the city were quieter).
2. Jacques
He heard the sounds as he made his way home, several days later, coming from an alleyway he was unfamiliar with, several streets off of his usual route. The night was falling fast, with the lingering clouds, and the smell of warm rain and tempest air hung low, promising a storm. He’d debated taking the streets, but his rooftop route was faster, and felt safer, further away from lingering eyes.
The sound, cutting though the heavy air, was horrible. It was animal, and loud - a sort of screeching that had him flinching on instinct. It sounded like terror, inhuman desperation.
He found himself moving towards it, before he could think better.
(Once - before, in Orkney - he had seen a hare, bleeding in the grass, screaming as a stoat fell upon its neck. Its calls had sounded much like this, a cry of desperation before it was cut short.)
He found the source of the sound in a alley, behind a butcher’s shop. He gagged at the smell of blood, leaning over the edge of the shadowed roof to see. A crate, its lid held down by another stacked on top of it in the small wedge of space between the road and the back door. He could see flickers of light, people moving back and forth on the other side of the door. There were shouts, coming from inside, which he could hear all too easily, even with the screeching from the crate.
‘- Kill the mangy thing, I won’t have it skulking back inside again -“
“We ought to drown it - stupid tom keeps coming back, I told you shooing it off wouldn’t work -“
“It nearly tore my arm off, you want to try wrestling it into a sack?”
“Well, we need to kill it -“
A low sort of scream from the crate cut through the words - whatever was inside was terrified. The voices paused, but turned back to their argument over methods. He could hear the thing inside scrambling at the lid, panting heavily. It wasn’t a dog, it wasn’t whining. No wild animal would be so deep inside Paris - which meant it had to be a cat.
His fingers dug into the gutter pipe, which groaned in protest. He thought of Minette. He thought of the desperation he’d felt, so long ago, at the chase through the forests, a bullet hole burning through his shoulder. He thought of the terror in the eyes of the dying hare.
He didn’t need more encouragement.
He took in a slow breath. Then he moved.
Silently and quickly, he dropped into the alley, landing much like a cat, the irony not escaping him. He watched the door, unblinking, ready to lunge for it to hold it closed. He moved towards the stack of crates. The creature inside fell silent, panting loudly. He prayed it would not cry out. Even though he was holding his breath, the smell of stale blood was overpowering. He reached the crates, and wincing, pressed his hand down on the lid to keep it shut, moving the second box aside fluidly. In the next moment, he had the box with the cat against his chest. He glanced at the door - they were still arguing, louder, the insults growing with the disagreement. He eyed the space. The roof of the butcher was one floor shorter than the surrounding buildings, squat. If he backed towards the street…
He backed away from the shop, silent, praying the animal would not cry out as he clutched the box tightly to his chest.
He lunged forwards, taking two long strides, and leapt -
The cat yowled in shock as they hit the shop roof, and there was a shout from inside, but he was already leaving it behind, scrambling up the side of the building and away as the door slammed open and the shouts rose into the stormy air -
He ran.
It did not take long to return to his own roof, the box still held against himself. He was panting nearly as much as the cat, though not with the same sort of terror. Minette, he noted, had not yet arrived, a fact he was glad for. His food for the day was still safe in the pockets of his clothing, the fish he’d begun to buy for Minette carefully packed away, none of it lost in his run, thankfully.
He took a moment to breath, sinking into a crouch within the shadows of the roof. he could hear the usual noise of the apartments, half distant. Somewhere, he could hear some instrument stumbling through repetitions of some song - after a moment he placed it - Frère Jacques. He’d heard it, learned the little tune inadvertently through the paper-thin walls of the first apartment he’d had residence in (before he’d become too suspicious to the owner and had been chased away), as the drunk living below him had been overly fond of it, to the disdain of his neighbours.
Carefully, he set the box down, hand on the lid, in the middle of his roof. He took a breath. Then he lifted the lid away, and moved back.
Instantly, a shape burst from the crate like lightning, moving to the shadowy chimney before stopping. Its spine was arched, and its grey fur was in disarray, stained and clumping. Its eyes were green, raging and wild. It saw him, and hissed, long and low.
He didn’t bother trying to get closer, as it was clear the cat would not have appreciated the gesture. Instead, he set the crate aside, and started routing round in his pockets for Minette’s fish - hopefully, she wouldn’t mind sharing. He’d get more to make it up to her tomorrow.
He tossed over the scrap of fish as well as he could. The cat (tomcat, he noted) growled and glared, but after only a moment had ducked down to devour the morsel. Then, with a final flash of green eyes, he darted over the rooftop, snarling as he passed close by, and was gone.
“Jacques,” he muttered to himself, hearing the final notes of the tune still echoing in the stormy wind. It was as good a name as any.
(He didn’t expect the tomcat to come back - but the next day, he was lurking in the chimney shadow, across the roof from Minette, who regarded him with wary curiosity. He greeted the tomcat, and the tomcat hissed at him. But he didn’t leave.)
3. Cat
He didn’t like it when it rained in the city. It wasn’t the same as in the wildernesses he’d left behind - here, the rain seemed to draw cold that lurked below his skin closer to the surface, and it drowned the rooftops enough to make them dangerous if not downright suicidal to risk. It made people angrier, more drawn to suspicions, and he’d learned to adapt his path home to a more circular route that kept him away from those who’d call for policemen when the weather turned. It was April, and the city was sodden, rain clogging around the gutters and creating tiny dams of refuse that quickly grew into puddles.
His feet were wet. He needed to replace his boots - hassle that the process was. Find a better company. (Last time - the first time - he’d gone to a cobbler himself, one from the darker districts of Paris. The man had been horrified at him - but the Frankenstein money had soothed the way. Not that the money had done much - the boots had started to fall apart within weeks, and only then he'd realized he'd been swindled. (It had been a reminder - he wasn't trusted. He wasn't safe, anywhere, not really, no man would look at him with anything like kindness. He couldn't let his guard fall, lest it get him hurt again.)
And now, his boots (and his socks, and the ends of his trousers) were soaked. At least the oilskin coat wicked off the water from his upper body.
This time, he’d do what he’d thought of, after meeting the first cobbler - write some sort of fancy letter to one of the reputable businesses closer to the richer districts, claim novelty or that he was making some sort of theatre puppet or advertising piece for some non-existent company - supply them with more money, and praise their workmanship - something like that. Spending that much at once would sting, but it would be worth it, to save himself from gangrene or anything worse.
He moved down the streets, eyes to the ground, to avoid meeting any gaze or gaining any attention. He simply wanted to be home, and dry.
Ahead of him in the gutter was a larger pile of trash, and he grimaced, moving to step past it -
the pile of trash let out a warning mrow.
His footsteps faltered, stopped. He looked closer.
Sitting on the disintegrating pile was a tiny sodden creature, staring up at him with a single yellow eye. The cat was practically invisible in the shadows of the street, coat made dark and shiny with rain in a way that remind him of his own coat.
“Hello,” he said, quietly.
The cat mrrowed again, watching him. It looked as miserable as he felt. He felt a swell of sympathy, alongside wry amusement - it seemed he was gaining a talent for finding strays, even though he wasn’t looking for them.
He tired moving forwards, but the little thing tensed, tail lashing - he backed away. He didn’t want to scare it off, even if he probably wouldn’t be able to touch it - it was probably just hungry.
Sighing, he reached into his pockets and pulled out a scrap of food for the poor thing.
It kept up its warning noises even as it devoured the fish voraciously, almost startling him enough to laugh - it sounded ridiculous, halfway like a muttering man and halfway like a growling dog - not a catlike sound at all.
It finished quickly, and then sat on its rainy pile, watching him with its single eye. He watched it back, until he could no longer ignore how cold his feet were becoming, from his stillness. Sighing, he rose again. The cat skittered away and around him, crouching near the wall of the building beside, and still making strange not-cat sounds. He held out a hand, but the cat made no move to approach.
He smiled, despite himself, as he turned away to walk home. Strange creature.
He made it half a block before he heard a meow from behind him - he turned, and saw a flash of wet fur. A nearby pile of bottles let out a familiar un-cat-like growl.
Idly curious, he pulled out another piece of fish, tossing it towards the pile - a tiny paw flashed out, snagging it. More vocal eating growls followed.
Then, the cat peered around the corner, single eye wide. It blinked, once, and then opened its little mouth to make a noise -
It croaked.
He laughed, startled by the unexpectedness of the sound - it sounded nothing like a cat.
It tried again, and the sound was something closer to a normal meow, but still nowhere near the normal meow of a cat like Minette.
“Are you sure you’re actually a cat?” he asked, amused.
It squeaked, much like a frog, in reply.
He tossed it another piece of fish, grinning.
The little creature followed him all the way to the apartment, and then up the roof. He resigned himself to having collected another stray when it he came to the roof the next night and found it waiting with Jacques and Minette. He was distantly surprised to realize he felt content, sitting there on the drying tile with Minette purring in his lap, watching Jacques bat at the young cat, who danced away. At least if human company would be perpetually denied, he could have this scrap of happiness.