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“Um, baby, don’t be mad, okay?”
Rick looks up from the fridge where he’d been putting the leftovers from dinner away. What in the fuck is Harley talking about? She just went down to take the trash out!
What he sees is his girlfriend, with a suspicious lump under her shirt, looking guilty as hell.
Before he can ask what the hell happened, a little furry orange head pops out of the collar of her shirt, with a little inquisitive “mrow?”
“No, nope, we do not need a cat right now! I don’t even like cats!”
“Baby, she was out there all alone! I think she got abandoned.”
That makes him pause—an abandoned house cat is different from the stray that he had imagined.
She opens up her shirt and lets the cat—a very fluffy, rotund orange one—tumble out of her arms. She does a big stretch and a yawn before trotting over to him. He crouches down and holds his hand out for her to sniff. He has no idea why—he grew up with dogs his whole childhood and then didn’t have the time or energy for any pets once he joined the army.
The cat lets out another inquisitive chirp and headbutts his hand, before she starts purring.
“Baby, can we please keep her? Just until we can get her scanned for a microchip and checked out by the vet?”
He sighs. “Fine, we can keep her until then but we’re finding her another home after that. We don’t need a cat.”
They end up setting the cat up in the bathroom while Harley runs out to grab supplies like some cat food and litter. While she’s out, Rick has to listen to the most pathetic mews coming from the closed door and his heart can’t take it—she sounds so sad!
He ends up keeping her company in the bathroom and she’s so happy to see him that she immediately skips over to him and hops into his lap. She stretches her neck up to rub her head against his chest and then settles into his lap and starts purring away.
Rick is not a cat person—never has been—so why is he finding himself caring so much about this one
The cat falls asleep on him by the time Harley gets back.
The cat survives on her own in the bathroom overnight and in the morning Rick’s making a call to the vet office down the street. He tells them the situation that he and Harley have found themselves in and makes the appointment. But then they ask him, “So what’s the cat’s name?”
Fuck, he hadn’t thought that far ahead. He wracks his brain for a suitable cat name but this is really something Harley’s better at.
“Sir?” the receptionist on the other end of the line asks, when he takes too long to respond.
“Missile Launcher,” is what comes out of his mouth. “Uh, Missy for short.”
There’s no questions asked, which tells him maybe that’s not the weirdest name for a cat they’ve ever heard.
He hangs up and hears Harley cackling behind him.
“Missile Launcher?” she asks, once she manages to stop laughing.
“I panicked!”
That sends her into another laughing fit. He flips her the bird in response.
Once Harley finally stops laughing, she turns to the newly dubbed Missile Launcher, who’s curled up on the couch, purring contently. “What d’ya think, Missy? You like your new name?”
Missy chirps in response and Harley giggles as she scratches behind her ear. “Awww, ain’t you the sweetest thing ever! I’m gonna miss ya once we find your forever home. Unless…” she looks at Rick with those puppy dog eyes of hers.
He sighs and shakes his head. “We’re not keeping her, Harls.”
Missy takes that opportunity to roll over on the couch and present her belly to him and let out the tiniest little mew, as if to say, are you gonna pet me?
“So, good news,” the vet says, “other than a little matting in her coat and the fact that she could stand to lose at least three pounds, Missy here sounds and looks pretty healthy. She’s spayed, wasn’t declawed, doesn’t have fleas, and I’d estimate her to be around six or seven years old. We’ll scan her for a microchip in case a family is missing her but I’ll be honest, it’s not uncommon for us to see cats that were abandoned after their owners moved.”
Rick looks down at Missy—who’s currently huddled in his arms with her face jammed into his elbow like a furry little football. How could someone just abandon her like that?
“I’d also like to get some bloodwork too, just to make sure we’re not missing anything. I’ll have one of our techs go over the estimated fees for everything. Are there any other concerns you had that I didn’t address?”
He looks at Harley, who shrugs in response. “Nah, I think that’s it, doc. How long should we hold out on finding her owners before finding her somewhere else to go?”
“Oh, you’re not keeping her?”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” he admits, even if he has come around to the idea of maybe keeping the cat—who seems to have latched onto him, of all people, as her favorite person.
“Well, the law here dictates that you actively look for an owner for at least seven days before you look for other options, whether that’s keeping her yourself or finding another forever home for her.”
Harley gets to work making missing cat posters to hang up around the neighborhood and posts in all the local online groups as soon as they get home. Seven days go by without a single person reaching out to claim her.
“Okay Mistopher,” Harley says sadly, while the cat is curled up on her lap. “Looks like it’s time to find ya a forever home.”
Missy tilts her head and lets out a soft mew before headbutting Harley’s hand.
“I mean,” Rick finds himself saying, “maybe we don’t have to find someone else to take her.” He’s not getting attached—he’s not! He just thinks, maybe, that Missy seems to be really comfortable here and who is he to upend her whole life again?
“Baby, are you sayin’ what I think you’re sayin’?”
“I’m saying I think she should stay here. She seems to really like us and I don’t think it’s fair to her to pawn her off on someone else, that’s it! I’m still not a cat person!”
Harley cackles. “Oh you are totally turning into a cat person, Rick Flag! She’s got ya wrapped around her little paw already.”
Harley comes home a week later to find Missy strapped to Rick’s chest in a makeshift baby sling while he makes dinner.
“It’s not what it looks like!” he yells, when she immediately pulls her phone out to take a picture.
It had started with Missy jumping on the counter in an attempt to steal some of the ground beef he had browning in the pan on the stove.
“No, ma’am, that is not for you!” he had said as he tried to block her from getting to the stove.
Missy had chirped at him with a head tilt before immediately reaching a paw out towards the hot stove.
He’d panicked and immediately scooped her up while frantically googling how to make a baby sling out of a scarf. He knew he looked ridiculous once it was all said and done—one of Harley’s polka dot scarves wrapped around his body and an eighteen pound orange cat snuggled within it against his chest, purring contently.
Harley cackles as he tells her the story of how he’d gotten to where he currently is. “Oh, I knew you’d turn into one of those cat dads!”
“I’m not one of those cat dads!” he protests.
“Baby, who’s the one who’s bought approximately a bajillion new toys for her?”
“That’s not—” he starts to protest, but she keeps going.
“And who’s the one who keeps fallin’ asleep on the couch because she took a nap on your lap and now you don’t wanna move her?”
He doesn’t have a response to that.
“Baby, I’m just sayin’, ya didn’t need to use a baby sling for her. Ya could’ve just locked her in our room if you were worried about her.”
Missy chooses that moment to let out a happy chirp and nuzzle her face against his chest.
“You love her, just admit it!”
Instead of admitting anything, Rick just grumbles and turns his attention back to dinner.
Harley knows Rick isn’t ready to admit that he’s a cat person now, nor is he ready to admit how much he’s grown to love their new family member in such a short amount of time.
So she doesn’t say anything when she sees him boop Missy’s nose when he thinks her back is turned.
And she doesn’t say anything the week after that when she starts noticing him carting Missy around like a baby while he makes coffee for both of them.
And she definitely doesn’t comment (too much) on it when she finds him doing bicep curls on the couch using the cat as the weight. She does take a sneaky picture though.
She doesn’t even say anything when she hears him having a full on conversation with the cat while she’s brushing her hair out after a shower and he thinks she can’t hear them.
“mrrp?” Missy chirps.
“You’re right, we can come up with something better for her birthday.”
It’s not until she witnesses Missy pulling Rick out of a panic attack just by licking his forehead and purring directly in his ear that she realizes just how much of a gift this cat is for their family.
She’s on the couch with Rick’s head in her lap and all eighteen pounds of chunky orange cat perched on his chest. He’s running his fingers through Missy’s fur as his heart rate goes back to normal. “Harls?” he says quietly.
“Yeah, baby?” she answers, as she cards her fingers through his hair.
“I’m really glad we kept Missy.”
She smiles down at him softly. “I’m really glad too.”
“I think I might be a cat person now.”
She throws her head back and laughs.
Yes, she thinks, Missy the chunky orange cat has been the perfect addition to their family—even if it took Rick an entire month to admit it.