writing prompt: andreil adopting their cats. how they found sir and king, the process of the names, etc.
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They haven’t really discussed it before.
Bee mentioned it in session in Andrew’s last year, and another time during his first months in Boston, the dreary stretch of monotonous days passing by. Since they moved to Denver, however, neither of them has felt the need for more company.
So it’s a surprise when Neil calls Andrew at six-thirty on a Saturday morning, right when he’s supposed to be out for a run.
“Are you hurt?” is the first thing Andrew asks, listening to the static of Neil’s panting breath.
“No, I'm fine.” He sounds distracted. Andrew draws back the covers and gropes in the morning light for pants. “But I think you need to come get me.”
Neil is at a park five minutes away by car, halfway through his usual route. Andrew almost misses him in the rising light, crouched next to a tottering pile of garbage from an overflowing bin.
He’s also taken off his jacket and holds it bunched up against his chest. Andrew immediately tenses: he knows Neil wouldn’t lie to him about being hurt anymore, but they're both familiar with what someone trying to pressurize a wound looks like.
Neil looks up when he stops the car right next to him. His loose body language tells Andrew enough to realize he’s indeed not injured.
“I found something,” he says as Andrew comes next to him.
“A good explanation as to why you woke me up before nine on a Saturday?”
Neil doesn’t answer and shifts his grip on his jacket, revealing what must be the ugliest animal Andrew has ever seen.
“You found a rat.”
Neil actually rolls his eyes. “It’s not a rat. It’s a cat.”
It doesn’t look like a cat. It has a face, presumably four legs, one and a half ear, and it’s so small it could fit in Andrew’s palm.
“And that concerns me how?”
“I thought we could take it in.”
Andrew doesn’t need to think about it. “No.”
“It needs help or it’s going to die.”
“You’re spent too much time with Wymack,” Andrew says, aware it isn’t another refusal.
He turns away back to the car, climbs into the driver’s seat and closes the door, waiting for Neil. Either he dares to risk Andrew’s anger by bringing the ugly thing in the car, or he doesn’t and the thing goes back to what it was doing before Neil picked it up, which is dying in a pile a trash.
Neil knocks on the passenger window with his elbow, looking down pointedly at his arms full of filthy cat. Andrew stretches across the seats and pops the door open forhim.
“We need a vet,”Neil says. “There’s a clinic open all day three streets away from here.”
They drive in silence, mostly because Andrew doesn’t care enough to make conversation and partly because the thing in Neil’s arms—he hasn’t even put it in his lap so as not to jostle it, seeing as neither of them is sure it would survive it—is too weak to make a sound.
There’s no one in the vet clinic, thankfully. Andrew isn’t sure he could stand noise and conversation on top of the weird smell in the waiting room, like dry kibble and dog and hospital. Neil brings the miserable animal to the counter where a tired-looking secretary waves him to a back door.
“Do you wantto come in too?” she asks Andrew.
Neil stops on the threshold of the consultation room, looking over his shoulder. It’s a clear choice. Andrew sighs inwardly and slips into the room behind Neil. It doesn’t mean he has to like it.
They determine quite easily that the cat is a stray, undernourished and full of fleas and ticks, barely a month old. The vet bathes the cat, treats its wounds and writes a prescription to try to make it live the day, talks about coming back for vaccines when it’s got some strength back.
Andrew doesn’t listen, though he remembers everything anyway. They wrap Neil’s jacket in a plastic bag, to get rid of, which is a win Andrew can admit he didn’t expect to come from adopting a stray kitten off the street.
Andrew doesn’t immediately start the car when they come out of the clinic with a newly washed cat. It still dozes in Neil’s lap, only now Andrew can really see how ugly it is, withoutthe filth and clotted blood in its patchy hairs.
“Are wekeeping her?” Neil asks, looking at Andrew with his usual intensity.
It’s a yes or no question: they’ve grown out of their truth and trade game years ago. Now these are given for free, so Andrew knows that Neil will respect his decision. He might try to convince, but he won’t impose.
Andrew remembers the conversations with Bee and, beyond that, the old reasoning of wanting to feel needed to get himself out of bed in the morning. Bee had talked of therapy animals and incentive. Andrew sees a life depending on him, once again.
“I’m not feeding it or cleaning after it,” Andrew says, looking away.
“Oh, look, she’s a tortoiseshell,” Neil says when they drive back home, the back seat full of things Andrew had only ever seen in a store’s aisle from afar.
He starts the car up to drown the sight of Neil’s smile and pulls out of the parking spot, accepting Neil’s instructions to the closest animal store. Neil stays inside, forced put by the sleeping creature in his lap. Andrew suddenly sees one very useful solution to at least one of his problems in the future.
Neil clicks on something and angles his phone at Andrew at a red light. It’s a picture of cat, black, brown, and orange. It’s not too ugly, if theirs can ever grow out of its battered state.
Andrew glancesat the phone without answering. Neil hums and keeps scrolling on the internet, probably measuring the depth of his incompetence in taking care of an actual living creature.
The cat is still sleeping. Andrew drops the shopping bags in the kitchen.
“How will we name her?” Neil asks as they step inside.
“Did you buy a cat bed?” Neil asks.
“It’s a she,” Neil says.
“It can sleep on a blanket until we’re sure the fleas are gone,” Andrew says, unfolding the cheap plaid blanket he bought. “It’s been sleeping in trash so far, I don't think it’ll mind.”
“So you've said.”
They install the blanket in a nest in the living room, then Andrew steps in the kitchen to make coffee. He’s been awake for three hours and it’s barely past nine.
“What are we going to name her?” Neil says again, plopping bread in the toaster.
Andrew shrugs. “Aren’t you the one who’s had twenty-two different identities?”
“It’s not the same,” Neil protests. “It’s a cat. I can’t call it Philip or Tom.”
Neil doesn’t seem to catch on the look that Andrew sends him. Andrew’s childhood might have generallybeen a long dark nightmare, but at least he had access to popular culture.
“I’ll ask,” Neil says.
Nicky is the first one to answer, his messages full of emojis and too much punctuationas usual. Andrew quickly leaves the chat. Hopefully they’ll be too busy fawning over the cat to add him back for a few days.
He goes back into the living room, crouching over the sleeping cat, and snaps a few pictures. A second later, Andrew’s phone buzzes to life on the counter with a notification to the Foxes’ group chat.
Neil spends the day in the living room, using his phone more in a few hours than Andrew has ever seen him do. At one point he rolls his eyes, mutters, “I give up,” and spends several hours on his laptop looking up cat care.
It’s after dinner that he finally plops down on the couch with his usual cup of tea.
“I made them vote on names,” he says. “Nicky just sent me the results. Behold—” he squints at the screen—“Sir Fat Cat McCatterson? Oh, I forgot to tell him she’s a female.”
Andrew looks at the cat, still asleep in its nest next to the couch, and back at Neil for a solid minute.
“It’s the skinniest cat I’ve ever seen,” he says.
“Nicky found it funny. You don’t like it?”
“I don’t care,” Andrew says, which is true.
It’s a stupid name, but they only have one cat, so it’s not like there’s any risk of confusion if Andrew just calls it “cat”.
