Brazilian Munkupounce is rather adorable. Munkustrap just keeps making eye contact with him and smiling, and they have their little inside jokes....
Pounce understands his little looks and gestures, and copies him...
... and they're such good buddies that Munk will definitely let him and Tumble get away with anything, right?
... oh.
betrayal.
He can't believe it. He has to stop and check. Munkustrap won't even look at him.
But all is soon forgiven. He spots a leg! He can cuddle the leg.
Munkustrap spotted the incoming boy and was expecting him to go between the legs - shifting his weight to give him room - but a leg cuddle is good too. He welcomes him in and gives him a pat.
They're good friends again!
Brazil 2010: probably Julio Mancini as Munkustrap and Rodrigo Werneck as Pouncival.
.... geez Misto, how come you get two Munk greetings
alonzo is chill about this, he's totally chill
yeet those babies it's okay they like it
Kade Wright as Munkustrap, Ibn Snell as Mistoffelees, Brian Craig Nelson and Taryn Smithson as Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer, Sammy Fossum as Alonzo, Dominic Fortunato as Pouncival, and Brendan Moran as Tumblebrutus. US tour 6, October 2022.
he needs all the love—and she needs all the spotlight so she can stare into the audience's soul in cryptid fashion and get all the attention.
.... it's okay, Carbuckety can get more than one chin-touch.
Alexander Auler as Munkustrap, Riccardo Sinisi as Carbuckety—in his final performance not only in that role but onstage in the Vienna revival! so he has reason to need extra onstage cuddles!—and Anastasia Bertinshaw as Jemima.
Two days before close—24/6/22—filmed by @cryptidvoidwritings and @falasta, and giffed with permission.
Kitten is feeling emotional. He needs a backrub. (With a bit of claw in it.)
(Well, it's the end of his final show in the Vienna production, so. He just needs lots of pettings.)
Riccardo Sinisi as Carbuckety and Alexander Auler as Munkustrap, with Ana Milva Gomes as Grizabella and Rory Six as Deuteronomy. Vienna revival, 24 June 2022; filmed by @cryptidvoidwritings and @falasta.
geez, sinisi!buckety, how come mum lets you get two tender pets from The Aloofest Munkustrap
no wait come back he wants more! no pettings are ever enough for the neediest Carbuckety
(Especially in this final week of the show.)
Florian Fetterle as Munkustrap—his final performance for the production—and Riccardo Sinisi as Carbuckety. Vienna revival, 21 June 2022, filmed by @cryptidvoidwritings and @falasta.
ok so who wants platonic tuggerpounce h/c after pounce has been whumped by macavity because pounce is engaged to macavity's brother and he's going to take out all his resentment on him now he's got him and forget all that the point is h/c cuddles and whump and also agonised munkustrap trying to fix it from a distance. plus background tuggershanks. and magic rings of morse-like communication.
also tugger is werewolf and munk and pounce can shapeshift into actual cats or humans or anthro cats because what is a beauty and the beast AU if the beast and beauty can't retain a bit of non-human afterwards.
yes ok good that's what i thought
(cw for mention of recent sexual assault, sorry pounce. also obvs pounce is a young adult here, not an actual child, despite tugger calling him kiddo all the time.)
also. also pounce thinks it's very important you all know how indignant he is over the fact that he has fleas ok.
---
(brief sample:)
“First things first,” Tugger said cheerfully to the air, “you stink. Bath for you, kiddo.”
He strolled over to the bed, shrugging his cloak off his shoulders, and deposited it and his precious burden on the bed together.
The cat stared up at him from the cavern of its folds, ears half laid back and fur bristling so much it almost obscured the sharp angles of ribs and hip bones.
You wouldn’t even try to touch a real cat, if it had looked at you with that much fight-or-flight. But Pouncival was in there somewhere—who knew how deeply—and he’d come to Tugger. After Tugger had changed into his wolf shape and chased away the stray dogs who’d been hassling him, after almost an hour of lounging around outside the crevice where he’d wedged himself, looking non-threatening and making soft reassuring noises and letting Pounce drink in his scent. Eventually, eventually , he’d crawled out from under that pile of crates and huddled desperately up against Tugger’s flank.
He blew the shivering lump a kiss and strolled away from the bed, shedding his outer layers and plopping his boots down by the door.
(His ring was still vibrating, because Munk couldn’t take a hint. Tugger had lost count of the pulses so who knew what he was saying. Probably the obvious. Lots of desperate things.)
“Easier to get rid of them if you change back to human shape,” he added casually, downing a glass of water from the washstand then filling a shallow bowl. “Better hope you didn’t grab any ticks, by the way. The forests around here have some beauties. I got a couple last week, right up by my nadgers. Evil little buggers. Long fur in long grass is no joke, I’m telling you. If you don’t drink I’m telling Munk on you,” he added.
He wasn’t moving his hand fast, as he pushed the bowl toward Pouncival.
Pouncival flinched back automatically, all the same.
Tugger’s heart clenched. He poked his tongue out.
“Promise I didn’t gob in it.”
Pouncival still wouldn’t meet his eyes, but the cringe in his body language was now apologetic as much as it was fearful. Tugger didn’t like it any better.
But at least he crept forward, and lapped at the water.
Tugger’s other hand flexed in his lap, fighting the urge to reach out and touch.
Even as a cat Pouncival was always noisy. He made all sorts of sounds, all sorts of expressions and chatterings, no matter what mood he was in. But now, he was absolutely silent: Tugger had heard nothing from him but a couple of defensive hisses, right before he’d shot in under those crates.
It was wrong. Everything about this was wrong.
But he’d known that from the moment Munkustrap had contacted him via the rings more than a month ago, to say that Macavity had taken his betrothed.
“Well, hey, I guess it’s handy to have a wandering hero about the place after all.”
One of Pouncival’s ears pricked up—a faint puzzlement, a faint lopsidedness. A faint trace of him.
Tugger grinned at him, and said, “Hey, you wanna—?”
Footsteps and a metal clanking sounded in the corridor outside, and the door handle turned. In a blur of panic, Pouncival disappeared under the bed.
… why wasn’t Munkustrap here. Tugger was not cut out for this sensitive comforting crap.
He and Pounce always had got on well, but you couldn’t really seduce a guy when he was the son of your not-so-casual regular hookup, and you couldn’t seduce or annoy him into a good humour when he was a quivering wreck who’d almost certainly been raped over and over for weeks. And seduction and annoyance were 80% of Tugger’ toolkit for making people get over bad shit.
In short, this whole situation was an attack on him personally .
The landlady’s sons dragged the buckets of hot water over to the tub in one corner of the room, while Tugger lounged on the bed, flirted carelessly, and incidentally distracted attention from any signs of cat.
“Didn’t you have a bath just this morning?” panted one lad, disgruntled as he dragged into place the screen which sectioned off the bathing area from the view of the door and most of the room.
(There were fleas in the bedding at this place already, so Tugger wasn’t about to feel guilty for bringing in stray animals who might or might not also be cute but traumatised boys.)
“What can I say?” replied Tugger, with automatic arrogance; “looking this good takes work, baby.”
If he’d actually been listening he would have despaired of himself—that banter wouldn’t impress a twelve-year-old—but all his attention was on his senses, not his tongue. He couldn’t smell or hear so keenly in this shape as when he was a wolf, but everything in him was focussed on a small furry shivering lump under the bed.
The boys left.
Tugger flopped onto his back, and looked at the ceiling.
The ring quivered on his finger. Munkustrap, asking.
Tugger tuned it out—it wasn’t like he knew any more than Munkustrap did anyway—and stared at the ceiling, eyes half-lidded.
He’d been hunting for traces of Macavity, of Pouncival, for weeks. He’d found nothing. Now here Pouncival was, cat-shaped, starving, in the middle of a nothing-much town.
The big question was: where was Macavity?
How long since Pounce had got away? How had he got away? Where was Macavity? Was he on their trail? How quickly would Tugger have to—
The lump under the bed stirred.
“Do you even want a bath?” Tugger asked of the ceiling, “because if you don’t, I’m gonna be on that like a shot. You should’ve seen the fish that man at the corner of Chancegate and High tried to sell me this afternoon, it was… well, high .”
The twin triangles of ears rose up over the side of the bed.
(... he was standing on his hind legs . Exposing his belly!)
Tugger flopped his head sideways to look at the beloved asymmetrical face, and cocked an eyebrow.
… Pouncival’s eyes dropped, and his ears flicked backwards.
“... okay. Bath,” Tugger pointed left, “or no bath?” he pointed right.
Pouncival glanced almost longingly toward the left, but then lingered in the middle, staring at the quilt.
Tugger huffed out air at him. “Just go take a bath, babes.” He sat up, rolling his body away at the same time so he wasn’t suddenly looming over the cat. “That soap should take care of the crawlies. Yowl if you want me.”
… fell kinda flat.
He didn’t look back. He was busy at the table with his maps. If Pouncival had turned up here, and now, then that meant… all these trajectories and routes he’d plotted on the map, when he was trying to find them… not this or that, but maybe up there in the northern mountains… or had he fled down the river, and come up from there? Timing, timing… how long would it have taken him? Had it been all on foot? All on paws? How long since he’d…
