Little paws make light work part 2:
Pt.1
Back at the refugee camp, Barret stared at cloud like he was insane. When Tifa and Yuffie had reached him in the rubble they had tried there best to reason with him that they didn’t have the resources to start taking in stray animals as well as people. Cloud wasn’t an idiot, he knew that the way things were meant that pets and strays may be left to fend for themselves but he couldn’t just leave Squall there. The second he showed Tifa the tag, he knew she would give in.
“There ain’t no way we can feed him.” Barrat crossed his arms and seems to search clouds face imploringly. He looked more desperate than annoyed.
“Cloud ya gotta be raitional about this man.”
“I am being rational about it Barret. He was one of Wedges. He… he was a gift to me.”
Barret looked at Tifa who nodded sadly. She came over to them and took the tag off of Squall who yowled like he’d been hit. Cloud cradled him closer.
“Look,” she muttered.
Barret took the tag turning it over in his hands. Tears welled him the corner of his eyes and he blinked rapidly before flipping his sunglasses down onto his nose.
“Damn,” he breathed out shakily. “Damn okay. Alright fine. Jus- shit kid, why’d you gotta keep breaking my heart.”
He looked at Cloud who murdered to the kitten like it was a baby and sighed. There was no way he could take that cat off of him without causing him serious distress. It wasn’t fair and Barret wasn’t the kind of man to do that to his friends, to anyone.
Tifa placed her hand on his arm and thanked him with her eyes. They both knew Cloud wasn’t exactly stable right now, but who knows, maybe Squall is what he needs.
They let him wander off after that, finding a washing bowl and a damp rag that he could use to clean off the rest of the dust. It didn’t do a great job, but it would have to do until they could get running water from somewhere. Squall seemed to be okay with being rubbed down as long as Cloud kept a hand on him at all times. His fur was the most gorgeous chestnut brown under the chalky white of the decimated city and he had a thick strip of white around his neck and down his shoulders that made him look like a strange little tiny lion.
Cloud huffed under his breath at the thought. He looked so small now but he could tell Squall would get bigger. Much bigger. His spine already seemed to be elongating in that awkward way kittens did. And his paws… they were like buckets.
“He will be big.” Said a low voice behind him and as he turned, Nanaki came to lay in the shade next to him.
“His mom was a big cat too… Gongagan jungle I think.” Cloud pondered out loud.
“Mmm, I suspect not.” Nanaki gave Squall a cursory sniff, and the kitten gave him a curious look. Cloud blinked.
“What do you think he is then? You think he’s like you?”
Nanaki chuckled and shook out his mane, making his jewellery jingle.
“No, not like me. He is more like you I think.”
“How do you mean?”
“What do you know about Nibel Cats?”
Cloud looked at him for a long second and tried to think back.
“Only that they are an extinct species.”
Nanaki tsked.
“Not extinct,” he said. “In hiding. They are not social creatures. They only interact with humans when they think them worthy of affection. They supposedly retreated to the Mako caverns in mount Nibel when Shinra came. Legend has it they felt betrayed by the people of Nibelheim, and so they left them to their fates.”
Cloud sits back against the rock and tilts his head up to the sky. Nibel cats were supposed to be messengers of the gods. Them and the wolves. Cloud had always wondered what happened to them, but the library never had anything and so everyone thought they had died out. It figures that they left his backwater little hovel to rot for its transgressions.
He wondered then, why squall was giving him the time of day.
“He senses that you, like him, are the last of your kind.”
“Tifa is Nibel born and bred.” Cloud counters.
“Yes and with you he can keep you both close. But I suspect he senses great turmoil in you.”
As if understanding their conversation Squall dug his little claws into clouds shirt and climbed up onto his shoulders. His tail flicked back and forth for a second before wrapping around Clouds neck like a scarf. His purring reverberated through Clouds body like the sound waves of a marching band drum. It was relaxing in such an unusual way, the weight of Squall counter balancing something inside of Cloudz
“I foresee him keeping a close eye on you,” Nanaki chuckled.
“Shouldn’t I be the one looking after him?”
“All cats let you think that. When really it’s quite the opposite,”
Cloud thinks back to Tifa’s cat. To the amount of times he had been startled out of crying by the little paw tapping at the window. He thinks about Wedges house, and the sheer amount of love that the man received everything he came home to them. He thinks about that mother cat, about Squall and thinks…
Yeah, maybe that’s true.
