Atobe stared at the cat sitting on the floor in front of him.

How Echizen had managed to talk him into catsitting for him, he wasn’t sure, and while he wanted to say that of course he’d chosen someone as great as him to be his catsitter, if he was honest with himself, he didn’t quite know why he had been chosen.

Atobe was squarely in the corner marked ‘dog-person’, after all.

But still, now that he was in this situation, he was going to prove that Echizen couldn’t have chosen a better person to trust with his cat.

He’d been given a bunch of toys from Echizen, but so far, Karupin had only cared about one. Surely there were more grand toys than something that looked like weed to pick as your favourite.

 

Beat for his part had been curious about the cat for a while, but had settled down on one of his dog-sized fainting couches to nap. Karupin had been wary of Beat at first, but seemed to have deemed he wasn’t a threat in the end.

 

He watched Karupin batting after the toy as he moved it around. For how long had the cat been at it now? Thirty minutes?

He looked at the time (it had indeed been thirty minutes, nearly on the minute), but as soon as he was distracted he felt the toy get tugged out of his hand.

Could cats look smug? It certainly felt that way when he looked back down at Karupin, who now had sole access to his beloved toy.

Leaning back, he decided that maybe it was fine to let the cat be for a while. How much trouble could one cat get up to, anyway? He picked up the book on the side table, flipping it open.

 

It didn’t take long for him to feel something land on the couch next to him. He looked to the side.

Karupin sat next to him, looking up at him with round eyes.

“What?”

In response, Karupin jumped up on his lap. His lap, where his book already took up the majority of the space as he had lowered it to pay attention to Karupin.

“Hey!”

As he pulled his book out from underneath him, Karupin made himself comfortable, curling into a ball on his lap.

He started to purr.

Karupin was certainly a cat who knew how to get what he wanted, no matter what you might want instead. He could respect that.

Atobe clicked his tongue, but didn’t make him move. Maybe he was growing a bit soft.

“This stays between us, got it?” he told the cat. For some reason he got the feeling that Karupin would have rolled his eyes at him, had he  been able to do so. He was a cat, how was he supposed to tell on him?

Atobe leaned back again, turning his eyes back to his book.

For now, he would let Karupin sleep on top of him. At least until it was time for dinner.

Back to top