filleauloup | Abandoned Warehouse District, Saturday Evening

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Abandoned Warehouse District, Saturday Evening

There were easier ways to go about acquiring a pet, really, but for one thing, Éponine would feel much better about not hearing the litter of stray kittens mewling pitifully every night outside her window. For another, she'd been raised to understand that if you could get something without having to pay for it, you avoided having to pay for it, and she still saw nothing wrong with that approach to life. She also found the idea of rescuing small animals from the streets vaguely appealing in some way that she couldn't articulate.

Having rounded up a crate lined with a towel, a can of tuna, and a flashlight, and then spent most of the afternoon prowling around her section of the warehouse district to determine where the cat and her kittens were, she was ready to put her plan into motion.

It really did seem like an excessive amount of work and planning to do to acquire a pet, but she suspected it might be worth it. Besides, as far as laying extensive plans to accomplish something went, this wasn't even close to being her most elaborate.

[OOC: For the cat-rescuing accomplice!]

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"Well . . . it won't hurt too much to look after them for one night if I have to," Éponine conceded, though her tone of voice indicated that she'd much rather not. (Because then she'd be tempted to keep them all, but she wasn't saying that.)

She crept a few feet further into the alley to listen, then nodded. "Yes, I think they might be done now -- shall we go have a look?"

Kenzi gave a very quiet eee! of delight, and tip-toed down the alley, past the blockade Éponine had constructed.

Peering over a trash-can, she could see the box, with an ash-gray mama cat, and four kittens of various sizes and colors, sniffing at the now-empty can of catfood. "Lookit them! So littttle!"

Edited 2013-06-23 03:16 (UTC)

One of the kittens had definitely caught Éponine's eye. She kept tiptoeing toward the cats, stopping to ask out of the corner of her mouth, "They are tiny, aren't they? Now, d'you think we ought to grab them all quick? Can we do it in one go?"

"Maybe pick up the box?" Kenzi offered, then reconsidered. She pulled on her mitts. "I'll grab the box. You grab any escapees. Aaaand... We'll figure out something when we get to your place!"

Éponine nodded and gestured silently to say You lead the way, then.

. . . she was starting to get really fixated on that one particular kitten.

"It's all right, dearies," she said half under her breath, humming as if it would keep them calm.

Kenzi hummed along. Well, sort of. "Don't worry, kitties, no problems, it's all good..."

Mama Cat was not thrilled with this. And did try to scratch Kenzi's arm. Then got a claw stuck in one of the oven mitts.

"Aww, man." The babies were just circling, though, and staying within range, so Kenzi lifted the box. "Can you get her loose from that?"

It couldn't, Éponine reasoned, be all that different from lifting someone's money-pouch in the middle of a crowded street, so she darted in and made a quick grab for the cat with both hands.

Which was a bit more like trying to lift someone's stolen money-pouch off Montparnasse, as it turned out, since she got clawed once or twice for her trouble. "There's no call for that! I'm only trying to help you get loose!"

Technically.

"No no kitties," Kenzi coaxed the babies. "No jumping outta the box, thaaat's it, oh, hey, Mom, stop it, she's trying to -- okay, she's got loose. She's fine." And was now yowling, even if she wasn't jumping out of the box. "Yeesh. You okay?"

"As if a scratch like this is something to worry about," Éponine scoffed, hugging the squirming, protesting cat closer in the hopes that it would calm down. (Her cat-handling techniques hadn't improved much since she was eight years old. Effective, but not very considerate.)

"Oh, for God's sake --" She glared down at the cat, who was trying to kick at her with both back paws. "Back to my place, quickly now, before she tries to rip me to shreds."

"C'mon, kitties, somewhere warmer, somewhere with more food..." Kenzi snickered. The cat-smushing-with-affection-control-technique was pretty amusing. "I'll let you keep the pot holders, hunh?"

"What on earth for?" Éponine asked, laughing, as she picked up speed. "As if I cook!"

It took some maneuvering to get the door open without letting go of the cat (good thing she wasn't in the habit of locking it, for once), but she managed.

"Good lord, wasn't that a job."

"You would think they'd never heard of moving house." Kenzi grinned, looking around with interest. The wide open space wasn't bad at all; she'd seen a lot worse. It looked clean, at least, and some of the windows were open. "Hmm. Where's a good place to put them down?" She beamed down at them. "So tiny and fuzzy!" She coughed. "I mean... they're pretty cute."

"Anywhere you like. They're hardly likely to get lost, not with all this empty space." The second she'd gotten the door shut, Éponine had let go of the mother cat, who hissed and started circling her legs.

"Oh, really now, that's a bit rude, isn't it?"

"I think that was foul language, in cat," Kenzi said idly, before folding herself down in the center of the room, and putting the box down too. Then carefully removing the oven mitts. Mama Cat came over to nose at the babies, making sure they were okay, then circling back to Eponine. Kenzi held the squirt bottle up, in case the cats wanted a drink. "Maybe a bowl for water? ... I like your place, by the way."

Éponine was actually rather proud of the warehouse, to tell the truth, since it was probably the nicest place she'd ever lived in her life; she brightened visibly.

"I've some bowls back in the office," she said, already on her way to go retrieve one. "Fancy, me having an office, and all this room to myself!"

It wasn't a particularly large warehouse, but it was still a lot of space for one scrawny girl.

It was pretty sparse, but it was a sweet set-up, and in good shape. That's what you looked for first: was anything going to fall apart? Were you going to inhale some god-awful kind of chemical? This place was just a office building/warehouse that no one was using.

"Where'd you get the bed?" Kenzi called, picking up one kitten, then putting it down when it mewed. "I bet you could pick up some hangings and stuff at the second-hand place."

"I don't remember; I picked it up somewhere," Éponine said carelessly, emerging from the bathroom with a bowl of water. "The boxes and crates were here, so I said, well, I may as well use them. It's stupid to leave them lying about otherwise."

Two of the kittens came over to sniff experimentally at the water when she set the bowl down.

"D'you know which one you'd take?"

"The black one, I think," Kenzi said, pointing to the ball of fluff currently sniffing at a random industrial carpet square, and kneading it with its teeny claws. It did actually make a tiny motor-boat sound when Kenzi petted it. "You? Which one do you like?"

She immediately reached down to scoop up the kitten with patchy fur and white paws, who mewed in protest and wriggled in her hands.

"You don't much look like the others, do you? In that case, we ought to stick together, you and me," Éponine told the kitten solemnly.

"What are you going to name her? Him. Her?" Kenzi paused, and the decided, "We'll let the vet make that verdict, maybe. They don't look sick, at least. Just teeny. And that one is cool, all the different colors."

"I don't know yet. It hasn't come to me," admitted Éponine. She patted the kitten on the head thoughtfully. "You don't mind terribly, do you, not knowing your name yet?"

The kitten just blinked at her, which she decided to take to mean no, it didn't mind.

Kenzi grinned, patting the soot-colored kitten. (Shadow? Nah. Gothika? Ooo.) "Cool if I hang out for a bit, before heading back?"

"I don't mind at all," Éponine said promptly. "I've never really had company over before, you know, and you won't mind leftovers for dinner, will you?"

It was possible she was excited about this.

"Nah, sounds good," Kenzi said, scritching behind the mama cat's ears. She didn't stop complaining, but she allowed it. "People aren't allowed upstairs in the dorms, or I'd let you see my place. But since I'll be moving out in two months, you're not gonna be missing much."

Good thing Éponine was reasonably certain Kenzi wouldn't wonder or much care where she'd gotten the microwave, but she set the kitten down and darted back toward the office area to start reheating takeout containers of chow mein and broccoli beef.

The kitten, after a moment, followed along after her.

"But you can tell me what it's like. How big are the rooms? Is it awfully noisy all the time with so many people living there?"

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