Claire tossed and turned in her drunken state, disturbing Solomon with her movements, but thankfully he was a nocturnal creature so it wasn’t like he was going to sleep much anyway during the night. He slept a fair bit either way since he loved to sleep like most of her kittens did.

She dreamt surprisingly pleasant dreams when she did fall asleep. Claire talked with her big cats, learned their language permanently and went on adventures with them. There were other people featured in the dream, like Kate, Elena and a few other members of the circus, but they were in the background compared to the animals. Elena appeared as an evil witch at one point.

The sound of someone shouting at her was an abrupt wake up call.

“Oh my god.” Claire cried, and put her arms over her head. “Why would you scream at me in the morning when I have a hangover?” 

She could feel her head pounding pretty badly by then. The words that Kate had spoken sounded louder than usual, so she had to assume they were shouted. It wasn’t just the words Kate spoke either, everything was louder than usual, even Solomon’s breathing was getting to her.

Claire had no idea how long she had slept, or if she had been given a chance to sleep at all before Kate was on her case again. She had dreamt at least. She wanted to yell at her friend to go away and leave her alone. It would not be the first time they had fought, because everyone fights every now and then, no matter how great their relationship may be regularly. 

“Solomon, attack…” Claire muttered against his fur, and was rolled over on her stomach when the white tiger got up on all four. 

He moved lazily over to where Kate was standing outside the cage, put his arm through the bars and tried to hit her with his paw. The whole action was done with such indifference that it was clear he was just following the words of his trainer with no real hatred or commitment behind the supposed attack. He tried to reach Kate a couple more times before giving up, sitting down and cleaning himself with his tongue.

Claire had mostly trained him with that command in case she would need him in an emergency, like a guard dog, but no one else needed to know about it so she had told no one else yet. If anything, she had planned to explain it away by saying she was going to incorporate coordinated play-fighting between her big cats in one of her future shows. Solomon was a bit too tame to attack those he knew with any real strength though.

“Yeah, that will teach you to bother me in the morning.” Claire mumbled to herself, while keeping her arms over her eyes to block out the blinding light. “You are lucky he is locked inside a cage. Who knows what such a wild beast would be to a human otherwise.”