“A cat.” Don’t play coy with me, narrator! As if I don’t recognize this cat on sight! I know pretty much all the cats, you know. It’s part of being a Yatskaya. Sure, I don’t [i]know[/i] him the way I know Molly or Phoebe or Old Whiskers or Adora or Timmytom, but I recognize those stripes, and the fuzz around his face like he’s got a tiny cat beard; that’s so obviously Edelgard von Hresvelg, named after the Prussian philosophy person, that I am insulted, yes, insulted that you would insinuate that I don’t know him! Of all the nerve!

Still, it’s always good to get to know a cat better, especially if you’re, and I’m tossing out a [i]pure[/i] hypothetical here, trying to hide the fact that you are in a forbidden friendship with the heir to the rat throne, which is probably made out of all this silverware, all butter knives and fork tines all sticking out like a porcupine, and I haven’t mentioned my theory to Eduard (no relation to Edelgard) yet but it just makes sense when you think about it, because that’s objectively the coolest kind of throne, and it’d be really good at stopping a cat-level incursion from eating the king of the rats in one bite. That’s why there’s a ban on loose cats in Fortitude, you know. If you find a mommy cat that’s snuck off and made kittens, the only kind thing to do is send them to this animal shelter over the hill in Horizon because otherwise you have to put them to sleep unless there’s a cat on their last life who’s willing to give up a slot, because the Treaty of Rodentia declared that you can’t have over a thousand and one cats in Fortitude on pain of war being declared between ratkind and catkind until there were a lot, lot less cats. Oh, and also humans would be treated as “feline collaborators,” which, uh, isn’t good. And from the sound of it you might think, wow, these rats must be straight-up [i]jerks[/i], but they’re not, not really, because there’s a prophecy. Eduard hasn’t explained anything about the prophecy to me yet, and neither has my dad (but what else is new), but that’s okay, because I figured it out myself.

[i]When Fortitude is swollen and bloated with cats, specifically being one thousand and two cats, then the spirit of the catssiah will descend on the Virgin Moggy, and she will give birth to a kitten and name him Puss in Boots. Because he has boots, he’ll be able to travel to the Far Roofs, beyond the roofs we know.[/i]

And [i]obviously[/i] the rats don’t want [i]that[/i] to happen! Imagine, a cat up there, tromping around in his rainboots! It’d be so unfashionable that they’d all die of second-hand embarrassment!!

Anyway, I start Operation: Sneak. I get down on all fours and look deep into my own soul, and then I take dainty little steps with my hands and knees, imagining that I’m a sneaky fox who doesn’t make a sound. (But out here, I don’t actually become a fox.)

It takes forever. Empires rise and kingdoms fall. The crickets chirp. The water striders dance. I put my weight on a twig and Edelgard twitches an ear and I have to wait for my heart to slow down which is tough when you’re holding your breath because that makes your heart want to speed back up again! But eventually I start pushing through the longer grass onto the jetty, and that’s when Edelgard raises his head and fixes me with a death glare.

I mollify him by giving a traditional greeting: slowly blinking to establish trust, and then sticking out the tip of my tongue between my lips. Blep!

(Storytelling: 1/9 XP)