Celta Cats Page 6

  More words and less visions from the woman, he thought he felt her stir up stuff in his mind, the back, or maybe the bottom. It felt funny, tickled inside his head. Made his blood fizzy, and his eyes weird and his ears hum. He felt a big pulse of his magic surge through him. He coughed, then purred in pleasure.

  “Why do you want to be a FamCat, Pinky?” Her mouth said the words out loud where his ears angled to hear.

  He showed her scenes. Of meowing to his Boy and his Boy not understanding, then a new-future-event where he lay around his Boy’s neck and his fur touched skin and they shared interest in bugs, and birds, and skirls and they didn’t have to use stupid sounds to talk. And Pinky knew right away what FamCat and Why meant. Most of all he thought of his love for his Boy, projected that. Got love back from his Boy in the corner and they shared it all.

  The female picked him up in her soft hands and looked him in the eyes. “I believe you can achieve your quest, Pinky. That you can become a FamCat You have Flair, psi power, in you. It just needs to be...drawn from the pool inside you to stream and be used.”

  He heard “FamCat,” but he felt everything else.

  “You are smart,” she said, and he learned from her touch what smart meant. He was a smart Cat. Smart as humans. As smart as that snotty cat who bullied him, that Drina.

  Yesss. Smart enough and with enough dammed magic inside him that he could be Fam. Remove the shadows obscuring his thoughts. Open a passage to his Flair-magic flow. Then he would reach his greatness. No more swats from Drina and much love from all peoples who liked Fams.

  “You are a strong cat. You can pass any challenge. You can become a Fam. You can do it,” she said in a happy voice.

  Yes. He could do it.

  =^..^=

  The challenges began.

  Zanth hulked on heavy paws toward Pinky, upper muzzle lifted to show a fang. Pinky hunkered down, not understanding why he’d been put here in this small and empty round room with a wooden floor—obviously Zanth’s territory. Was this how he became a Fam? By fighting cats three times his size?

  “Grrrr.” He rose slightly, balanced on his paws, ready to spring. Ready to fight Zanth. Ready to be Fam.

  Then the big mean Zanth, who acted like he owned the world, jumped faster and longer than Pinky thought possible and hit him and sent him rolling.

  He rose with a hiss, hurting at the left shoulder, saw Zanth parading around the room, tail in the air, nose lifted, looking at a window where peoples watched them.

  Pinky’s Boy did not stand with them and Pinky’s heart hurt. The wonderful woman’s eyes looked sad, her mouth turned down.

  Then he heard—did he?—heard... The whish of air and scent of cat warned him and he hopped to the side just in time for Zanth to miss him by a whisker. Move right, avoid left forepaw strike! He jumped, swiped out himself. But a couple of those claws pierced him and he knew red blood spotted his beige fur. Boy’s older female-Dam-person liked the color of Pinky’s fur. El-e-gant, she said.

  His ribs pained him now, too.

  Wait! He was thinking, instincts being SLOWED. Wait. Think while Zanth struts some more. Ha! Zanth’s ear showed bloody. Don’t preen. Think. Pinky scrubbed a paw across muzzle and right eye. Zanth should have slashed with right paw, but had done left. Pinky had known Zanth would use left before he’d hit. Thoughts, images, rattled in Pinky’s head and he shook it and the pictures tilted and looked less flat and got substance...and though Zanth didn’t face Pinky, he saw the black tip of that cat’s tail twitch and went on alert.

  Zanth teleported. And whirled. And, all claws flexed, fangs showing, leapt at Pinky.

  He twisted away, zipped sideways, pivoted and hopped up high, high, high to light on Zanth’s back, dug in with own claws. Zanth yowled! Pinky snarled in triumph.

  Another image came to mind. How Zanth planned on ramming Pinky next...he missed his bite to Zanth’s tail, rolled off and when that cat rushed straight at him, zoomed under his belly and out through the bigger cat’s bowed back legs, wheezing a laugh. But he knew now. Knew why this mean alpha cat fought him.

  Well, Zanth liked fighting. Who didn’t?

  But he also projected stuff, Zanth pictures, to Pinky. To teach. And make Pinky scared just because he could.

  Pinky could see those pictures. So he shouted, from his head to Zanth’s, and shrieked out loud at the same time. You STOP!

  An amazed expression crossed Zanth’s face as his paws did stop and the rest of him slid across the floor. He had to scramble with scritching paws and claws to avoid the wall.

  Pinky smirked. Sat and glanced aside and dampened his paw and groomed his whiskers.

  From half-closed eyes, he observed the peoples standing in the window. Zanth’s big FamMan, the Very Big Guy, stood with arms crossed, a curl at one end of his mouth. Wonderful lady grinned with pride at Pinky. Two other shadows just stood. He sniffed long and hard but did not smell those peoples.

  Grrrrr.

  Now Zanth stalked to Pinky on soft paw pads, a fake smile on his muzzle.

  Pinky did the fake smile, too.

  Zanth stopped, slowly arched his back, raising his fur—

  And the lady appeared in the middle of the room. She clapped her hands. “This test and exploration of Flair and stimulating Pinky’s Flair is over.”

  Pinky didn’t know exploration. He understood his name, easy. He heard and comprehended Flair—mind magic to do stuff. Cocking his head he felt for the idea of stimulating from the lady and got it.

  Yes, she tried to make his magic Flair more.

  Good.

  He tried a word that came to his mind and his tongue, but his mouth could not say aloud. A word that peoples said when someone came up to them. He sent it out from his mind. Greetyou, lady.

  Zanth growled.

  Then the lady held Pinky. Her Flair had ‘ported him to her. He turned his head to sneer at Zanth but she said in words that ruffled Pinky’s fur with her breath and from her mind to his, Greetyou, Pinky.

  He opened his mouth to pant pain away and she made a noise and stroked him and then his pain stopped. That’s why all Fams loved her. She Healed them.

  Ready for your next trial? she asked him with a thought-and-words.

  “Yesssss,” he said really out loud.

  Zanth threw a hissy fit.

  =^..^=

  Another challenge, trial. More exploration and stimulation of his Flair. Pinky hoarded the new words, sounded them in his mind as his ears had heard them. Peoples words attached to pictures in his brain he recognized.

  Another different room. This one had some furniture and thick rugs and the place smelled mostly of Zanth’s human Family and some of Zanth and some of the other cat with no Flair.

  “Princess is my cat,” the lady said when she lowered Pinky to the floor. He stuck his paws out so he stood, though he trusted the lady enough that he could lie at her feet. “My name is Danith D’Ash.”

  Dan-ith Dash, he said with his mind, though this thinking out loud hurt some.

  Rain spit against the long windows and the lady glanced there and sighed. “I had some outside tests planned. Get out in the fresh air.”

  He did not know the word, but Pinky thought the image at Danith—Flair-mind-magic blanket that kept peoples dry, Fams and humans.

  “A weathershield spell,” she informed him. “But that won’t keep the landscape dry since we didn’t erect one over the area.” Then she got an image of her mate and said with her thoughts, Rand can you...

  Pinky only heard and understood the first part, so he practiced the new words in his head. Weath-er-shield spell.

  She put blocks of wood before him and some thick glass stuff, too. Pinky’s eyes widened. He was not allowed near glass stuff.

  “These are puzzles. The wood blocks make shapes. I will send you the shape I want and you will arrange the blocks.” She squatted down, flicked her teeny finger claw against the class and it made a pretty noise that made his ears angle. “After the blocks, I
will play a tune on these tumblers. You will repeat the tune for me. Then I will think of the sounds I want and you will play the tune for me.”

  Pinky heard and remembered the new words, associated them with ideas. He sat solidly on his rump. Ready.

  So he rearranged blocks this way and that, slowly with his paws, as shapes formed in his head.

  Then the lady—Danith—would mix them up fast with her hands. Humans had clever hands but bad claws. No peoples watched him from outside the windows in the rain, but he felt eyes on him. He thought the house must know the fall of his paws and the size of his body and that he visited. He hadn’t made up his mind about FamHouses yet. He didn’t think the one he lived in now should let Drina hit him in the butt.

  “Pinky, pay attention! Let’s do the music memory test.”

  So he played with pings on the glasses and it didn’t matter that his claws scratched the glass. He felt like little explosions went off inside his mind, yes, painful but he sat up very straight when Danith laughed and petted his head with two hands and said she was proud of him.

  After that he had lunch with Zanth FamCat—who made snide mind comments as he ate messily—and the regular cat who walked in dragging sparkley collars on the floor. She couldn’t fight. But Pinky hid his own scorn of Prin-cess because Danith loved the cat and he liked Danith.

  He sucked up a lot of water, too, the morning had been hard.

  When lunch ended, Danith picked him up and held him and that soft and animal loving and wonderful aura enveloped him and he relaxed against her. She smelled so good, like catnip and food and sleeping on a thick rug in the spring sun.

  They went through a door into a huge room. So high Pinky couldn’t really see the ceiling. Or maybe the ceiling was tinted black. In front of him stood a narrow opening between walls. He gazed up. He might be able to jump as high as the walls...if he could use a little boost from his Flair-magic, but they seemed too narrow to sit on comfortably.

  His breath caught and his throat tightened and he squeaked. He was thinking of using his FLAIR!

  Then he let a pleased and surprised purr rumble out of him.

  “Go on, Pinky,” Danith said, “Go through the maze.”

  He stared up at her and she smiled her beautiful smile but didn’t tell him anything more but he knew it would be all right. Ears angled, whiskers at alert he stepped into the corridor and walked along until he came to a branching path.

  A sheer whistle attracted his attention and he glanced up to see a green bird perched on one of the corners of the wall. Go to the right, came a whispery voice in his mind.

  Right?

  The bird clicked its beak in an annoyed way and lifted one wing and pointed.

  Pinky sniffed and took that path.

  Barely squeezed to one side fast enough to miss the stinky poop the bird let loose as it flew over him, cackling.

  You should have thanked her, Danith scolded in his head.

  THANK YOU! he yelled from his head.

  Nobody said nothing.

  He continued prowling forward, ears tilting as he listened hard, tail waving. At the next junction, he heard a couple of solid thumps, smelled Zanth to his right, but thought that cat lurked around the corner. A hoarse grumble hit his mind, Come to Me, little kitty!

  Oh, no, he wouldn’t. He looked the other way and saw a white and black chubby housefluff with those stupid long ears.

  Come here, LEFT, the housefluff said. A housefluff knew left and could speak well, when Pinky couldn’t! Not okay!

  He kept a nice smile on his muzzle, though and when he reached the hopping creature he paused to lick its nose and projected gratitude, Thank you.

  He told himself it didn’t matter that the fluffy thing didn’t answer him.

  Every time he came to a turn he’d meet a different FamAnimal who would talk to him in his head...a fox, a dog with smelly breath, even a kitten. Go left or right. He always said Thank you, but none of them responded.

  When he reached the end of the maze, Danith smiled at him and held out her arms.

  Sure enough, he could use his Flair to jump into them.

  “You did very, very well, with all the mind tests,” she said. “You are becoming a Fam.”

  She nuzzled him but by the time she put him back on his paws, his relief made him dizzy.

  “One last thing,” she said.

  He tensed.

  A loud noise behind him made him jump and he whirled to see all the walls had vanished. Now he stood in the middle of a big round room with holes near the bottom of the walls, and platforms of all sorts up and down the walls, and some cubbyholes. He saw the bird on a perch, eating seeds and ignoring him. He saw the fox and the housefluff and the kitten in a pile of kittens and the drooling dog. He blinked and he knew this terrible place.

  All of these peoples were Fams. And none of them had a Boy like Pinky did.

  He was in the a-dopt-ion cen-ter. He was so lucky.

  Danith gestured. “Just say hello.”

  So he set his paws, swept his gaze around without meeting eyes, and shouted, GREETYOU, FAMS!

  They all yelled back, making the noise of their hellos, too. Barks, different from fox to wolf to dog, the horrible screeching of birds, all sorts of cat acknowledgments—mews and meows and purrs and...

  And they all started bellowing in his head.

  Pinky, pinky, pinky! the kittens squealed in a variety of shrill voices that hurt inside and out. They hopped up and down in their box on the floor, paining his eyes as he tried to keep track of them.

  The dog began to howl. Badly.

  He let his head drop, his tail droop. His paws sweated and sweated but dizziness didn’t let him wash himself so he could cool down. He collapsed in the middle of the room with all those Fams eyes fixed on him. Yowls and meows, clamoring cries and yips assaulted his sensitive ears. Many, many voices high and squeaky to low and rumbly, battered the inside of his head until it throbbed.

  All of him throbbed and throbbed and throbbed from eartip to claw...along with every beat of his heart.

  The horrible babble reached a screeching pitch in his head where he couldn’t think, but each word felt like a fiery thread. New words and ideas and notions and whole phrases and sentences tumbled like rocks in a landslide in his mind.

  He couldn’t take it. One more second would drive him crazy!

  He got out of there and landed, panting, on the examination room table. He curled up tight and put his paws over his head.

  The door opened a couple of minutes later and the smell of Danith rushed into the room.

  “What a fantastic cat you are, Pinky. What a FAM. You teleported.”

  He wished she’d whisper.

  But then her soothing hands petted him, stroked and banished his weariness, and he heard the quiet in the room and nobody screamed in his head. He moved a paw away from one of his eyes. He caught her concerned expression before she met his gaze and flicked a smile on. “You’ve lost some weight.”

  Rolling over, he tried to sit up and she helped him. His fur felt a little too slick with...he didn’t know what. Ick.

  With a long sweep of her hand, she cleaned him up and banished his weariness. He sighed and leaned against her.

  Thunk. The door swung open. Zanth strolled in. Pinky stiffened.

  I did what you said, FamWoman, said Zanth, and gave Danith a fake-sweet smile. I did the fight with the puny cat. He sniffed. I did the maze. I did everything you asked. He sat straight and puffed out his fur, gaze fixed on Danith. I deserve cocoa mousse. The fake-sweet smile widened into a sickening-happy grin. As big as my head! Zanth ended.

  Then Zanth’s FamMan, the Very Big Guy, strode in. “Here you are.” He kissed Danith. When he stepped back he frowned down at Pinky.

  Who stared right back up at him. Greetyou.

  Very Big Guy grunted.

  “Rand T’Ash,” Danith murmured.

  So. T’Ash—and now Pinky got all sorts of memories from all sorts of peoples a
bout that name—had grunted.

  “People,” Danith corrected. “It’s not peoples, it’s always ‘people.’”

  Zanth sat and licked a forepaw, groomed his ear. Peoples is fine.

  A knock came at the door and Pinky’s heart leapt. His Boy had arrived!

  “Come in,” Danith called.

  “Greetyou, Danith. Greetyou, T’Ash. Greetyou, Zanth,” Pinky’s Boy said. “Thank you for sending your glider for me.” But he didn’t look at them, he looked at Pinky, who sat up even straighter than Zanth, full of pride.

  His boy gasped and charged forward and Danith stepped aside.

  “He is a Fam now. I can see it in his eyes! We will be able to talk to each other telepathically! Greetyou, Pinky.

  Time to really use his new mind-voice Flair. I...am...PINKY! he announced.

  Everyone smiled except Zanth, who snorted. But Pinky liked the sound of his mental voice, nice and deep.

  His Boy scooped him off the the table and cuddled him. “I heard him. Did you hear him? I have a FamCat now. Can I take him to T’Blackthorn’s?”

  Another fact rose from deep in his brain to ping in his mind. His Boy was called ANTENN.

  Pinky said, I want to be with you now, Antenn.

  “Yes! Thank you, thank you, thank you, Danith!” Antenn said, nearly hopping.

  “I’ll go with you,” Danith said decidedly. “No one will doubt me.” She kissed her husband, put a hand on Antenn’s shoulder, and opened the door.

  “Until later, Pinky,” T’Ash said.

  Pinky remembered manners. Merry meet.

  “And merry part,” said T’Ash.

  And merry meet again, Pinky said with his mind and Antenn said aloud.

  Good-bye and go away now, said Zanth, then jumped on T’Ash’s shoulder. FamMan, time for mousse! Zanth licked his chops.

  =^..^=

  Antenn talked and talked as they rode back to the smart House where they lived while Antenn’s adopted Dam worked with pretty fabric and tinting and furniture there. The man who owned the House was having a large party and a ritual this evening—and Pinky understood all of those concepts.

  “Yes, I know about the party and ritual,” Danith said. “Rand and I will attend.”