[Spirit of Lust 2] Chapters 152 & 153. (Patreon)

Chapter 152: The vet, and gifts.

Mom did find a vet that was open on Sundays. We got lucky and our new kitten was seen almost immediately. Alice and Noelle didn’t come with us, but said they’d be back soon.

The kitten was female, around three weeks old, said the vet. Clearly malnourished, but thankfully not in critical condition. The vet said she must’ve been abandoned at most a week ago. We were given advice on how to take care of her. We purchased the formula and wet kitten food, along with a bottle of shampoo and a carrier. Well, mom purchased it. She stopped me when I was about to bring out my wallet.

Mom paid for the vet and everything else, even though she tried very hard to drive the point across that keeping a pet was costly. It was something that I would understand as time went by. Mom never really expected us to cover all of the cat’s expenses, but wanted us to believe we would have to so that we wouldn’t make irresponsible decisions.

We went back home with our new family member. Isabelle kept the carrier on her lap all the way back, smiling from ear to ear.

“You’re going to give her a bath as soon as we’re home,” mom said. “I was afraid giving her one before the vet saw her would be dangerous.” Was that directed to Isabelle, me, or both? She didn’t say more, so we assumed it was meant for both of us.

Did I ever tell you we had a backyard? It was small, and with nothing of note but an old grill we never used and not very well cared-for grass. Isabelle got a shallow plastic container and set it outside while I boiled some water and mixed it with more room-temperature water.

The kitten meowed in complaint as loud as it could, trying to struggle in my hands as I lowered it to the warm water. The struggling of a kitten as big as my hands wasn’t much of a struggle at all.

“Someone doesn’t like baths,” Isabelle said, grinning, kneeling across from me and looking into the improvised cat bath.

“She hasn’t even tried it yet,” I told her.

The moment the cat was in the water, she calmed down. She started pouncing around, splashing and rolling on her back.

I grinned. “You were saying?”

The clear water began to turn muddy from all the dirt on the cat. Isabelle poured some cat shampoo on my hands and I carefully started scrubbing the little thing.

I kept a straight face, focusing on my task and not on how adorable the cat was.

“So… What are we gonna name her?” Isabelle asked.

Oh. Right. A name.

“...How about Missy?” I suggested.

“There must be a million cats named Missy out there. How about Miranda?”

“That sounds awful.”

“How so? What’s wrong with Miranda?”

“Doesn’t roll off the tongue.” I looked down at the kitten in my hands, now cleaner and covered in soap and foam, with patches of orange but mostly white fur. “How about Cake?”

“Cake?” Isabelle repeated as if trying out the name. “Cake. Mmm. You know… I kinda like it. Cake.” She giggled. “Okay, let’s go with Cake!”

Cake meowed at us in approval. Or I took it as approval, at least. I don’t speak cat.

Isabelle took care of drying duty. She took Cake and wrapped her in a small towel while I dried my own hands with another.

“...What are we going to do tomorrow? When we need to go to school, I mean,” she asked me.

I sighed. “Leave her in a closed room with food, water and something to play with?”

“Yes, that’s probably what we’ll have to do,” mom said, walking out of the house to check how we were doing. “I’ll ask our neighbor to check on her once or twice.”

“Mom, look at Cake!” Isabelle said, holding Cake towards mom. “She’s even cuter now that she’s clean!”

Mom started laughing. “Cake? Seriously? That’s what you named her?”

“What? I like it,” Isabelle pouted.

“No, no. It’s a good name. Just… goes to show your tastes.”

“Oliver came up with it.”

“Same thing.”

Thirty minutes later, Alice and Noelle came back, and they did so with a huge bag full of gifts for the cat which they set down in the living room.

“Oh my god!” Isabelle gasped. “You didn’t have to!”

There was a litter box, sand, a bed, some blankets, toys, treats, a collar, a retractable leash, and even a scratching post.

“We said we’d help,” Alice said. “We pushed this on you, so it’s the least we can do. How did it go at the vet?”

Isabelle began to fill her friends in on the details while I looked through the things they bought, crouching next to the bag. There was a bowl for food and water with an electronic dispenser so you could set a timer for when you wanted the food and water to be, well, dispensed.

Noelle kneeled next to me, maybe a bit too close. “We figured you’d need this one in particular, since you’ll be at school most of the day. Oh, and this is a mouse that runs on battery, so it can chase it around all day if it wants to.”

I smiled wryly. “Thank you, Noelle, but… This is too much. It must’ve cost a lot.”

The redhead shook her head. “Not that much, really. Don’t worry about it. You were right when you said it’s a big responsibility, and I felt bad for asking you to take the cat in out of nowhere. This really is the least we could do.”

“I didn’t… I didn’t say that to make you feel bad,” I told her.

“I know.” She giggled. “Doesn’t make you less right. Thank you for agreeing, Oliver.”

My heart skipped a beat again. It was a familiar feeling, the one I got when she looked at me with that smile, one that I hurried to push away.

I stood up, looking at the kitten already loving the scratching pole, even if it was about ten times her size. “We named her Cake, by the way.”

“Oh my God! That’s perfect!” she beamed and went to play with Cake.

I sighed tiredly and turned away. It was a good thing I could speak to other people now, but it was still exhausting. Just because I could bring myself to do it didn’t erase the fear of screwing up. Not completely.

I looked towards my sister, who was sitting at the couch with Alice, talking. The council president caught my gaze and… smiled at me, making me turn away in embarrassment.

That had been a smile I couldn't quite understand. It could have been a thankful smile, but to me it looked more like… she was proud or something.

No use thinking about it.

I went back to my room and left the girls alone with Cake.

************

Chapter 153: The start of a reconnection.

I played a bit of my game for a while longer, but by then I was too distracted. My plan for the day was to stay in my room and do nothing, but now we suddenly had a cat. Worse than that, Noelle…

No. Don’t think about it. It was nothing. It wasn’t the first time I looked at her and thought she was attractive. Alice was, too, and plenty of other women. There wasn’t anything wrong with thinking that, so long as they remained harmless thoughts, but I’d still rather not think about it.

Sighing, I sat on my bed and picked up my guitar. If anything could get my mind off thinking, it was playing guitar. I started practicing one of the more difficult solos that was still giving me trouble, and before I knew it, an hour had passed.

I no longer heard the noise from downstairs. Were the girls gone? What happened to Cake?

The knock on my door answered my question. Isabelle came in, holding Cake close to her chest. “The girls asked me to tell you again that they’re thankful. I… I am, too.”

She closed the door behind her and let Cake on the floor. The cat moved slowly, one clumsy paw in front of the other as she explored my room again. It was hard to take my eyes off her, and when I looked back to Isabelle, she was sitting at the other end of my bed.

“I asked mom why she said no to me and yes to you. It… made me a little mad, at first.”

I sighed, shaking my head.

“Just a little! You would’ve been mad, too!”

My expression softened. “I guess I would’ve.”

“See? Well, she said that you’ve been showing a lot of responsibility lately, and that you knew what you were getting into.”

“I don’t know what I’m getting into,” I corrected her. Or mom. Whatever. I watched Cake trying to climb onto the bed through the bed cover. “We’ve never had a pet. It’s scary. If she dies, it’s our fault, you know?”

Isabelle grimaced. “Do you always have to see the worst possible outcome?”

“It’s a habit at this point.”

“Why’d you agree? You were so against it at first?”

“...” I don’t know why I agreed. It was a mix of too many things, some of which I didn’t want to admit. “I just changed my mind. I didn’t expect mom to agree so quickly, either.”

Cake was halfway up the bed, hanging on by her front paws and on the verge of falling. Isabelle was about to stand up to help her, but I raised my hand to stop her. We watched, and little by little, Cake managed to climb on my bed. She gave out a victory meow towards us, and we couldn’t help but laugh.

Cake kept moving until she was on my lap and decided to make that her resting place for the moment. I had the silly thought that I knew three girls who would fight the cat for that spot, and had to stop myself from bursting out laughing.

Isabelle couldn’t have read my mind, but she still said something frighteningly related. “Why don’t you send a picture of Cake to your friends?”

I looked at her, blinking. She was so casual about it. Not a hint of bitterness or anything like it. She just watched as Cake curled herself into a ball and closed her eyes.

“That’s… a good idea,” I admitted. I reached for my phone, trying hard not to move too much to bother the sleeping kitten. Though there was no way she had fallen asleep so quickly, right?

I took a picture and sent it to the girls with the message ‘We have a cat now. Her name is Cake.’ I sent it to Thomas, too, because why not?

“How…” Isabelle started again, now with more hesitance. “How’s it going with your… friends?”

I kept my eyes down on the cat on my lap. She was so light, and she started purring, too. I feared that if I looked at Isabelle she’d be able to get some truths out of me.

“Well enough. They… helped me shop for new clothes the other day.”

She blinked. “You hate shopping for clothes.”

“It was… alright this time.”

There was a long silence between us, heavy enough that we could hear Cake’s soft purring. I saw Isabelle opening and closing her mouth out the corner of my eye a few times, until she finally spoke.

“I didn’t tell you I broke up with Ignacio, did I?”

I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. “When?”

“Like two weeks ago already.”

“Why?”

“Turns out he was one of those that’s only sweet when he wants something from you. He also bad-mouthed Alice, and I couldn’t forgive that.” Isabelle was frowning, mouth twisted. Then she pursed her lips and looked down at the floor. “It… helped me realize I’d done the same to you. I talked shit about your friends while knowing nothing about them, only listening to stupid rumors. I was… I guess I was…” She choked a bit on her own words. “I was afraid that you were… moving on, I think.”

My chest tightened, understanding and frustration mixing inside me. Isabelle didn’t say more, but it was like she couldn’t find the words to explain herself further. But I thought I understood.

“So it was okay when you did it, but not when I started?” I asked.

She answered with a silent, shame-filled nod. “I’m sorry.” Her voice cracked. “I screwed up.”

“Yes you did,” I said. Isabelle flinched.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated.

The cat on my lap stopped me from standing up to pace around the room. Instead, I started tracing the back of a finger along Cake’s back to calm myself. Surprisingly, it was working.

“I have other things to worry about now,” I said. Something in the back of my mind, maybe pride or caution, prevented me from outright forgiving Isabelle. “I think I’m finally growing in the ways I always wished I could. Even so, I can’t just forget everything just because you apologized.”

Isabelle nodded. “I figured.” Her next words she muttered lowly, with a small smile. “You’ve always been like that.”

She stood up and walked to the door. She opened it, and just before she went away, she turned her head to me. “Just so you know, I’m rooting for you. Don’t fuck it up.”

I felt a chill.

The sound of the door closing made Cake raise her head. She looked up at me, tilting her head a bit in curiosity.

“What do you think she meant by that?” I asked her.