my, my, how does it meow?

Minoth's not an animal person. Never has been, never will be. (This is more to say, he's not a pet person, but in general he prefers things with stained-glass wings to those with pink paw pads.) He's hardly a people person, after all - his recent developments in that department have been surprising to all parties, bar none who know the playwright personally.

Personally...say, intimately?

Well, Flora's a friend, anyway. Maybe, for Minoth, that constitutes intimacy. And how does he know her? What does he know of her?

Clever, bright and curious, often funny; wholly pleasant to chat with, and even sometimes to vent to. Not too swiftly shaken, though her determination is a measured quantity. Minoth won't deny finding her easy on the eyes, either.

(It's the first time he's ever thought of it, about her, in quite that way, but it's so much more and thus much less than a euphemism, that. She's a soothing sight for every sore eyeball and forehead, her very presence a balm. Really, truly, she is.)

She even smells nice! Of all people, Minoth can say without overmuch apprehension that Flora's a comfortable designee as his favorite. Now, maybe this is because his interactions with her are fewer and farther between, and thus easier to "get right" when he becomes self-conscious enough to throw an otherwise polite conversation. But if that's so, then that's so.

Minoth likes Flora. Flora likes Minoth. Minoth behaves like a gentleman, and Flora like a lady, and they're careful, very careful, fully fragile to a tee.

Flora bewitched into the body of a cat, though? This is altogether a different challenge.

Because cats, like dogs and then again emotionally moreso, can smell fear. You can't be uncertain, hesitant, around a cat. You can't be guarded around a cat unless you really mean it, because kitty'll beat you at your own game so easily, like pushing a glass off the end of the table, like twitching your tail and not even having to think.

Flora can smell Minoth's fear at any time, he knows that. But because she's (usually) human herself, she gives away just as much as she's willing to let slip, which usually isn't all that much.

Generally, there are two options, with animals. Well, three, if you count the tendency of dogs to just stand there and pant, pleased enough with the circumstance in itself.

You can sit next to them and pet them, or you can pick them up. One is the tentative gambit to please an unpleasable creature, and the other is a desperate stratagem invoked when one can think of nothing better to do, because you can't exactly talk to a feminine feline, now, can you?

Minoth watches Flora, silent, reposed upon the floor in a patch of sunlight, radiant with tortoiseshell stripes, freckled nose fluttering and paws turned halfway over so as to expose just a prim hint of their perfect underside, claws kept.

That is, Minoth watches Flora silently, and Flora is silent, too.

To speak of intimacy, he hasn't quite mastered the art of sitting in mutual silence with her. He's actually quite far from it, and much closer with Addam. Maybe with Addam it's because he can always pretend he's got something better to do, or at least an occupation, baseline, but with Flora? ...No, Flora knows better. Flora always knows better. Flora knows best.

"So what's a nice girl like you doing in a nice place like this?"

It's an attempt to elide the awkwardness that this is Addam's house, Addam's and Flora's house because he'd gotten her in on the venture together, and no matter how Mythra will deride it and deride it, it is a very, very nice place indeed - fit for kings, if not princes, if not paupers, if not playwrights.

Flora throws him the side of an eye in response, pupils properly shrunk from the sun's rays. Then she begins cleaning a front paw.

So maybe it was a bad attempt.

There's also the option that Minoth just get up and go into a different room - the library, instead of the parlor, or the kitchen, or even the washroom, if he needs to lock himself up for a spell. But that would be rude, cowardly, and those are two things Minoth tries never to be, despite his usual whims to be sardonic, sarcastic, pragmatic and free.

He drags the heels of his hands down the lower ends of his thighs, and the faux-leather gives a squeak of protest. Now Flora's watchful eye shrinks, shudders, with a wince.

"Sorry about that," murmurs Minoth. "Not my favorite sound either."

His favorite sounds...the crackle of a bullet from his barrel, the sizzle of a sausage on the fire, the scratch of his pen on paper, the songs that Addam sings...

Well. Maybe that's being a little bit too broad. Addam's voice is as pleasing as the next, really. It's just that he's the only one who does sing.

Minoth gets up (with a creak and a crackle of his own), moving past Flora to stand in the bay of the window and look out without blocking her precious rays. No sooner have his boots touched the baseboard than does he hear a new sound, one unique in Torna.

Flora meows at him.

He quickly turns back, chin thrust over shoulder, to make sure there's no household pest she's lit upon in a game, haunches poised to spring and butt a-wiggling.

No mouse. No bug. Not even so much as a dust mite (and Minoth seems to recall that Addam had said she's allergic, which was quite the thrill when they first moved in).

Minoth looks down at Flora, and Flora looks back up at him. She's presented politely, all four paws and one bottom end met to the floorboards.

"I'm hearing things, is that it?"

Another apocryphal mewl, but this time he's watching her muzzle intently for its issuance.

Minoth doesn't like to be incapable. He likes to handle anything and everything that comes his way with the same proud ability as he has for those things he's done every day of his life, and will do until the end of time. He certainly doesn't like to be impotent, ineffectual.

So if Flora's going to give him a hard time, he's not going to take it lying down. He crouches to get as close to level with her gaze as he can, and when she makes the smallest inquisitive peep, he scoops her up without another moment wasted.

Minoth forgets, temporarily, that most cats will yowl and twist and jump away, when seized upon in such a manner. He doesn't have to remember this crucial fact, though, because Flora is not most cats. Flora goes happily, willingly, almost as if she'd planned it.

"I wouldn't usually call you a piece of work, Flora, but you're getting there, today," Minoth grumbles. He happens to think that a joker is as a joker does, even if Flora couldn't ever be anything so crass, so crude. "Clever trick you're playing, here."

She probably did plan it. She probably knows him better than he knows himself. She probably knows everything.

Now, there isn't much to do with a cat held in arms, if the cat can reasonably be expected to know what everything above jump height (which isn't much, in Aletta Manor) looks like, sounds like, swats like. She doesn't climb up on his shoulder or lay her paw over his mouth.

(Thank the Titans, she doesn't decide to up and scratch out his other eye, either. Minoth can and does do well with one roguish scar, but two? It's a bad kind of symmetrical.)

Flora is simply content. Minoth's never quite gotten to grips with content. But, if there are no other requests from the furry contingent, he'll do just as well to turn back around and walk to the window, staring out over the moor with his chin buried among the chocolate-brown tuft that juts out over the place where Flora's eyebrows would be.

It's almost as idyllic as it might be if Flora were standing here next to him, fair freckled cheek leant to his chest and slim, strong palm covering his Core Crystal, as they watch in solemn silence for the next stroke of future coming present by the Architect.

No, no a cat person, nor an animal person at large. But a Flora person, for sure, if one is so unlucky to find that there aren't any Flora persons around.