point of cute

It was almost suspicious, the number of convenient errands Addam managed to produce that involved the Aletta homestead, when he thought no one was looking. Sure, they'd been back there to send off the expedition for the Dragon Incense as the prerequisite to being handed those delectable Energy Pickles in the first place, but now the prince was just handing off anything he thought Lora would buy - and Lora would buy a lot, considering Addam was usually the one paying.

The result was that Minoth didn't even remember why they were here this time, but Addam was bustling along with just as much his usual share of vigor. Minoth, privately, thanked the Architect that he had an aesthetic appreciation for the way Addam walked, ran, or jogged, no matter from which angle, because if he'd gotten himself hooked up with a Driver that captivated his heart and soul but embarrassed his eyes, he'd never live it down.

(This condition entirely separate from the fact that Amalthus walked funny, looked funny, talked funny-- Okay, maybe that last, or even those latter two, wasn't or weren't true, but he DID walk funny. He did very much waddle. And Minoth sauntered, and Addam ambled, and he liked it that way. Say, what about Flora? She padded, like as not.)

When Addam went on errands deep in the bowels of the house to retrieve something or other, he no longer beckoned Minoth to follow him, and whether that was because he feared dalliance in the study, full of books and papers and all those things Minoth found enchanting, emblematic personal spaces shared most of all, or because he forgot was anyone's guess.

Minoth installed himself in the kitchen, busied himself inspecting the patterns in the woodwork of this cabinet or that buffet chest, and made nice with the kitten patiently miauwing (so help him, he liked peculiarly spelled onomatopoeia) for its station between the two side legs of the chair at the near end of the dining table.

It - she, he figured after she'd rolled over playfully exactly once, and then rolled back onto her front the better to staunchly pretend that nothing of the sort had occurred - was quite a pretty specimen, with medium brown fur splashed in irregular stripes of a darker brown and paler paws, belly, tailtip, and muzzle. Pink inner ears, elegant and well-trimmed tufts at the base, whiskers that popped out at the most adorable angles...

"Nice cat," Minoth offered, when next he saw Addam's haplessly spiky head poke back into the room.

Addam frowned. "We don't have a cat."

He tried to keep frowning, but it apparently became quite difficult once he'd tilted his gaze down to the space between the flares of Minoth's pants and saw the fluffy little creature: "Minoth, that's Flora!"

"That's ridiculous. You want me to believe that that-" he pointed, and she meowed "-is Flora? Your wife? I mean, you might be a clown, but you're not that hopeless. No way I'll believe you made her up."

"Minoth..."

"Yeah?"

"I just said we don't have a cat. And you've MET Flora! More than only just!"

Minoth shook his head. "Doesn't matter. You looked at that cat and you said it was Flora, without even stopping a beat to think. There's something..." and here his knowledge about cats caught up with him, so he whispered "...fishy going on here."

"You think I don't know that?!" Addam wasn't whispering. "My wife, the person I love most in the world, has been turned into a cat, and my best friend" -the person you love second most in the world? Minoth thought with an involuntarily inmixed tone of pleading that he sharply dismissed- "doesn't seem like he's going to do anything to help me about it!"

"How do you KNOW that?"

"How do I know you're not going to help? The suspicious statements and lack of anxiety are a wonderful start, don't you think?!"

"Addam." His face, long and marked by a characteristic chin, fit easily between Minoth's palms. "You think your wife is a cat. I'm not anxious, I'm concerned."

Addam wrenched his face away. "Well," he pronounced poutily, "you've got a heck of a way of showing it."

Through it all, Flora-cat didn't seem to be too terribly concerned with watching her fellow occupants of the clean, spacious room. To be sure, their shoes and attached miscellaneous buckles made for plenty of scratchable, nuzzleable surfaces, but their ludicrous conversation itself? If she understood, it wasn't any big boon.

"So I do," Minoth said, eyes on the kitty. "What do you want me to do now? I'm game for anything except true love's kiss."

To Minoth's chagrin, Addam burst out into almost violent guffaws. "You're lying! You think you're going to work some reverse psychology mumbo-jumbo on me - or even better, you think you're going to get ME to kiss the cat!"

She whipped her nose rather pointedly up at the speaker, which he didn't notice, busy as he was shouting, "Oh, it's ridiculous!"

So Minoth gave Flora a look. She met it, then tilted her head to one side in an obvious signal.

"Do you want ridiculous, or do you want your wife back?"

"I w- Minoth?"

Minoth raised his eyebrows coolly, all and none guile. "I'm just sayin' - don't be a scaredy-cat, now!"

(Both cheeks, freckle-recalling whiskerholes and all, did the trick, as per usual.)