Joey the Cat and Prince Snowberry III

Joey the cat was a real fucking tough alley cat.
Best ratter in Calimport, everyone said.

Some of the other alley cats always made fun of
her, though, because she was best friends with Snowberry the rat. Admittedly,
“Snowberry” *was* a really fucking dumb name. Still, he was the smartest
and most useful animal Joey ever met.

He was clever, and fast, and he could squirm
into places far too small for any feline. Whenever Joey and Snowberry got too
thin and desperate, Snowberry would break into a fish shop down at the docks,
then bring her back meat in tiny bits and pieces.

Other times, Snowberry showed her how to catch
fish. Not the normal way, with her claws, but with a piece of string. He tied a
little metal hook on one end, then baited it with a piece of meat. Then he
threw the line into the water, and when a fish came up to eat the bait,
Snowberry would pull hard as he could on the line, and Joey would pounce on the
fish and drag it back onto land.

Sure, sometimes when she was hungry, she eyed
Snowberry a little. Admiring his fat.

She never met a white rat like Snowberry before.
Snowberry had a thick, sleek coat, and sure, it looked pretty, but it was so
obvious and easy to spot, she was amazed he’d never been caught and eaten by
other cats before.She wondered what he tasted like.

“Hey,” Joey said one night as they dug through
garbage together. “Snowberry.”

“Yes, my love?”

“How come you ain’t dead yet?” Joey said.

“Oh,” Snowberry said. “Well, my owners took very
good care of me.”

“Your owners? The fuck is an owner?” She fished
a tuna can out of the pile of garbage on the street.

Snowberry dug the last bit out tuna out of the
can, then stuffed it into her mouth with his paws. “You know,” Snowberry said.
“It’s like, y’know, a human that takes care of you. They stick you in a cage
and make you do tricks, and they give you food.”

“They stick you in a cage?” Joey scoffed.
“Why?”

“So you can’t leave,” Snowberry said. “Oh, it
was fucking awful. But I had the most daring escape. I jammed a bit of straw in
the lock, see, so it malfunctioned when they locked in me for the night, and
then I gnawed… ah, it’s a long story.” He licked the tuna juice off his
paws.

“Oh,” Joey said. “Huh.”

She was glad Snowberry escaped. She liked being
friends with him.

--

“Oh my god,” Snowberry. He jostled her awake in
the middle of the day. He bit her ear. “Wake up!”

Joey yowled. She’d been enjoying a perfectly
nice nap on the docks. She pinned Snowberry with her paws. “What?”

“My owners!” Snowberry said. “They saw me! They
passed me by on the street, and they recognized me! They’re going to come steal
me, Joey! I can’t go back to the cage! I’ve had a taste of adventure! I’ll die!
I’ll die of boredom!” He tried to shake her, which didn’t work, so he flapped
her ear instead.

Joey flicked her ear. “I’ll fight ‘em all off.”
She rolled over on top of him so he’d go to sleep. It was the middle of the
day, for fuck’s sake.

“You’re a cat!” Snowberry said.

Joey scoffed.

“Okay, no,” Snowberry said. “No no no. I have an
idea. Joey. Listen.” He tried vainly to squirm out from under her. “Y’know my
son-of-a-bitch ex-boyfriend?”

“Fluffles?” Joey said. “You wanna talk about
fucking Fluffles? In the middle of the day, at 3 PM, when most god-fearing
creatures oughta be sleeping? No.”

“Listen! Fluffles. He’s white like me. This is
what we do. We find him, and we poison him with poppy seeds…”

“You can’t solve every fuckin’ problem by
poisoning it.”

“Oh wow, now you’re against poisoning,”
Snowberry said. “It worked perfectly well when I tricked those means cats you
hate onto boarding a pirate ship, then fed them poisoned fish so they fell
asleep and didn’t wake up until the ship sailed away.”

“You did *what?*”

“Oh my god, stop getting distracted,” Snowberry
said. “Fluffles. First I’ll seduce him, then poison him. Then you pick him up
in your mouth-- gently!-- and we carry him to my humans. Then we put him in
their house, so they find him. And then they’ll think he’s me, and I’ve come
home! And then *he* gets the cage!”

Huh. That was actually a pretty good idea.
“Yeah, fuck Fluffles,” Joey said. “I’ve wanted to eat that son-of-a-bitch for
months.”

--

It actually did work. Which wasn’t a surprise.
Snowberry’s plans always worked, even though they took a few tries, sometimes.
God. Snowberry was so fucking smart.

She did take the opportunity to chew Fluffles a
little on the way there, but hey. Joey wasn’t a fucking saint.

[[[Jadira and Prince Shura|NEXT]]]