Rascal
cats
Bagheera licked the last dust of kibble from her bowl, sat back on her haunches, and considered the evening. The bowl was empty. This was a problem. Not because she was hungry, exactly, but because the air above her carried a second, richer layer of smell: sauteed chickpeas, butter, something herbed and green that she had no name for but wanted very much to put in her mouth.
She padded out of the laundry room and into the hall. From the dining room came the clink of forks against plates and the low murmur of her humans talking about whatever humans talked about. They sounded occupied. Good.
The kitchen was just around the corner. She paused at the threshold, ears rotating. A pan sat on the counter beside the stove, its lid tilted open at an angle that seemed, to Bagheera, like an invitation. Steam still rose from it in thin curls. She could see the food resting against the rim, glistening, practically unsupervised.
She crossed the tile floor in four quick strides and leaped.
The counter was cool under her paws. She steadied herself, lowered her nose to the dish, and bit into the chickpeas. It was extraordinary. Warm, salty, slick with cream. She chewed once, twice, and was reaching for a second piece when a chair scraped in the other room.
“Bagheera!”
The male one. He appeared in the doorway, tall and frowning, pointing a finger at her the way he always did when he believed he had authority over the situation. She looked at him, then at the food, then back at him.
“Down. Now.”
She grabbed one last piece between her teeth and jumped to the floor, trotting past his legs and around the corner before he could close the distance. Behind her she heard him mutter something to the female one, who laughed. Bagheera swallowed the food in the hallway and licked her whiskers. She felt no guilt. Guilt was a concept she understood only in the abstract, the way she understood that the red dot on the wall was not actually alive. She knew; she simply did not care.
She sat in the hallway for a while, cleaning her paw. The sounds from the dining room resumed. Forks. Glasses. Conversation. She waited. A minute passed, then another. She lowered her paw and stared at the kitchen doorway. The pan was still in there. She could feel it, a gravitational certainty, like the pull of a sunbeam on a cold afternoon.
The thing about rules, Bagheera reflected, was that they only applied to creatures who had agreed to follow them. She had agreed to nothing. She had been adopted into this house, yes, and she ate the food they poured into her bowl, and she slept in their bed, and sometimes she sat on the female one’s lap and allowed herself to be stroked. But none of that constituted a contract. She was a sovereign entity. The food was unguarded. The math was simple.
She rose and began her approach. This time she went low, belly close to the tile, each paw placed with deliberate silence. She reached the base of the counter and paused, listening. The conversation in the dining room continued. She gathered herself and jumped.
She landed lightly, one paw on either side of the dish. The chickpeas were right there. She opened her mouth.
A hand closed around her midsection.
“You absolute rascal.”
He had been faster this time, or she had been slower. It did not matter. He lifted her off the counter and tucked her against his chest, one arm beneath her and the other coming up to scratch the soft fur under her chin. She felt his thumb work the spot just below her jaw, the one that always made her eyes close. Her purr started before she could stop it.
He carried her to the dining table and sat down with her in his lap, still scratching. “You know you can’t do that,” he said, in the soft, exasperated voice he reserved for her worst offenses.
Bagheera closed her eyes and leaned into his hand. She was warm. She was being scratched. The chickpeas had been delicious.
She had done absolutely nothing wrong.