Free Web NovelChapter 6: The Smartest Cat in the World
The park’s washroom was clean, like actually clean, with white marble countertops, a large mirror, and fluorescent lighting. The only sound in there was the distant, muffled sounds of the park outside and the drip from the faucet.
Tikki sat on the marble countertop beside the basin, watching me.
While I stood before him with the Cognition Enhancer in my right hand, unable to make myself move for the past several minutes.
I knew firsthand the kind of mind-rending torture this enhancer would put him through. After all, I was in a bathtub for five minutes, and my heart nearly gave out.
Tikki blinked at me slowly as I petted him, running my thumb between his ears the way he liked, and he pushed his head back into my hand and closed his eyes, while I did my best to keep my breathing even and my face easy and just stood there petting him while every alarm in my chest ran at full volume.
[He trusts me completely... and here I am...]
And overlapping that, sharp and cold came the image of the man at the fountain. Tears on his face. That wild-eyed, all-consuming rage I couldn’t be more familiar with.
[That wasn’t supposed to happen for another week. I really don’t have time.]
I looked at the injector. Then at Tikki. Then I brought the injector to the back of his head, and my thumb moved toward the release cap.
"I’m sorry, little man," I said, very quietly, scratching behind his ear one more time as I steadied him with my left hand, pressed the needle against the back of his head, and pushed the button.
-Kshk-!- Weah-!
Tikki’s entire body shuddered in a single motion, as he screeched out in a sound I had never heard him make before, and then he froze completely with his eyes blown wide, and for exactly two seconds, nothing happened.
Then the pain hit.
"VEEYUU!" He screamed, all four limbs going shuddering at once, his claws clutched the sleeve of my jacket as he twisted and thrashed.
His fur stood fully upright from ears to tail-tip, tail puffed to twice its normal size, whiskers trembling, breathing broken into rapid, ragged bursts between each screech.
I grabbed him and pulled him against my chest and held on while he bit down on my forearm hard through the sheer pain ravaging his head.
All four sets of claws drove through the jacket fabric and found skin underneath, hind legs kicking in fast, frantic pulses, but I kept my grip and kept moving my free hand in slow strokes along his spine and kept saying it’s okay in a low, even tone.
Even when the biting got harder, I didn’t move. Three minutes went past, then four, while every muscle in his body fired wrong, yet I kept Tikki pressed against my chest, my hand moving in slow, steady strokes.
Then, gradually, the hissing and screeching stopped.
The spasms slowed, and his bite on my forearm loosened. His breathing stretched from frantic to something that still shook but had a rhythm.
"It’s okay... it’s okay..." I kept petting him.
The silence that followed had more than just weight to it.
And the very next second, Tikki snapped, biting directly into my hair, bracing both hind legs flat against my forehead, and pulling with every ounce of his being.
"TIKKI!" I instinctively yelped.
He pulled harder, shoving my head back with his hind legs while wrenching my hair with every ounce of fury in his tiny body until-
-Rip-!
The tension of his pull suddenly disappeared along with the sound of something ripping, and a piercing pain in my scalp.
I lost my balance, falling to the ground on my ass, while Tikki tumbled in the opposite direction.
Slowly getting up, Tikki spat out the flock of my hair that he had ripped out with his tail down and puffed up, and his dilated eyes fixed on me with a glare of such concentrated personal betrayal that for a moment I genuinely had nothing to say.
I slowly raised both hands and began with, "Look, dude, the world is literally ending. We do not have time for this!
Tikki slowly blinked at me, and I felt my shoulders loosen.
"That’s right... It was necessary. So-"
"Wove!" He charged
[Oh fuck me!] I scrambled to my feet and cleared the washroom door at a full sprint.
Instincts honed from three years of surviving sprinters kicked in before thought did, and I was already cutting sideways across the path before Tikki cleared the entrance, and the gap held for about four seconds before he started closing it with an unnatural efficiency.
"Dude, I’m sorry!"
Tikki didn’t even bother replying as he closed in. fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm
He wasn’t just blindly chasing after me; he was predicting me.
I cut right. He was already moving right. I cut back left and vaulted a picnic table, and he went under it without breaking stride, already positioned on the other side to meet my landing.
I hit the low concrete divider along the path border and slid over it, and Tikki took the railing beside it in a single clean leap, landed on top, and launched off directly into my path.
I jumped between an elderly couple walking. Tikki used the park bench to their left as a shortcut, came off the far end of it, and shaved two full meters with his intercept angle.
I was using every evasion pattern I knew: sharp directional cuts, elevation changes, obstacle funnels, pushing into tight spaces where a sprinter would lose momentum.
But Tikki counterplayed every single one.
He cut corners tighter, anticipated direction changes before I committed to them, even converted every obstacle in the park into a tool for closing distance, and the distance kept closing.
Somewhere behind us, a cluster of people had stopped whatever they were doing and watched a dude being systematically hunted across a public park by a small puffed-up calico.
We ran until neither of us had anything left.
Sprint turned to jog. That jog to a walk until I dropped onto the nearest patch of grass with my arms and legs spread wide, staring at the sky, and Tikki landed beside my head a few seconds later, both of us damn near panting our lungs out.
I turned my head and looked at him. He was on his side, panting with his tongue out, tail deflating slowly back to normal.
Looking at him, I couldn’t help but chuckle.
[The damn thing worked... he’s okay.] I thought, feeling the knot in my chest finally loosen as I reached out and scratched his head.
He closed his eyes, and for three full seconds, his whole body relaxed into it.
Then he remembered he was supposed to be mad at me and went for the hand, which I managed to pull back just in time.
Chuckling, I slowly got up and looked at him, more than confident.
"Pucker up, buttercup..." I said, still catching my breath. "You are officially the smartest cat in the world, the apocalypse is starting early, and we do not have a minute to waste."
I picked him up in both arms like a baby and started toward the bike.
It was now time for step 2.
Tikki lasted halfway before the indignity became too much. Kicking free with both hind legs, he climbed my arm and slid into the shoulder pocket in a sequence that was noticeably more precise than this morning’s version.
"He settled into the pocket facing forward and made it abundantly clear through sheer posture alone that this conversation was not over.
And I couldn’t stop myself from pressing a quick kiss to the side of his cheek, which he replied to by biting the hair above my ear and pulling hard.
"Okay! Okay! Sorry!"
