Haller and Catseye- Tuesday morning

[x-catseye.livejournal.com]

Haller tracks Catseye down with a bribe of pastrami and explains the concept of privacy in terms she'll understand, as an attempt to address JP's issue with her.




It was a rare sunny morning. Catseye understood that at this time of year when the sun shone, that meant it was much colder than it would be when there were lots of clouds and snow falling, but she was inside the cozy warm mansion, and being cold was the furthest thing from her mind. She was curled up in a ball in the sunroom, lethargic and completely content, eyes closed as she drowsed, tail over her nose.

And then suddenly she caught a whiff of something foreign, something new to the sunroom. It was ManyPeople's scent. Following it came the sound of footsteps and a loss of the sunlight which she detected through eyes that had slitted open- he was standing nearby, blocking the light. She let out a "mrrt" to acknowledge his presence, but didn't move from her position.

Jim nodded to himself. Catseye had no particular schedule he'd been able to ascertain, but he'd suspected that a careful survey of the mansion's sunnier spots would turn her up eventually. This was only the third place he'd checked -- and, fortunately, he'd come prepared.

"Hello, Catseye," he said, regarding the immobile purple cat, "I went into town earlier to pick up a few things, and saw something you might like."

He held up the sizable paper bag he'd been carrying. Its contents were well-wrapped, but easily recognizable to a feline nose: pastrami.

As he spoke Catseye heard a bag rustle, and with the rustling came a scent she knew all too well. Her eyes opened and it was all she could do not to pounce on Haller. But she held her cat dignity in check and raised her head, sniffing almost disdainfully, whiskers twitching. She gave a lazy stretch and got to her feet slowly, though inside she was nearly salivating. She twined around Haller's legs and let out a greedy "mrrow!"

Jim's mouth curved in a half-smile. "Thought so. You can have it, but do you mind turning human for me? I'd like to talk to you, and this is the bribe."

After one final pass against Haller's legs, Catseye took a few steps away and shifted. Anything for pastrami! "What does ManyPeople want to talk about, and can ManyPeople talk after eating with Catseye?"

"Weird People Rules," Jim replied, handing the bag to the abruptly-girl. "Mr. Beaubier wanted me to talk to you about them."

Catseye dug into the bag eagerly and pulled several pieces of pastrami out, stuffing them into her mouth eagerly before offering the bag back to Haller. "Weird People Rules?" she asked with her mouth full. "Are those like SillyHumanRules? Is GrumpyPointyEars still grumpy about Catseye wanting to nap with him?"

"No thanks, you can have the bag," said Jim, refusing the bag with a simple gesture. "And yeah, that would be one of the problems, though I'm not going to try and make rules about it -- I just wanted to ask you a few questions. To start with, why do you think he doesn't like it when you come into his room to nap with him? In your opinion, I mean."

"GrumpyPointyEars did like it, at the start. He was nice to Catseye." She dug into the bag again and chewed for a few moments before adding "then he found out that Catseye was actually a human and now he won't let Catseye in. GrumpyPointyEars doesn't like Catseye anymore."


Jim nodded. "So why do you think finding out that you were human bothered him?" he persisted. Talking to a girl who didn't quite think like a girl was a slightly strange experience, but in a perverse way the idiosyncrasy actually made him less inclined to talk down to her. Not that he'd ever been fond of that tactic; there were few things he'd enjoyed less in his childhood than having his inexperience treated as stupidity. He wasn't sure if this was the right approach for Catseye's particular situation, but he decided to play it out until proven otherwise. Confusion could be cleared up; the memory of condescension less so.


The catgirl shook her head and held out her hands, confused. "Catseye doesn't know! That is why Catseye got so upset! Catseye thought maybe it was because GrumpyPointyEars didn't want people to think that he was doing NotSleeping with Catseye, but Catseye knows that GrumpyPointyEars doesn't like NotSleeping with females and so Catseye doesn't know why it bothered him!" She wasn't even eating anymore, clearly upset by Jean-Paul's rejection of her.

Jim offered a silent prayer of thanks to whoever had explained "NotSleeping" to Catseye. Not only was that going to save time, but he wasn't sure there was any amount of prep that could bring him to give her The Talk.

Granted, they might eventually need to work on how one was generally discouraged from bringing up other people's sexual preferences to relative strangers, but you had to learn to walk before you could run.

"Okay," Jim said, carefully arranging his thoughts, "You've probably heard this word a lot, but I don't know if it's been properly explained because it's something most people grow up with rather than get taught. Do you know what it means when someone says they want 'privacy'?"

Catseye sat down and poked unhappily at the paper bag of pastrami. "It means they do not want any humans around because they are doing something sneakybad?" she suggested. "Or they don't like Catseye?"

"It's not always bad, or about not liking you." Jim suspected someone had at one point tried to explain the concept, but wasn't surprised this was the definition she'd arrived at -- especially if the explanation had occurred early, before she'd really been prepared or willing to assimilate a human mindset. For someone not raised with traditional social mores, that might indeed be how it was interpreted. The telepath rubbed the back of his head thoughtfully.


"Some people are more comfortable alone," he said, trying to figure out how to break it down to familiar terms for her. "Or rather, they want to do things that are easier or more comfortable without other people around. Like when you've found a good place to sleep and people come in and start making noise or yank your tail, or when you're hungry so you try to catch a bird, but someone keeps following you and scaring them off. It's sort of like that. Hunting and sleeping are both things that you can do with company, but you'd usually want to do it in private."


The catgirl thought this over, still poking at the bag of pastrami without eating any. "Catseye does not like it when humans wake her up from naps or pull tails or scare off prey," she agreed. "But when Catseye does not like humans to be around her, Catseye finds places to go where there are no humans. If humans find Catseye, then Catseye hides again, and if humans find again then it is because they are sneakysmart and that means Catseye should pay attention to them and has to do what they want. But when Catseye is sneakysmart finding humans who want... privacy..." the word sounded funny- she didn't think she liked it very much, "then humans get angry." She shrugged her shoulders and looked up at Haller for an explanation.

Jim thought for a moment. "It's attached to something we call respect," he ventured. "You say that when you want to be left alone, you go somewhere you cannot be found. For humans it's different. We have . . . territories. Some places are open to anyone, like this room. If someone is in a place like this, it's a sign they want to be found. But the rooms where people sleep every night and keep their things are considered their private territory, and the place they should be able to go when they don't want to be bothered. That's why people like to be asked permission to come in." The telepath paused. "Think of it this way. If you're sleeping, and someone wants you to get up and get a book for them, which would make you more likely to help them: being told 'You're going to get me that book', or being asked 'Could you please get that book for me'?"


Pondering, Catseye raised an eyebrow. "Catseye likes to help people who give her pastrami or play with her. If the human is nice and if they tell Catseye why they want the book then Catseye will help them if they say please or not. Catseye understands respect," she told Haller wryly. Respect, after all, was what this whole thing was about. "Catseye respects BigBrother and BrainyButtBoy and WarmSnugglyFriend and many humans at the mansion so when they tell Catseye they don't want to be bothered in their rooms Catseye finds somewhere else to sleep but they don't keep Catseye out just because Catseye is a girl that turns into a cat. They respect Catseye for who Catseye is. GrumpyPointyEars does not. When Catseye asked him on the journal to tell her why he said she could not nap with him so Catseye would understand GrumpyPointyEars had no answer. He does not respect Catseye."

Again Jim nodded. This was good. He wasn't as acquainted with Catseye as he should have been before she'd left to live with her brother, so finding out how much of a practical grasp she already had on these concepts helped him quite a bit, and possibly her as well; articulation usually did. As he'd suspected -- and perhaps Jean Paul, too, judging from the other man's comment on treating it as culture-shock rather than wilful stubbornness -- it wasn't ignorance, exactly, but difference of approach.


Which was just a tactful way of describing his first thought, which was "Two immovable objects met and were somehow shocked to find themselves blocked to a standstill."

"That may be the problem," Jim said, resting his hands on his knees. "By continuing to enter his room, I think Mr. Beaubier feels you aren't respecting him, either. He didn't understand at the time that you see an open window as an invitation, or that it wouldn't be obvious why he didn't want you in his private space. That's why he didn't think he needed to explain. Just like you don't give respect unless it's shown to you, neither does he. Even though that wasn't your intent, from his point of view you started it by being disrespectful to him."

The catgirl cocked her head, confused by 'continuing to enter his room.' "Catseye has not been in GrumpyPointyEars's room ever since the first night Catseye went in. Catseye is respecting staying out of his room." She wasn't even yowling at the door anymore. "Catseye is sorry if GrumpyPointyEars thought Catseye was disrespecting him, but GrumpyPointyEars should have told Catseye he thought Catseye was disrespecting his... privacy... instead of being grumpy and not answering questions."

She hadn't been back in? Well, at least that meant the plaintive noises he'd heard down the hall for a few nights had stopped of their own accord. "Just like respect, for you, means being given an explanation when you're asked to do something even though it's not always the same for others," Jim said aloud, "sometimes you have to work a little harder to adjust to other people. I have a suggestion. Ask Mr. Beaubier to explain why you upset him, and explain to him that you're asking because it isn't obvious to you, and you want to understand. I think he'll be more patient with you if he knows that you're trying. Almost everyone will answer your questions if you explain why you need to know."

Frowning, Catseye lashed her tail. "Catseye did ask GrumpyPointyEars to explain so that she would understand the reason Catseye was not allowed in his room. GrumpyPointyEars said that he did not have to explain the reason." She wished she could show Haller her journal, but she remembered what she'd written fairly well because it had upset her so much at the time. "Catseye wrote to GrumpyPointyEars in her journal and said 'Catseye knows she cannot decide humans' reasons for them but Catseye thinks it is not fair not to know the reasons at all. Will WarmPointyEars tell Catseye the reason so Catseye can try to understand?' but GrumpyPointyEars did not answer."

"Ask him again in person," Jim suggested. "I've talked to him since then, and he may be a little more willing to answer now. It may also help if he can see you. One of the drawbacks to the journals is that you can't tell what tone the other person is speaking in, or judge how upset they are or aren't. Sometimes I think that's why it's so easy to fight on them." The telepath gave her a lopsided smile. "Don't worry. You know when the boys play games that have levels like easy, medium, and hard? You could probably think of Mr. Beaubier like a game on the Hard setting. He's not bad" Jim added hastily, lest she get the wrong impression, "but I think he needs to be handled in a very particular way that can be hard to find even for people who know all the normal human ways. It's a challenge."

Feeling much better after hearing Haller's encouragement, Catseye opened the bag of pastrami and sampled a little more. "Challenge," she echoed thoughtfully as she chewed. "Like catching a very speedyfast mouse. Catseye will try to ask again. Does ManyPeople want some pastrami now?"

"Sure." Jim smiled as he accepted a slice from the bag. He drew one out, considering that couching it in terms of a challenge to her had possibly been a bad idea. Still, he was probably safe enough.

At least until the pastrami was gone.