Forge and Catseye - Tuesday afternoon

[x-catseye.livejournal.com]

Forge takes Catseye for her very first driving lesson. Forge makes a mental list of repairs to the car.


Catseye sat in the driver's seat of the signed-out car, keys proudly in her
hands, and waited for Forge with anticipation, fidgeting restlessly. Unable
to resist it after a few minutes, she put the keys in the ignition and
turned them, listening to the engine catch and start to purr. She liked the
sound a lot. Hands on the steering wheel, she pretended she was driving. She
also knew where the horn was, and pressed it just to hear the noise.
"Badnoise," she muttered to herself, not enjoying it as much as the purring
of the engine. Curious, she poked at one of the levers next to the steering
wheel, and jumped when the wipers came on, poking the lever again to make
them turn off, but they stopped not at the bottom of the windshield like
they were supposed to, but at the top. Furrowing her brow, the catgirl
pondered how to fix what she'd done.

"Hit the button on the end of the lever," Forge said, sticking his
head in the open passenger-side window before opening the door and
sliding into the empty seat. "Returns the wipers to the default
position. So you really want to learn to drive, huh? Big step." He
chuckled to himself. "I remember how hard it was to get you to grasp
the concept of pants."


Catseye batted him in the arm with her hand playfully. "Catseye still does
not like pants," she pointed out. "But Catseye wants to drive because it is
what humans do and even though Catseye is a cat sometimes Catseye is also a
human sometimes and humans drive and Catseye thinks it will be fun to go
fast without running!" She pointed forward, across the hood of the car.
"Look! Catseye made the car purr! Catseye knows that she has to push the
pedal on the bottom and turn the key at the same time," she said proudly.



"You've been paying attention, that's good." Forge pointed a remote at
the windshield and clicked a button, watching the garage doors slide
open and reveal the ramp leading to the west end of the driveway. "You
have to think of the car like... okay, think of it like hunting in
your BigCat form, right? You have to be subtle to sneak up on a deer,
be conscious of everything around you. Use the mirrors to see around
the car, and be aware of what the car's telling you. That engine's
going to purr differently depending on how much power you give it, for
example."

He tapped the instrument panel with a finger. "This dial is your
speed. Tells you how many miles you'll go in one hour. This one tells
you how much gas is in the car. When you see it getting close to the
red part, you know you need more gas. You know that the skinny pedal
makes the engine purr, and the big fat pedal makes you slow down. Now
this here? This is the gearshift," Forge indicated, thanking the gods
that Catseye hadn't picked a manual transmission car to learn in.
"Right now you see that letter 'P'? It means 'Park'. The only ones you
need to worry about are 'D' for Drive and 'R' for Reverse. If you're
ready, go ahead and hold down the big fat pedal - that's the brake -
and move the gearshift to 'D'."


Before she touched the gearshift, the catgirl thought about everything Forge
was saying and ran it all back through her head. Only SillyKittens did
things before they were ready. "The mirrors help Catseye to hunt with the
car," she repeated, pointing to the mirrors one by one, "and this dial says
how many miles the car will go in one hour? But why does Catseye need to
know how many miles it will go in one hour? What if Catseye doesn't want to
drive for an hour, ShinyBitsBoy?" she mused, then turned her attention to
the gas gague. "Catseye knows what gas is, it is food for the car! Catseye
helped BlackBloodGirl feed OneEye's car gas! And when it gets to the red
part then the car needs to eat. And the letter D makes the car move?"


Forge paused for a moment. "Close enough. And miles per hour is speed
- if you can go sixty miles in an hour, you know you're going a mile
per minute." He pointed at various spots on the speedometer. "Slow,
okay, fast, too fast. Just remember that."

He sat back in the seat and checked the seat belt with a slight amount
of trepidation. "D means Drive so... go ahead and take us out of the
garage, driver."



The miles someone could go in a minute didn't mean much to Catseye, but slow, okay, fast, and too fast did. "Catseye does not want to go slow, only fast!" she told Forge excitedly. "But if Catseye goes toofast that is not allowed, Catseye knows." She checked her own seat belt. "D is for Drive and Catseye is going to make the car drive," she grinned, holding down the fat pedal with one foot the way Forge had told her and pulling on the gearshift until it reached D. "The fat pedal has bumpies that feel funny on Catseye's foot," she told Forge with a frown, turning to look at him, and took her foot off the pedal.


The car jerked momentarily, then slowly crept forward at an idle.
Glancing down at Catseye's bare feet, Forge smiled. He'd spent a week
once convincing Kyle that yes, it was perfectly legal to drive without
shoes on in the state of New York. "Now the accelerator - the skinny
pedal - give it some juice, but lightly," he insisted.


Catseye used her left foot to touch the skinny pedal and the car jerked forward. Taken aback, she hit the other pedal with her right foot, sending them sailing forward against their belts. "Oops." She tried to hit both pedals at the same time with both feet but the car began jerking back and forth. Startled now, she turned the steering wheel, knowing that the wheel made the car turn and hoping she could straighten it out. The car turned off the drive and onto the lawn before Catseye took her foot off the skinny pedal. "Oops?"


"Not... bad for a first time..." Forge squeaked out, unhunching from
the pseudo-fetal position and glancing out the windows. "Okay, now
we're going to work on driving slowly. Just use a light touch
on the gas pedal, and eeeeeeeease us out onto the road."

Inwardly, though, he was making mental notes. Startled and didn't
change forms. Grasped the concept of the steering wheel and actually
used the brake correctly. He'd always suspected that had Catseye
benefited from regular schooling instead of spending her formative
years as a feline, she could have been a true polymath with the speed
that she picked up new concepts. As it was, however, trying to teach
her something new was often like, well, herding cats.


It took a bit of experimenting with the pedals to figure out how to make the car stop and go again, and how much to turn the wheel in combination with the amount of gas she did apply. Catseye concentrated hard, tail lashing between the seats, her tongue poking out of her lips. "Catseye thinks using both feet makes it harder?" she mused, unsure whether she was right. "If Catseye only used one foot then the car would not flop like a fishy?" She had managed to get the car to turn back onto the drive and it was meandering slowly towards the road, a wheel occasionally veering off onto the lawn as Catseye overadjusted the steering wheel.



"Automatic transmission, one foot, yep." Forge tried not to leave
fingerprints in the edge of the dashboard as the car managed to make
it through the main gate without scraping off an entire coat of paint.
"Only press one pedal at a time, and never too hard. Remember, like
sneaking up on a deer. Smooth and careful."



"Smooth and careful," she repeated, nodding. "Also Catseye thinks the car is not like a cat that can touch walls and gates and trees and things with its coat. Catseye thinks this hurts the car's coat?" It had sounded like it hurt, that whiny screechy noise as they'd passed the gates grating on her sensitive ears. "Which way does ShinyBitsBoy want the HuntingCar to go?"


"Just... let's go left, and try keeping it on the road for now? Steady
as she goes..." Forge said through clenched teeth. It's for a good
cause, it's for a good cause... he kept reminding himself with
every shudder of the car's engine.


Catseye wrestled with the steering wheel and the gas pedal and managed to get the car turning onto the road. "Smooth and careful, like sneaking up on a deer," she repeated to herself. "The car does not like to drive on the grass, only the road?"


"Yes. Cars are for the road, not the grass. This car, anyway."
Paint work, brakes, alignment, Forge thought to himself
as Catseye managed to find no less than three potholes between the
gate and the main road, as he mentally checked off the upcoming
maintenance list.

The thought of off-road driving with Catseye almost made him wish he
was facing down the Brotherhood again. "Okay, I'll make you a deal. If
you can keep the car on the road from here all the way down to that
bend in the road, then stop it, turn around, and drive back? I'll make
pastrami sandwiches for lunch all week."


"Catseye can do it!" she answered with determination. The first thing she did was to ease up on the gas pedal, then stopped jerking the steering wheel around, tongue hanging out of her mouth in concentration, tail lashing. "Catseye is not going to lose Pastrami sandwiches!"