Garrison and Adrienne - Buy some furniture and give the cat a name

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

The freaky magical cat annoys Adrienne so she puts it out in the rain but then falls asleep. Channeling Breakfast at Tiffany's, she and Garrison brave the weather to search for it.

"I'm so fancy... but you already know... I'm in the fast lane... from L.A. to Tokyo! I'm so fancy... yeah- hey!" The song changed abruptly and Adrienne looked up from grading papers to see the orange cat had jumped silently down from Garrison's moose head and onto her radio to change the button on one of her preset stations. Adrienne made a shooing motion. "Get the hell out of... oh. Okay. Thanks." The new song playing was B*witched's C'est La Vie, which was even better than Iggy Azalea's Fancy.

"Gotta let me in, hey, hey, hey, let the fun begin hey... I'm the wolf today hey, hey, hey... I'll huff I'll puff and blow you away." She did the dance motions from her spot on the couch and went back to grading papers as she sang until a crash from her bedroom got her attention.

"What the hell are you doing?" she called out as she got up to investigate. Tandy was out and the cat was no longer in the living area, so her money was on the cat for the cause of the disturbance. Which meant she was talking to a cat. Because that wasn't strange at all.

When she saw her closet Adrienne let out a bloodcurdling shriek that caused the cat to bolt out of the room. It had somehow gotten the closet door open, jumped up onto the shelf above the hanging clothes and knocked a box onto the floor, spilling the accessories that had been in it across the floor. "What the fuck?! she yelled. "Stay the fuck out of the closet! I don't want your fucking hair all over these fucking-" she'd stomped back into the living room and found the cat lying on the pile of term papers, which resulted in another shriek. "Jesus Christ! Get off!"

When it refused to listen to her, Adrienne stomped over to it and shooed it away. It hissed at her but reluctantly slunk off, leaving behind a large ink stain from the pen it had been sitting on. She shrieked again, this time because the cat had now left an inky trail behind it. "That's it!" she bellowed, flinging a window open, recoiling slightly from the driving rain she'd let in. "Out! Get out!"

The cat was trying to make itself as small as possible in the corner of the room, but it didn't run when she approached it, allowing Adrienne to grab it by the scruff of the neck and, holding it at arm's length to avoid the ink all over its underside, put it on the windowsill. She gave it a shove so it was on the outside of the sill and closed the window. Even though she knew it wouldn't be a permanent solution, since the bloody thing always seemed to find its way back in anyway, it gave her a sense of satisfaction as she turned her back on the window and set about cleaning up the mess the cat had caused.

~

"Why is the AL East so fucked up this year?" Stretching as she sat up on the couch after a latter-innings-nap, Adrienne switched off the Red Sox game and looked around the suite for the cat she was talking to. Except it wasn't there. It must have gone into Tandy's room.

Curious, Adrienne padded over to the bedrooms and switched the lights on, first in Tandy's, then in her own. But the cat wasn't in either. "Cat?" she called out tentatively. "Where are you?" She returned to the window she'd pitched it out of, but it was no longer there. And it was still pouring rain. Fuck it. It's probably fine, she thought to herself, returning to the couch. So what if it hadn't been gone for this long since it started showing up?

She tried to settle in and forget about it, but something that felt like what she assumed guilt felt like gnawed inside of her, and she squirmed uncomfortably. She switched on Tandy's XBox and tried to focus on a game, but the gnawing persisted, and eventually she tossed the controller aside and pushed herself to her feet, grabbing her trenchcoat from the front closet and heading for the front door.

The force of the cold rain bit into her skin as she popped the collar on her coat and wandered the grounds of the mansion calling out "Cat? Where are you, cat?" It didn't take long before she was chilled to the bone and absolutely drenched. "Cat! Where'd you get to?!"

Garrison flicked his coat several times to get the excess water off and hung it up. He was staying in Adrienne's suite for the moment, as Kyle had decided now was the time to fix some water damage on his walls, necessitating the temporary relocation of himself, his moose head, and the unnamed orange cat that he still had been unable to get rid of or convince anyone else to adopt. He looked around but Adri wasn't there, which was surprising. There was a stack of her term papers on the desk and the couch was still warm, so she hadn't left long ago.

"Cat!" Adrienne yelled, wandering around the edge of the woods with her hands cupped around her mouth like a bullhorn. "C'mere cat! Come back, damn you! Caaaaaaaaat?"

Kane determined quickly that Adrienne wasn't in the suite. He was just passing the window when he could hear her shout vaguely over the rain. What was she doing outside in this rain? He grabbed his just hung up jacket from the stand and pulled it on, following her out into the rain.

Adrienne was still wandering the grounds calling for the cat when she spotted another figure through the driving rain. Squinting, she struggled to make it out. Her eyes lit up when she realized it was Garrison. "Help me find the cat!" she called out to him, wiping her face with her hands, though it had absolutely no effect to dry or warm her skin.

"The cat? What's the cat doing out in this?" He yelled over the rain, looking around for the wretched orange thing.

"I... I put it out. I closed the window. Before the game started," Adrienne admitted, shifting her eyes guiltily. "And now I can't find it. Help me find the damned thing?"

"What?" That was... a while ago. While Kane wasn't against the idea of the cat moving on, it was cruel to put an animal out in this weather. He knew that Adrienne wouldn't have done it with that in mind but they needed to find the cat. It was only right. "Alright, you're a cat and it's absolutely pissing down. Where do you go?"

"I fell asleep!" she answered in response to his tone when he asked what. "I-I... I don't know." She ran her hands through her hair distractedly. "I'm not a freaking cat. Doesn't the catgirl still live here? Maybe ask her? It likes being dry. Remember when it dumped your beer bottle over that one time and it freaked the fuck out and started running around the suite because it got wet? Maybe it's in the treehouse?"

"Makes sense." Kane nodded and prodded over to the treehouse tree, looking up at the wet wood ladder. Yup, he was going to break his idiot neck trying to save a cat he didn't even want. He quickly started to climb it, although paused as a bolt of lightning crashed down less than a mile away from where they were standing.

Adrienne started cursing when she saw the lightning come down, pacing at the foot of the treehouse. "I can't believe we're going to die over a stupid fucking stray cat!!" she hollered into the wind.

"Technically, I'm going to die over a stray cat." Kane muttered as he pulled himself over the edge. Unfortunately, the tree house was empty at first glance. Cursing, he pulled himself up and caught a flash of movement near the end of the branches were it fetched up against the mansion. On a ledge against the second floor wall was huddled the soaked, shivering cat. "Wait, I can see him!"

"Not if we both get struck by-" Adrienne's comment was cut off when she heard Garrison's exclamation about seeing the cat. Another clap of thunder shook the ground and she saw a streak of orange bolt out of the window, across several tree branches, down a trunk, across the lawn, and around the corner. "Shit! Cat! Caaaaaaaaat! Come back here!" Adrienne took off after it, hoping it had stopped just out of sight. When she rounded the corner she came to an abrupt stop when she realized she'd reached the area of the grounds where the trashed was stored in bins. "Oh, great. That's just great," she muttered loudly as she waded into the pile of garbage bins to continue her search.

Kane worked his way down slowly, now soaked to the skin. He followed her around the corner, only to find her pushing bags of trash to either side, looking for the cat. If he didn't know better, he'd think she was upset about the disappearance of the unwanted feline. He came up behind her, helping to move the heavier bags as she searched.

Wiping her face with her hands again, Adrienne continued tossing bags aside and banging on the cans in hopes of startling the cat out into the open. After several minutes, thinking they'd overturned every bag and banged every can, Adrienne turned away to look at Garrison, a defeated look on her face. But then she heard a pitiful 'meow' from behind her and spotted the shivering, drenched orange feline. "Cat!" she cried out happily, dashing over and stooping down. She picked it up and hugged it close to herself before turning back to Garrison.


"Looks like he was-" Kane said before another crash of thunder obliterated his words, making the three of them huddle together for a moment. "OK, that's a goddamn sign. I get it. Babe, let's get inside with our cat before we drown out here."

"Aren't we supposed to kiss while Moon River plays around us?" Adrienne suggested with a bedraggled smirk.

"Once we get inside and the cat isn't likely to claw our faces off doing it."

***

Moon river wider than a mile, I'm crossing you in style someday. You dream maker, you heartbreaker

The song filled up the steamy bathroom from Adrienne's iPod as the two of them soaked some of the rain chill out of their bones deep in a hot bath. Kane took a lazy sip from his glass of rye by the tub, stroking Adrienne's leg under the water as she leaned back against his chest. In the corner of the bathroom, curled into the middle of a nest of towels, the orange cat purred fiercely as it dozed.

"So, I guess we need to name him, eh?"

Adrienne rolled her eyes and stared at the sleeping cat with a look of disdain. "They didn't actually name it in the movie."

"And I'm far better looking than George Peppard." He grinned. "But unless you want to call it 'damn cat' for the rest of the time..."

"Pass," she answered, wrinkling her nose. "Too Disney. How about we name it George Peppard?"

"People will think we named him after the A-Team." He settled back deeper in the hot water, enjoying the feel of her against his skin. "What was the name of the cat that portrayed the cat in the movie?"

Adrienne closed her eyes and consulted her Repository of information garnered through use of her powers. "Orangey," she answered after a moment, wrinkling her nose again. "I'm not calling a cat that. Are you sure it's a boy cat?"

"Yup. My mom had cats." Kane shook his head. "He's an irritating little hairball. Who was the irritating racist guy in that movie?"

Flicking water at the cat with her fingertips, Adrienne raised an eyebrow. "Mickey Rooney?"

"Was that it? Sure, what do you prefer - Mickey or Rooney?"

"How do you not know Mickey Rooney? He was in like hundreds of movies," Adrienne grumbled, still trying to wake up the cat. "I like Rooney. How about you?"

"I know Mickey Rooney. I just didn't remember him in it." Kane protested. "Rooney. I like it too."

"Because it makes you think of Rooney Mara, and she's super hot?" Adrienne asked innocently, abandoning her efforts with the cat and turning her water-flicking on Garrison.

"I'm sitting in a tub with a naked you stretched out over me and you think I'm thinking of other women? Where's the trust, Adri?" He joked, shifting his hand intimately to underline his words.

Adrienne followed his hand with her eyes and raised an eyebrow, smirking. "I think it's a little to the left?"

"I'm not the one that keeps wriggling."