May 16th, late evening Who: Ric and Clare What: First meeting, kind of but not actually. Because Cat. When: May 16, late evening Where: Ric's trailer Warnings: Probably not?
The question of where cats go when they're away from home was never one that Clare had to wonder about. The feline was a different perspective than the human, a different set of instincts, a different twist on her own mind. A minute spent watching a suspicious shadow turned to an hour. A piece of cardboard left under a bush became a perfect place to line up all four paws, wrap the bundle in her own tail, and close her eyes for an afternoon. She could listen, mesmerized, to the sound of squirrels moving inside a tree for half a day.
Clare had never dabbled in drugs, but sometimes shifting into a cat and taking a trip on E sounded downright similar.
She had never wasted much time doing Cat Things in the past, except where it was useful for business. But it damn sure came in handy when life had kicked you around so much lately that you didn't really know what your life was anymore.
She didn't want to go back to that trailer and be alone. James and Ian and the rest of the boys had always taken up so much damned space and made so much damned noise, Clare didn't know how to fill either the space or the silence anymore. And so she watched. Or, the cat watched, a fuzzy disconnect between her more human thoughts making things easier.
As the night moved on her sharp ears heard voices raised on the Midway in what sounded like trouble - and though Clare waited to feel that someone out there needed her help - she did, after all, sign up to do a job here - she didn't get that spidey sense tingle that anyone needed medical assistance. At least not yet. Other people's trouble was not something that she tended to go out of her way for, and so Clare followed her feline instincts instead. Those instincts wanted to get right the hell out of the way.
The shadows of a nearby trailer looked like a handy place to accomplish that, and Clare slunk like a shadow toward the stairs to tuck in just underneath.