The only reason Mao had been able to keep out of trouble while waiting was because his people eating itch had been scratched, otherwise it was a rare, blue moon sort of thing. He liked trouble, it was fun and entertaining. He just flicked his ears at the question, sure it was rhetorical anyway.
He didn’t need to be invited twice. Mao was off the hood and in the car almost as soon as the driver’s side door was opened. The little cat sniff-sniff-sniffed, processing all sorts of information through the wiggling of his nose and bristling of his whiskers. He then sat, prim and pretty on the passenger seat, facing Vaughn. He stared, eyes big and round, almost as bright as the dashboard lights in the nighttime gloaming. His expression couldn’t be read as he listened to the man’s rambling, nor did he seem to react to any of it. He was just taking it in.
Not long after the drive to wherever ‘home’ was had begun, he silently slipped between the front seats to the back of the car. Should Vaughn glance up to the rearview mirror afterward, he wouldn’t see a little kitty cat behind him, but a creature roughly the size of a german shepherd dog lounging across his backseat. Mao now looked something akin to a panther, but with the pointed ears of a house cat, and two tails alternating lazily waving their smoking tips. Hopefully the sight of him wouldn’t cause an accident!
“Would you say you’re a lonely guy, V?” Asked his inhuman voice, followed by that rumble in his chest that must be a kind of laugh.
Mao didn’t wait for an answer, but went on, “You know, I like my freedom to come and go, but I’ll visit as much as you like. ...Maybe as much as you don’t like.”