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Mikeko brings her paw up to her small mouth methodically, cleaning in-between the little things that she has so often heard Apollo fondly call her toes. Her days of scavenging on the streets, bringing half-dead mice back to her apathetic former owner who hadn’t cared when she had left entirely, are over—Apollo is a kind man. She knows that. She is so small, and knows so very little, but she is certain that the man who allows her to sleep in his bed is one of the best humans to exist in this wide, wide world. He had taken her in when she had nothing, nursed her back to health despite her mewling hisses of distrust, and now she knows that peace comes in a small apartment with two pairs of shoes by the door.
Yes, two, because Apollo has been having a guest over more and more these days. At first, she had hated that Apollo’s attention had become split between her and the tall, breezy blonde who had sat on her spot on the sofa. She had protested, scratched, cried out—but Apollo had simply picked her up and placed her on the other man’s lap.
“She’s a bit protective,” he had said, and Mikeko had puffed out her chest with pride. “She’ll warm up to you.”
Now, Mikeko knows that the man is called Klavier. Klavier is a word she hasn’t heard before, but it feels natural coming from Apollo’s lips. Every day, she learns a little more about the world in which her favourite person lives—this funny little world of wild words and people who perform strange rituals just for the joy of being alive. Klavier, as a word, means—to Mikeko—for something to sparkle. It isn’t just the shiny jewellery that he wears, or the sing-song lilt of his voice—it’s the fact that whenever Apollo sees Klavier, his eyes light up and a smile breaks out, impossibly wide and beautiful, across his face. Klavier must mean happiness, inasmuch as Apollo means safety.
She loves Klavier, in a way. He always brings her the expensive treats that Apollo normally only gives her once a year, on a silly human occasion that he refers to as her birthday. And he always pets her right between the ears, his short nails perfectly scratching the exact spot that makes her feel warm and comfortable. But even if he didn’t treat her like royalty, she’d still appreciate him for the way he barrels towards Apollo as a force to be reckoned with, making him happier than Mikeko has ever seen him before. It’s not that he hasn’t been content—he’s always enjoyed his alone time—but there’s something new here, something that even the tiniest of calico cats can understand.
Apollo is in love.
It’s why she worries so much when he won’t stop pacing the floor on a Friday night. Friday is another word that she’s grown to love, if only because it means that Apollo gets home from work with Klavier and she cuddles between them both while the light-up screen called a television plays different sounds and colours. Truthfully, she doesn’t understand why both Apollo and Klavier get so invested in the images on the bright box, but she’s happy as long as they’re happy.
And they’re not happy tonight. Because Klavier isn’t here.
It’s dark outside now, well past the time that Klavier and Apollo would normally arrive home together, and she jumps up off the sofa, circling Apollo’s ankles in the kitchen until he bends down to pet her on the head. As loud as she possibly can, she mewls. She wishes that he understood her feelings and thoughts as well as she has come to understand the language he speaks, but she can’t articulate the things that are currently swirling around uncomfortably in the pit of her stomach.
Where is Klavier? Klavier comes home? When?
“Sorry, little one,” Apollo smiles. “He won’t be here tonight.”
She sneezes in discontent.
“I know, I know. I wish he was here too. But there’s some stuff going on,” he picks Mikeko up, cradling her close to his chest as he walks over to the sofa and sits with her on his lap. “His brother isn’t a very nice man, and it’s the anniversary of his arrest. He said he wanted to be alone.”
Mikeko near-wails. And you just let him go?
“I can’t push him. Not when we’ve only been dating a few months. I just have to trust him when he says he’ll be fine.”
It’s not enough for Mikeko, and it’s clearly not enough for Apollo, because he doesn’t even turn on the magical television, almost as if he can’t bear to watch it without Klavier. Mikeko even paws at her favourite spot on the sofa, finding that it’s too large now, too lumpy and spacious. She needs Klavier on one side of her, and Apollo on the other, to truly feel like she’s safe.
Jumping down onto the floor, she stalks away, going towards the front door and waiting there. She’s an indoor cat these days, which she doesn’t mind all that much when Apollo feeds her so well and keeps her occupied with a variety of toys, but she wishes she could make her way out onto the dark streets and find Klavier herself. No matter how much she scratches at the door, it doesn’t open, and there’s no Klavier on the other side.
She misses him so, so much. He’s not okay—she knows that he isn’t. She might not have nine lives, or a particularly quick wit, and she certainly can’t go out to sea in a pea-green boat, but she knows enough about the humans she cares about to know when one of them isn’t well.
Remembering how sick she’d been when Apollo had first taken her in, she stops scraping at the door with her claws and begins to cry. She had been so newly born at the time, and had only ever known the callous apathy of the world around her. Her mother had been taken away, and she had believed that she would die in the rubble and litter of the park in which she slept, but Apollo had been her lifeline. He had taken her in, carefully carried in a blanket, and fed her small bites from his outstretched hand. Even though she had scratched at him, bitten him in fear of being hurt again, his patience had trumped her stubbornness. In an act of what Mikeko can only describe, with her limited vocabulary, as pure love, he had looked after her and nursed her back to health, and then he still hadn’t finished, because he had let her live in his home with him. Though a mean landlord— another human word that means bad, bad man— had threatened Apollo with a letter that had made him cry briefly from stress, he had never abandoned her. He had packed up and moved to a new home, and she has slept on the end of his bed every night since.
So, she knows that Apollo can look after poor, sad creatures in need. She just doesn’t understand why he isn’t dragging Klavier back to his apartment in a fluffy blanket, feeding him small bites of tuna until he stops being sad about that big, nasty word—his brother.
When Apollo’s phone rings, she recognises the picture on the small screen. It’s like a still-image of Klavier is on a very small television, and she’s smart enough to know that this means Apollo can talk to him without him having to be in the room. Apollo can talk to Klavier! She nudges the phone until it falls off the arm of the sofa onto a cushion on the floor, and Apollo picks it up.
“Hiya, Klav,” he says, holding the phone up to his ear. “Are you okay?”
Mikeko paws at Apollo’s socks, pulling at them until he looks down and acknowledges her. Is he okay?
“Shit, yeah, okay,” Apollo continues. “You’re fine. I promise. I’ll come and get you.”
Is he okay? Is he okay? Is he okay?
“No, no, don’t worry at all. I miss you anyway. Of course you can come round.”
Bring him here!
“I’ll be there in twenty. If you start walking now, I’ll meet you halfway. Are you sure? How much have you had to drink?”
Stop talking and go get him!
“Alright, alright. Why would I be mad at you? Of course I’m not. I’ll be there really soon, okay?”
He puts the phone down and immediately takes his coat off the rack. Mikeko follows him all the way to the door, going as far as to try and sneak out of the crack the moment he opens it, but he bends down and stops her from leaving the apartment.
“I’ll be right back,” he tells her. “I’m going to get Klavier. He’s not in a good way. I think he needs some company.”
Yes! Yes! Yes!
“You hold down the fort here, Mik, yeah?”
When he leaves, shutting the door gently behind him, Mikeko knows what she has to do. Klavier is upset, and she knows what being upset feels like. She remembers feeling like nobody in the world cared about a cat like her. She remembers hating every human who passed her by without a glance, but what she remembers the most is that Apollo had shattered her whole worldview with his kindness. Apollo could do anything, she thinks. Anything he wanted to.
She’s just glad that he wants to help Klavier.
Which doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have a job to do—not at all. She’s been tasked with holding down the fort, which—in Apollo’s terms—is the most important thing of all. He’s off finding Klavier, and she has to keep his home safe in his absence. She won’t let a single intruder get through that door. She’ll keep Apollo’s home safe, because that means keeping her home safe too.
Dragging her favourite blanket over to the sofa, she pulls it up onto the cushions with all the force she can muster. There’s a spot to the left that she thinks is far more comfortable than everywhere else, and it’s the spot she always claims as her own. The cushions are perfectly firm, and the arm rest provides sturdy support if she doesn’t want to lie down completely. But Klavier needs that spot more than she does right now, so she bundles up the blanket as neatly as she can, tucking it into the folds of the sofa with her paws.
But she isn’t done. Nowhere near! Klavier doesn’t just need to be comfortable, he needs to be happy. She thinks of the things that make her happy, flashing the images in her head like a list.
Apollo makes her happy. Fresh tuna makes her happy. Lying in the lines of sunshine from the window makes her happy. And what does she love? She loves her paws, how they allow her to walk and run and climb. She loves her whiskers. She loves her nose. She loves her family.
When the door opens once more, and both Apollo and Klavier walk through, she has to stop herself from running right up to them and dragging them over to the sofa. Klavier is crying, and she knows what that means. If he’s anything like Apollo, it means that he needs a lot of quiet attention, but it seems like Apollo has already sorted that out; he’s holding Klavier’s hand, whispering something soft to him. But there has to be some way that Mikeko can help! She loves Klavier, and she wants him to know it.
With a proud flick of her tail, she walks in circles around Klavier until he follows her all the way up to the blanket on the sofa. He stands there for a second, looking between her and the comfortable spot that she has prepared for him, and she wishes more than anything that she could roll her eyes the way she has seen Apollo do many times.
It’s for you, silly! Not me! Sit down!
Slowly, Klavier sits right where she wants him to. Now, she has to entertain him, and she knows that he likes the television box with the sounds and colours, but she just can’t work out how to turn it on. She paws at the screen desperately, but it stays dark, and she has to give up by the time Apollo enters the room.
Oh well—she can still cheer Klavier up somehow. He looks incredibly upset, and the moment Apollo sits next to him, he bursts out into shaking sobs, saying something incomprehensible in-between his tears. She recognises that word again— brother— and she wonders if Apollo has a brother, too. It doesn’t sound like a word that means something bad, but Klavier can barely make it through a whole sentence without drifting off into more unintelligible cries about the subject.
Maybe brother isn’t a bad word. Maybe it’s just Klavier’s brother.
Which would present an easy solution, if Mikeko could talk. She mewls at his feet, rubbing her head against the base of his legs in her desperation for him to understand her.
I’ll be your brother! Let me be your brother! I’ll be a good one!
He leans down, lifting her up into the air and placing her gently on his lap. She loves the feeling of his rings as he strokes her fur, and she rests her chin on his chest, blinking slowly. It’s the only way to tell him what she really wants to, and she hopes that he understands each tiny gesture.
Everything she does says: I love you, I love you, I love you. This is how I love you.
Slowly, Klavier begins to smile. Apollo puts his arm around him, bringing him close, and Mikeko falls naturally between the two of them. She’s still nestled into Klavier, but her tail curls close to Apollo’s leg, and she feels close enough to the two people she cares about most that she’s no longer worried that things will be bad again. It’s okay if Klavier is sad, she thinks, because he won’t be sad forever. It must be a human impossibility to be sad around Apollo.
And she’s glad. So, so glad. Because this is her family; her home. When Klavier smiles, sitting on her old favourite spot on the sofa, she doesn’t mind at all that he’s made his way into the quiet life she used to share with only Apollo. She’s got a new favourite spot, anyway. Right here.
But she doesn’t close her eyes, not even as Apollo and Klavier finally turn on the strange television box and fall asleep to the sound of something very old playing in black and white. Even though she’s tired, she forces herself to stay awake, watching over the apartment with determined, silent intensity.
She won’t let anything bad happen here. Not now, not ever. This is hers to love and protect, and she doesn’t need nine lives—not when this one is everything she could ever want.