Wiz opened his mouth to say more and then shut it again when he realized there wasn’t anything he could say. Not only is arguing with a cat a lost cause, this cat was halfway up the stairs and could easily outrun him if he tried to give chase. Wiz didn’t like looking foolish any more than the average cat does, so he decided to leave it for now.
Wiz didn’t dislike cats, but from observing his friends who had cats he had arrived at a couple of conclusions. The first was that cats, not being pack animals like dogs or people, do not have consciences. That meant that if you had a cat you were sharing your life with a furry little sociopath.
The second was that every animal had evolved to exploit an ecological niche and in the case of cats that niche was people.
“Well, all right,” Wiz told the cat. “But don’t get the idea you’re staying.”
“Who are you shouting at?” asked Malkin as she came in the door with a basket of food.
Wiz nodded toward the stairs. “That.”
Malkin studied the cat and the cat studied Malkin. “I think that’s Widder Hackett’s cat,” the tall girl said finally. “Handsome enough.”
“So is a leopard, but that doesn’t mean I want to share quarters with one.”
Malkin grinned at him. “Looks like he’s decided to share quarters with you. And if you’re planning on catching him to throw him out you can do it yourself. He’s a scrapper, that one, and I’ve no fancy to get myself clawed up to put out an animal that will come right back in every time you open the door.”
“Hmmf,” Wiz snorted, weighing his ambivalence toward cats against the obvious trouble it would take to get rid of this one. “Does he have a name?”
“Widder Hackett called him Precious, but I think his name is Bobo.”
“Bobo, huh? Looks more like Bubba to me.” The cat narrowed his yellow eyes and glared at him as if to say “Watch it, bud.”
It turned out there was a stove in the kitchen. It was a ceramic tile box next to the fireplace that Wiz had dismissed as a waist-high work counter. There was also a wooden hand pump that drew water into the sink. Malkin got a fire going with the help of a fire-starting spell from Wiz and she quickly threw together a grain-and-vegetable porridge that turned out surprisingly well. They ate in the kitchen under the glow of a magic light globe Wiz conjured up.
The only excitement came when Bobo cornered and caught a rat in the upstairs hallway. He came trotting down the stairs, head high, with the limp furry corpse dangling from his mouth and settled himself under the sink to eat with the humans. Wiz turned his back to the sink and tried to ignore the occasional crunching noises from Bobo’s direction.
“Cat’s got his uses,” Malkin observed.
“Unfortunately I don’t have a violin that needs stringing.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve got a spell to clean dishes either,” Malkin said as she scraped the last of the stew from her bowl.
“I can probably whip one up tomorrow.”
“Let it be for tonight then. But one way or another, Wizard, you’ll clean those dishes tomorrow. And tomorrow it’s your turn to cook.”
“Who’s the boss in this outfit anyway?”
“Depends,” Malkin said lazily, “on who needs who the worst, don’t it?”
Tomorrow, Wiz thought. I’ll worry about this tomorrow.
Actually there was a lot to worry about tomorrow, Wiz admitted to himself as he crawled into bed later that evening. He had to get things set up here so he could work, and he had to figure out a way to keep Dieter pacified. And he still didn’t have the faintest idea how he was going to solve the village’s dragon problem. That last was really beginning to gnaw at him.
Well, Wiz thought as he drifted off to sleep, it could be worse I suppose.
“Look at this mess!”
Wiz jerked bolt upright in bed.
“Look at it, I tell you,” the voice repeated.
Wiz looked around frantically, but the room was empty.