Page 106 of Checking Out the Librarian

He nodded at the circle of people with ideas before he swept down the aisle of books, but the woman who had spoken of shelters didn’t get a smile with real teeth or even both sides of his mouth. She’d ignored him, but he wasn’t going to take that personally, not really.

Okay, he did.

Behind him, he heard Becca say, “And no, Lily, you are not required in the break room. Jonathan is perfectly capable.”

He was perfectly capable of losing his shit, that’s what. But, like everything else the library required him to do, he could do this.

First, he found an empty copier paper box, which easily contained the kitten, then washed his hands and started researching what three-week old kittens ate.

They couldn’t poop for themselves until they were approximately twenty days old.

Maybe this wasn’t going to work.

Lily bustled in and headed straight for the water kettle. While she waited for it to boil, she plopped a bag of Earl Grey into her giant mug and bent closer to the box Jonathan had lined with newspapers from the recycle bin. “This is a perfect fit for you, honestly.”

“A cat?” Jonathan shifted the half-and-half container in the breakroom fridge, but neither kitten formula nor goat milk, allegedly the best choices for a kitten, magically appeared.

Cow’s milk was forbidden on all the websites, and the office fridge didn’t have goat milk, go figure. But yogurt was part of the recipe for homemade kitten formula, and whoopsie, someone had left a small carton of an elite European goat milk yogurt in the fridge, perhaps assuming no one would steal evil ruminant yogurt, but clearly not anticipating a kitten.

“Not just a cat. A fancy schmancy tuxedo kitten that bites at my finger.”

“I do not bite.” Maybe it was time to look in the box again, just to check, but Lily and her smirk blocked his path. He stuck his nose in the air. “Not at fingers.”

Her smirk didn’t lessen; if anything, she got smirkier.

“Well, not at women’s fingers.”

The kettle made the beginnings of a whistle, and she unplugged it before it reached a pitch to be heard outside the room. It wasn’t soon enough to prevent Kitten from crying though, and Jonathan glared as she poured water into her mug.

“Looks like you have things under control here. I’ll skip my break and cover the desk so you can feed your new bestie.”

“Don’t leave me! I don’t know how⁠—”

“You’ve got this.” She left him alone with a kitten, a carton of goat yogurt, and nary a clue.

“Oh, you monster, what am I going to do.” Even if the kitten could hear his whisper, it undoubtedly couldn’t understand.

It was shivering again, practically shaking its whole body. Must be the air-conditioning, because the staff room was the chilliest part of the building.

His cardigan, a cashmere affair he’d been inspired to purchase last year at an Upper East Side thrift shop after a post from an opinionated menswear blogger, hung on the back of his chair. It was both beautiful and cozy. It was also pale gray, and the kitten was mostly black.

Fuck my life.

The cashmere made a perfect nest.

The internet told him to put a tiny dab of yogurt on the kitten’s tongue and then rest one finger on its throat to check if it could swallow. Under his right first finger, he felt the smallest, weakest pulse, a barely-there sensation that scared him so deeply with its tenuous connection to this world that he had to bite his lip.

Then the tiniest pink tongue emerged and touched the white droplet he held out from the first finger of his left hand. He felt a different flutter that might be, could be, a swallow.

“You are so good, you are such a sweet kitten.” He clucked again with his mouth because that seemed to be what people did with baby things.

Another droplet of goat yogurt, another swallow. He would nourish this kitten drop by drop if he had to, but what he really needed was a bottle and kitten formula. It was supposed to drink every four or five hours and its last meal could have been anytime.

Jonathan knew exactly who would jump into action to get formula, all his perpetual enthusiasm harnessed to an animal rescue. He took a picture of the little black ears and white mouth and neck, with the tiniest slits of blue eyes showing, and sent it to Connor.

Jonathan

I found this at the library dumpster.