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Yes, that seemed to be a recurrent thing with Archie.
He didn’t make his own choices; his dreams were all so vague. He let others dictate what he did, then blamed them when he got a fate not to his liking. He was a peasant—not just in his circumstances, but in his mind. Even if Leo wanted to keep helping him, without selfishly hoping for more of a connection with his pre-cat life, the task might prove too difficult for one cat to manage on his own.
Everything seemed far more difficult as a cat now that he knew he should be a prince instead. He had a whole kingdom to care for and no one to aid or even recognize his efforts.
Leo could have stayed with Archie out in the cold. Leo had stayed with Archie all through the hunting trip and several other nights besides. But not for the first time, the cat longed to be somewhere and with someone who didn’t expect him to be in charge of everything.
So he turned his tail and walked back into Castletown. Out of habit, Leo hunted a few rats as he went, but none of them held the plague. Perhaps the one in the cellar was truly the only one to be found—though that didn’t feel right. Rats were rarely so solitary. There had to be a whole nest of them somewhere, though it didn’t seem like he would find it tonight.
He continued in random circles until he found himself back at Tabitha’s.
Whenever Leo didn’t know where to go or what to do as a cat, he always found himself back at Tabitha’s.
“Mer-row!” he called for her outside the second-hand shop.
In seconds, she opened the window of her loft and smiled down at him. “Oh, there you are, Tom. Or is it Leo? I guess I’m not really sure which one you might prefer.”
Leo jumped toward the open window, but her words made him pause, unsure how to answer. And—once again—it wasn’t just because he was a cat. With anyone else, he was Leo—no question. He might even insist on his full name or title from someone he didn’t truly wish to associate with. But with Tabitha? It just didn’t seem to matter so much.
He might even come to miss Tom one day if she stopped using it entirely.
She laughed, stepping away from the window and gesturing for him to join her at her work. “Well, come in here, whoever you are. I need a second opinion on this new dress, and you know the others are all useless compared to you.” She meant the other cats, strewn around the loft. There were five of them today, but only because the fluffy ginger-cat named Biscuit had another litter of kittens, and Soot was there to supervise in a way only a true cat would understand.
Leo walked past them with some anticipation. Entering Tabitha’s space was always an adventure. Colorful cloth and bows were erratically draped over every available space, charcoal marks on the wooden floor mapped out the redesigns of a half-dozen new projects, and a headless manikin stood in the center. Who knew where her cookpot or sleeping mat had ended up?
It was pure chaos.
It was art.
And of course, the other cats never had a thing to do or say when Tabitha showed them something she had sewn together, but Leo always had.
“There. You see?” Tabitha spun around, holding a voluminous dress against her slight figure. Her eyes brightened, and she wore a teasing sort of smile as she gathered up an obscene number of ruffles in her hands. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
Leo yowled his displeasure. The dress was hideous, and she knew it. Decades out of style and probably not even worth saving. Only Tabitha would think it was worth saving.
She waved it at him again like tempting a bull to charge.
He did. He kept his claws in this time (What if he hit Tabitha?), but he swiped his paw and hissed. He was in a mood to pull out every ruffle that awful thing had.
Tabitha laughed like she always did, pulling it over to the manikin and out of his immediate reach. “You’ll love it when I finish. Promise.”
She winked.
Because Tabitha talked to cats. She was eccentric. She never seemed to guess Leo was different from the other cats, even when she spoke to him like this. At least, she had never broached the topic and started making demands in the same way Archie had.
She just continued on in her work, smiling, talking, and even singing to herself as she went.
It was a strangely comforting sight. A unique sort of beauty. A prince couldn’t love a shop girl any more than a cat could, but Tabitha occupied a space entirely her own. Not a servant or a sycophant. Not a sister or any other relationship he had experienced before.
She rarely needed anything from him except his company, and right now, that seemed such a marvelous thing.
“Will you stay tonight?” she asked him, and Leo couldn’t think of anywhere else he would rather be.
Chapter 20
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Archie’s night outside wasn’t too different from when they were still on the hunt, and he still had a home. When he at least had something to his name that didn’t come from a princess or a cat. Now, all he had was the clothes on his back, his grandfather’s bow, and a few other things small enough to fit into a single wheat sack. He had taken two of his mother’s books with him, but her garden was gone. Another piece of her had been ripped away.
