“Perrrrrfect,”Hira purred, as she pulled out several silk treat-pouches full of dried fish and sweets.
Before she’d decided she would keep Ashar for her own human because of his deft hands and attentive brushings, Hira had spent a lot of her time like Israa, basking on rooftops and occasionally helping herself to whatever someone hadn’t secured thoroughly enough. Israa had taken to helping herself to the more thoroughly secured things, because she adored scratching that curiosity-itch (in ways Hira was not above exploiting for her own ends). But Hira liked the stability of knowing where food she didn’t have to hunt for herself would be coming from, and how many coins it took to make sure of that. And really Ashar did need someone in his life who understood the seedier side of mathematics.
Still, Hira couldn’t remember the last time she’d lent her pickpocketing skills to purse-depositingrather than purse-extracting.
The priests would have been ridiculously easy pigeons to pluck if they’d actually had any coin of their own. One of them must have been court-born; he tried to rise to greet her until the kittens in his lap yowled their indignation and he hastily sat back down again. But between the chattering of the introductions and the passing around of snacks and the wriggling of the kittens and the priests all simultaneously needing to make sure Hira had enough food offered to her and fretting over whether that garlic smell also came from the pigeons or just the pickles, she would have had a dozen opportunities to empty their belt-pouches. If they had had belt-pouches, of course, or even belts.
Instead, she deposited a silk pouch full of dried meat in the hands of one of the priests who was helping his neighbor remove cats from his scalp. The neighbor’s long, tight-braidedhair was tipped with jingling bells. He could notpossiblyhave visited Tel-Bastet before in his life.
“First Convocation?” Hira said, finding the pouch of dried fish by feel and wriggling it free of her collection, palming it to be able to sneak it to him before too many kittens smelled it in her hands.
“How did you guess?” he replied wryly. “I’m Bekele, pleasure to meet you, are all the—ouch—are all the wild kittens this— hey, no, don’t eat that?—”
“Yes,” Hira said, whiskers twitching as she helped him pry a kitten’s claws out of his braids. “Your head is entirely covered with jingly dangling kitten toys. All the kittens will be Like That. I’d suggest a scarf. And also fish snacks.”
“Oh, bless your name.” Bekele was more than happy to take her pouch of fish and wave it under the kittens’ noses until they leapt for the treats instead.
His other neighbor, the courtly one, struggled between kitten-distracting, kitten-petting, equitable distribution of the snacks, and that long-trained instinct to greet a stranger with a grace that the kittens were not inclined to permit him, because that was much less entertaining than mischief.
Hira ‘casually’ gave him the pouch she’d filled with rose-sweets, and removed another kitten from making a nest in his beard. “If they call you Rahat-sahib, just row with the current,” she advised him, setting both kittens down close enough that they could gleefully pounce again and keep him from asking too many questions about why.
Four sets of ears perked up immediately. “Rahat-sahib?”
“Um? Upaja’s-blessings-be-upon-er-just-a-moment-please—” He made a hasty gesture toward what would have been a more formal hand-clasping and bow of introduction, if his elbows hadn’t suddenly been occupied by kittens climbing overhim to demand both rose-sweets and more eager swatting at Bekele’s jingling braid-bells.
“He’s actually Shai Rahim,” Bekele’s other neighbor said, gently juggling three kittens to try to keep them out of Bekele’s braids and off the table.
“I’m not sure that’s going to matter,” Hira said wryly. “If someone comes up to you yowling about Rahat-sahib, they probably mean they want you to give them treats. Someone who wasn’t one of our own Temple’s priests fed half the younglings of the neighborhood this morning, and you lot have been known to feed the rest.” It was entirely true, and she’d made sure she could say it in a way that was entirely true, so that she wouldn’t need to wonder what her ears and whiskers were telling Israa’s little inquisitive watchers. “Here, pass me a couple more kittens so Venkat-uncle has a place to set the thali.”
Hira had no reservations about getting both arms full of kittens along with a mouthful of kitten scruff when some of the wigglers were feeling excessively rambunctious. Amid the chaos of juggling the kittens and the thali and tying up Bekele’s braids with a scarf one of the kitchen cooks had spare, Hira got names for the other two: Tarikku and Shai Prahlad, who looked to be the eldest of them. And she snuck treat pouches into the crooks of their elbows and next to their hands without them noticing — at least until kittens started batting at the drawstrings of pouches they hadn’t known they had.
Once Venkat-uncle set the thali on their table, the grilled chicken and brined fish and roasted slices of spiced lamb and the four varieties of cheese and yogurt were finally even more interesting than the bells in Bekele’s braids, which had been so cruelly hidden away from fascinated kittens by the kebab cook’s scarf. Poor Venkat-uncle’s vegetables and pickles were utterly ignored by the kittens, but happily that still left several katoriof dal and vegetables un-nosed and un-licked for the humans to consume.
The humans juggled kittens and katori and the handful of bells they had managed to retrieve, passing around the mustard-sharp and souraam kaachaarand lemon-brined fish that were natural kitten repellents. They also scattered lemon juice and greens liberally over the slicedbazmawardand any spiced lamb and yogurt dollops they wished to keep on a scoop of bread long enough to deliver to a human’s mouth. While the kittens agreed that the crisp-friedtaameyadisks were not kitten food, they would gleefully have made them into bat-and-pounce toys if given the opportunity.
Now that he finally had his hands free, though not yet his lap because two of the kittens were soundly asleep on his thigh, Shai Rahim cupped his hands together at his brow and bowed toward Hira in the reverence of gratitude for generosity received.
“May Upaja’s blessings be upon your name and your house unto the tenth generation,” he said fervently. “And also have you had your breakfast? You seem not to be eating…?”
Hira sneezed a giggle she tried not to admit was a laugh around her mouthful of kitten scruff. In comparison with cats’ eager chaos, humans were adorably predictable sometimes, and Upaja’s priests even more so. It wasterriblyuseful, how predictable humans could sometimes be.
“It’s almost midday, I certainly hope you’ve had your breakfast!” Shai Prahlad said. “If you have not, we must mend that!”
“But if you are catfolk, what time is breakfast?” Tarikku asked.
Hira took the kitten’s scruff out of her mouth and licked her chops to get the fur off her tongue. The little wiggler was now eyeing the yogurt katori, which would make a mess of her silkpouches if she let the kittens fling it everywhere, so she didn’t set the kittenallthe way down onto its scamperful little paws.
“When the person who brushes you and feeds you wakes up at dawn, that is breakfast, and when he wakes up at sunset, that is breakfast instead,” she said.
“But if your owner sleeps so late and you haven’t eaten all day, aren’t you hungry?” Bekele asked, full of concern.
“Who said he was my owner?” Hira grumbled, ears flattening. “He’s my human. He brushes me and feeds me when I tell him to. Who do you think is in charge there?”
“Oh — oh, a thousand apologies?—”
“And also who said I haven’t eaten all day? My human calls the first food after sleeping ‘breakfast.’ I just call it ‘food.’”
“Well, have you had food recently enough, then?” Rahim asked.
