Catnip

01 | In Which Caleb Becomes a (Not So) Proud Parent

"I'd rather shove your dad's butt plug up my ass than have your dick anywhere near me, thanks very much," Marnie says, and Caleb shudders at the images she's just put in his head, images he'd rather not having floating around in there, waiting to resurface while he's in the middle of his calculus homework tonight. (Yes, tonight as in Saturday, as in his eighteenth birthday, because despite tradition stating thou must not commit to homework on the night of thy birth, the thought of leaving it to collect dust in the depths of his schoolbag while he lazes around and binges on cake is kinda sickening.)

"Whatever," Caleb says. "Can I go back inside now?"

"So long as you remember to prepare the guest room!"

It's the way she's standing there, hands on her hips, smugness radiating off her with the intensity of a hundred-Watt bulb, that convinces him he's had enough of Marnie Bernadette Royle to last him infinite reincarnations on earth. So he slams the door in her face, returns to the front room where he's spent the morning watching Brooklyn Nine Nine on Netflix, and settles down with Jake and the gang, never so much as thinking about the girl again.

He wishes.

In reality, Marnie's not that easy to get rid of. So when he slams the door (read: attempts to slam it, only to stub his toe in the process), not a second passes before she's located the doorbell and has resolved to hold her finger against it for as long as it takes to piss him off.

Which, on a good day, is approximately three seconds.

Caleb grits his teeth and, hopping on his uninjured foot, throws the door open. Marnie smirks. "You're lucky Maya's not home."

"Are you kidding? If your sister could save one of us from death by autoerotic fatality –"

"Can't it just be death by drowning?"

"–you'd be a rotten corpse faster than I can say 'suck my dick.'"

"You don't have a dick. And you do realise decomposition's not an instantaneous thing, don't you?" He has to correct her because so far his brains are the only thing he has going for him. "First there's pallor mortis, where your body pales due to lack of blood–"

Marnie groans and makes one of her infamous meh expressions. "Spare me the lecture, Diaz. There's a reason you take AP bio and I don't."

(Yeah, reason being Marnie refuses to buy into his better-early-than-late approach to graded assignments.)

"Anyway," she draws the word out, "you're keeping the cat."

"I am not keeping the cat."

"Your mom agreed! You're keeping the cat and that's final. Suck on it, bitch."

"I didn't ask for a goddamn cat for my goddamn birthday."

"Language, Diaz. You know I hate you using God's name like that."

To this day, it baffles Caleb that Marnie can persist to be the crudest person he knows and yet the only person to call him out for casually slipping god into a sentence.

He sighs and glances beyond the doorstep, to where Marnie's brother's age-old falling-apart Chevy is blocking his driveway again, this time with a living, breathing birthday present asleep on the passenger seat.

Happy birthday, Caleb! I know you hate animals and have a special aversion for cats in particular, but I've gone and got you one anyway, 'cause who needs friends that actually listen to you, right?

"Honestly, Cal, it's not even that bad. Cats are the shit. They eat, sleep, look cute – hell, they even clean themselves! It'll be like having a clone of you around."

Caleb's unsure what to be more offended by: the implication that he's lazy and unproductive, or the fact that Marnie, his best (and maybe only) friend, just called him cute, an adjective most commonly associated with babies and new-born animals.

(Last time Caleb checked, he was neither.)

"Seriously," Marnie says. "This time next week you'll have fallen in love with her."

"Just 'cause I'm gay doesn't mean I'm into freaky bestiality shit."

"Always taking things literally, Diaz." She rolls her eyes and checks her watch, then takes an unconscious step back, no doubt relishing her victory inside. "Anyway, I gotta go."

He frowns. Normally he wouldn't mind so much about her leaving because, let's face it, he likes being alone. Silence is nice, peaceful, the perfect background music for when he's sorting through theories and ideas in his head. But it's his eighteenth and Mom's at work and Maya's gone off to swimming practice, and the thought of being stuck inside all day with a kitten just isn't appealing. How will he know what to do with the thing? Or where to dump it when it won't shut up?

He holds back his onslaught of questions, going instead with, "First you dump a dumbass cat on me and now you're ditching me on my birthday?"

"Like you ever planned to step outside," she says. "Besides, Daniel and I are going horse riding, and I would've invited you but–"

"Hell no."

"Thought so."

Caleb's never been into physical activities (or anything that involves leaving the house), but Marnie lives for them. She goes through phases where she'll obsess over a new hobby for months, master the technique, and then drop it in pursuit of something new. Skiing, quad biking, snowboarding. Lately it's been horse riding, which isn't too hard to understand given she lives at a horse ranch on the outskirts of town, but if there's one animal Caleb hates more than feline fur balls it's those neighing motherfuckers, so he mostly hangs back and leaves her and her less-crazy twin, Daniel, to it.

(Caleb suspects Daniel is the less-crazy twin, although the fact that he allowed Marnie of all people to borrow his truck and drive both herself and a helpless kitten out here says otherwise.)

Marnie clicks her tongue, and he can tell she's got so much more she wants to say, probably a list of rules and guidelines for how to cope with the cat ordeal; must-dos, must-don'ts, what to expect from life as a reluctant parent-of-sorts. But in the end she settles for, "I dropped everything you'll need off the other night to your Mom, so you should be good. But if you're struggling, just call me, OK?"

He's not happy about this, can't even bring himself to pretend he is. In actual fact he's pissed, so pissed that he doesn't plan to call Marnie even if he's struggling. But it's done now. His mom and her have been in it together from the start, hell-bent on fitting a pet into his already-busy life, and as much as he hates animals he's not cruel enough to leave the damn thing on the doorstep all day.

So he nods and lets her bring it out (and let the records show: Caleb does not find this hairy little grey-and-white fur ball to be cute in the slightest, honest), and when Marnie waves her goodbyes and drives off in Daniel's craptastic truck, once again waking the neighbourhood up with the unhealthy wheeze of the engine, he refuses to speak a single word.

Three cheers for friendship.

            ~    ~    ~

And so, on the night of his eighteenth birthday, Caleb Diaz neglects his plans to study calculus in favour of scooping shit out a cat's litter tray and flushing the biodegradable litter-shit-combo down the toilet.

God help Marnie Bernadette Royle.