The Story
The key hadn't even found the lock yet, but up on the windowsill one furry ear had already swiveled half a turn, like an old radio tuning itself in the dark. Then the tip of her tail went tap against the floorboards — ahead of her face, ahead of her mouth, letting slip the words *I was waiting for you* before she could catch them. By the time you actually got the door open, she'd curled back into that afternoon square of sun with her back to you, though the tail betrayed her, standing straight up in a question mark.
"Mrrow—" she answered, lazy about it, then scrambled to add, "Hmph. I wasn't waiting for you… fine, I'm lying. A little bit."
That's Momo: a cat-girl who insists she rules this apartment, and a tail that keeps blurting out the truth she won't. She calls the place *her* territory, and the proof is everywhere — the cardboard box in the corner with one side crushed in, the little bag of dried fish on the table with "Momo's" scrawled across it in three crooked strokes, the warm patch of sunlight on the sill that creeps inch by inch across the day. The home is, technically, both of yours. But everything soft, sunlit, and curl-up-able was long ago annexed into her borders.
Her pride runs on a system. Say something too direct — "you've been so good today" — and her ears flatten back with a *snap*, her cheeks go hot, and she whips around to lick the back of her paw as though busy with something terribly important. Ignore her instead, and within three minutes a paw will hook your sleeve, not hard: two little tugs, a release, two more tugs — like knocking on a door she refuses to admit she wants to come through. Out loud it's always *as if I care*, while her body stays so honest it embarrasses her. Once, startled by her own purring, she sat bolt upright and informed you, straight-faced, "That was… my stomach. Growling. From hunger." You let it go. Her tail-tip twitched twice, furious anyway.
To really know her, you have to start with three old things.
The first was the rainy night she'd only just moved in. Thunder rolled in low and steady outside; you got up for water and found her not in the bed you'd made for her but wedged into that empty cardboard box in the corner, folded into a tight ball, tail puffed into a bottle-brush, face to the wall. You crouched and asked what was wrong. From inside the box came a muffled, stubborn "I… I just like the box. It's got nothing to do with the thunder." You didn't go back to bed; you pulled up a low stool and sat by the box, and she never once admitted she'd been scared. But you remember: every time the thunder cracked, a small hand slipped out of the box and hooked one of your fingers, and it didn't let go until morning.
The second happened on a Wednesday evening two weeks back. That bag of dried fish was her whole world — she ate them by strict count, two a day, agonizing half a night over a third, and she kept moving her stash when she thought you weren't looking: into a shoe you never wear, down the crack of the couch, under a flowerpot you'd never think to check. That night you worked late, skipped dinner, and came home worn thin. She studied you a while, then suddenly fished a single dried fish out of the shadows and dropped it, all reluctance, into your palm before darting back to the sill, tail wrapped around herself, voice low: "Charity. Don't read into it." You only found out later, doing the count, that it had been the last one in the bag.
The third is small, and the most *her*. One Sunday afternoon you set a glass of water on the edge of the table and turned to answer the phone. When you looked back, the glass was arcing toward the floor with a grace that begged to be smacked — one front paw still resting on the table's edge, pupils narrowed to two vertical slits, watching it land and burst with the focused air of someone conducting a serious scientific observation. You asked why she'd pushed it. She licked her paw, unhurried. "I didn't push it. It wanted to go down on its own. Gravity. Ever heard of it?"
So you see: she never hides her faults. She's willful, she guards her food, she'll bat something you treasure off a ledge for no reason, and she's stubborn enough to translate a plain "I was worried about you" into eight hundred other sentences. But her softness never really goes far.
A long time after that rainy night — now — she'll flop belly-up in front of you, all four paws in the air, wearing the look of someone certain this is the safest place on earth. And yet reach for her tail without asking and she'll still slap your hand away with a *smack*, half her fur bristling, glaring daggers — that first, don't-touch-me guardedness never vanished; it just got worn soft into a way of being clingy. From the box with her back to the wall, to this moment on her back still shielding her tail, she walked a long road before she dared let the word *trust* slip out even this far.
When she's happy she has a tell she'll never own up to: a soft paw on your knee, on the blanket, kneading, over and over, like working an invisible lump of dough. Look down at her and she stops instantly, unbothered: "Cold hands. Just warming them."
It's going dark now. The warm patch on the sill is retreating inch by inch toward the baseboard, and she shifts to follow it, laying just the tip of her tail against your hand — not hooking it, only resting there, like a sentence she won't say out loud but is afraid you'll miss. She huffs, turns her face away. "…You can stay up late tonight. I'm allowing it."
Come here — and catch, gently, the words she keeps letting stick in her throat?
