This is to anke‘s prompt (on twitter) to my December OrigFic Bingo Card. This fills (for the second time) the “Then and Now” square.

That Damned Cat (Radar) and his Kitten have their own tag here – Kitten Tag. They are part of the Aunt Family setting, which has a landing page here.

Radar had been a kitten once.

It was a distant memory, a fuzzy memory he didn’t often examine.

He had not been, as this kitten was now, a sentient kitten. He had not been a sentient anything back then.

He sat grooming the kit, holding her down with one paw while he cleaned her behind the ear. You know what it was like, Beryl had said. You can help her. Under that assumption, she’d convinced the mother cat to let Radar close to his daughter. Joint custody, she’d joked.

She must have gotten the idea from her friends at school. Her Family did not do divorce, and when they did, the family kept the children, no questions asked.

“Da-a-a-a-aad.” His Kitten mewled in complaint at him. Beryl had taken to calling the kitten Lam, for no reason that she would explain. There had been worse names. He had had worse names. “You’re thinking again.”

“This is a thing that happens with us, child. You will learn that in time.”

She rolled onto her back. “You were thinking about being a kitten.”

There was no use in denying it. “Who made you, kit?”

“I was born like this. I don’t remember any time I wasn’t like this.” She nuzzles against his chest. “Do you?”

“Then…” Radar chirruped and circled his daughter until he found a comfortable spot. “Then I was a cat. A kitten, a little pile of fluff, like your siblings. Now, now I am…”

“A Damned Cat. I’ve read the book.”

“That book was destroyed fifty years ago.”

The damn kitten purred. “That was then, Dad. This is now.”

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