Lilicoon has tea with her friends Jay and Mr. Sunshine. She laughs as she recounts her time as a "skitten-sitter" and some skitties decide to sit in the laps of the three, making it more amusing, and a good afternoon.
@internutter/challenge-04259-k241-volunteered-kitten-sitter -- Anon Guest
They had been amiably chatting about everyday nonsense when the half-grown skitten invited itself into her lap. Where it immediately settled to grooming her tail floof. Lilcoon interrupted her train of thought and speech to scritch its head and say, "Hello, Monty. Where's your sibs? Oh." Four more half-grown skittens leaped or clambered on to her and her seat. "Gumby, Doris, Fleek, and Zizu. The gang's all here."
Mr Sunshine, who had been meditatively sipping his Rosemary tea, raised an eyebrow. "You're not usually on first name basis with the Skitties. What happened?"
Lilcoon breezily dismissed it all with, "Oh, I became a Skitty-designated skitten-sitter the last time you were out on extended assignment." She gave each of her little companions some pets with one hand as she sipped tea with the other. Watching in amusement as Jay was making, And? AND? gestures.
Jay finally snapped, "And? What's the rest of that story?"
"Well, I was enjoying some fiction released by the Archivaas when a mama skitty started dumping her blind almost newborns into my tail floof. Then a second mama starts bringing in her kitty-toddlers. Then another mama starts dragging in her ambulatory little ones. I called Services by that point, but my job was to stay still and warm and safe while Security and maintenance tried to track down the issue."
From her perspective, it was rather dull work. Cute, because she had a lap and a tail full of Skittens and some of the mamas. Playing with the fully mobile and 'bumper car' skittens had filled in the most minutes.
The full detective story was more fascinating than the part she played. Security scanned the ID chips of the mamas, traced them to the evac pod where the nest was. Then pulled the pod out of its niche to disassemble it after the diagnostics registered everything in the pod as normal.
The skitties were far better at detecting flaws than the internal diagnostics system. Which was very much overdue for an upgrade. Or, as one of the Maintenance Engineers put it, "A good kicking."
"So the entire life pod system's getting a root canal because some mama Skitties decided to make me their Aunty. And now I know several of the Skittens by name."
Some had colonised the laps of both Jay and Mr Sunshine. It was true, they really could tell which ones were good people. Well. Good people for cats.
[Photo by Victor Serban on Unsplash]
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