2.04 The Spaghetti Incident

Marcus and Casey returned home from the cinema one night, to find a tiny kitten sleeping on their doorstep. It was too late in the evening to go door knocking to look for its owner, so they decided to take it in for the night. "The breed looks like a Tonkinese, but the colors are wrong.", said Marcus.
"Cool!", exclaimed Casey, "I'll call it Nymphadora! You know, after that witch, from that movie!"

"Yeeaah..No!" said Marcus sarcastically. Marcus counted off on his fingers, "Firstly, you haven't even looked to see if its male or female, secondly, we are not having any pet with a name that you can't run down the street yelling, if it goes missing", Marcus took a breath, "And 'C', it may already have a name given to it by a family somewhere that is missing it!"

Marcus retrieved one of the spare pet beds from the basement and placed it in their bedroom before settling in for the night.

 Dozer tried to socialize with the temporary inhabitant, but the skittish kitten dived under the couch and refused to come out.

 

 

Casey and Marcus spent two days door knocking looking for the kitten's owner, they even tried the local animal shelter, and looked for signs in all of the major shops in towns. Nobody appeared to be missing a Tonkinese cross kitten, Marcus applied at the local council to registered ownership off the kitten under his name. The council secretary needed a name, and Marcus filled in the application for SkittyKitty Jettstar. He'd never seen such a skittish cat, so he felt the name was appropriate. Besides, there was no way he was going to write 'Nymphadora' on the form.





Most nights, full moon or not, Natalie practiced her howling, she still sounded more like a mouse than a wolf!

Even though Lilli was now officially the owner of Blackwell's Scrap and Junkyards, she saw no reason to change either the current operating hours, or the signs on the gate.

 News of Gladys death had already circulated through Elba by the time Lil had opened the yards, and many of the customers where there mainly to commiserate with Lil.

 Lilli caught up with many people that she hadn't seen in a while, including Lawrence Wong-Lum and his wife Ava, (He had meant to ask her on a first date, and was so nervous asked her to marry him instead.) Maybe Lawrence life long streak of bad luck had finally come to an end.

Casey's mother and one of her sisters also came to visit the yard. Lilli took the opportunity to grill Serena about some of Casey's insecurities. Casey's mood swings were less frequent, and less dark, but Lilli felt that Casey still needed more help.

Serena explained to Lil, that fairies and witches had always been accepted in Elba, and vampires, provided they didn't go around biting people had been accepted well over one hundred years ago.
But werewolves, due to the fact that many of the earlier ancestors behaved like wild uncontrollable beasts where not permitted to live within the town limits until twenty years ago, and even now, there was still plenty of prejudice against werewolves. Casey had met much of this prejudice at an early age, and it had affected her much more deeply than her sisters.

After the customers cleared, Lilli sat in the office with her feet on the desk, reading the days news.
On page three was an article regarding the Fae Royal Succession, according to the royal bodyguards report, the former queen had passes away peacefully in her sleep. Prince Jasper was her chosen successor. "Peacefully?", snorted Lilliana, knowing that she was one of two people who knew the truth of her passing. Lillian also knew that her mother had never, ever, in her life, done anything peacefully.   





Natalie continued her attempts to improve her howl beyond a feeble squeak on a nightly basis.

"Seriously Readers, she's getting quite good at it!", says Dozer, despite the evenings earlier lecture about fourth walls. 

 

Natalie is also learning to read, as are her brothers, Dylan and Dominic. Dominic is especially excited to read this one, as his Daddy wrote it. The book is called 'SkittyKitty and the Spaghetti Incident'. Lilli helps him out with the bigger words. The book came about after Skitty had tried to swipe some spaghetti from Marcus dinner bowl, and had ended up trapped underneath the upturned bowl.

Marcus read his next book with Dylan. This book is called 'SkittyKitty and The Scruffy Pup'.

Dylan thinks the two main characters of this book are amazingly similar to the two family pets.

Marcus has now written many children's books, based on the mostly imaginary adventures of Skitty:

• SkittyKitty and the Spaghetti Incident
• SkittyKitty and the Scruffy Pup
• SkittyKitty and the Monster Under The Bed
• SkittyKitty and the Glitterbug
• SkittyKitty and the Mirror Kitty
• SkittyKitty Vs. The Evil Garden Gnome Of Doom
• SkittyKitty and the Golden Guitar
• SkittyKitty and the Shiny Dragon
• SkittyKitty and the Spaghetti Monster
• SkittyKitty and the Bigger Kitty Shadow
• SkittyKitty and the Grand Catnip Adventure

All of Marcus books are extremely well received by the critics.

Marcus teaches all of his children to walk.

SkittyKitty eventually gets used to The Scruffy Pup Old Dozer, and sleeps in the luxurious pet bed, rather than hiding under tables and other furniture.

 SkittyKitty grows up to be SkittyCat, but the name SkittyKitty sticks.

 This is SkittyKitty, this is SkittyKitty on catnip. Just say 'NO' to drugs pixelated pets!

Chapter Notes:

I've discovered werewolf toddlers can 'train' hidden traits, hunting appears to have one level as a toddler (practice hunting), but Lycanthropy itself has 3 levels, possibly more, (Howl at moon.)


*Spoiler*, I rolled perfect children for Marcus and Casey's children, while SN skills aren't referred to in the rules, I thought I'd max Nat's WW skills anyway, which means a huge amount of night howls.


I wrote most of this offline, as the old craptop is playing the 'wifi goes on, wifi goes off, wifi goes on, wifi goes off' game all day. I'm spending my entire life savings on a new low-end laptop in the next few days.