Pippi is yawning sleepily as she munches on her own breakfast, as though she's been up all night doing other things instead of sleeping, which of course she hasn't because she's a regular cat that doesn't have anywhere to go but here. Regardless, it's pretty clear that there isn't much danger she's going to be going anywhere now. She's going to have a nice nap instead. That patch of morning sunlight on the couch looks quite inviting. She finishes her last bite, takes a drink of water, then brushes against April's legs for a moment and goes and curls up in the aforementioned spot. 

"Perfect. Nighty-night."

She trundles off.

Pippi yawns again and closes her eyes. The sunlight is warm and comfortable and she is very sleepy.  

Still napping when April gets back?

Yes, but Pippi blinks herself awake when she hears the key in the lock, as she has an important task to do. April will see her stirring slightly as she enters. 

"Fancy meeting you here."

She gets the grocery cart into the kitchen and starts putting stuff away. Cereal, Pop-Tarts, milk, eggs...

Pippi Longstocking has by now followed April into the kitchen, and flopped into a sleepy loaf in her usual spot to watch her as she puts away her groceries. 

When the eggs go by Pippi meows, and looks up at April with wide and helpless eyes. 

Sigh. "You sure? I'm gonna be so mad if it turns out eggs give you the shits."

"Meow."

"Fiiiine. Eggs for lunch." But for now they go into the fridge.

No bacon this week, so the eggs are the most exciting stop on today's journey.

Pippi has no way to know that she's been promised anything, but she still seems a lot less disappointed than the past times when April has put the eggs away in the fridge. Maybe she can figure things out from tone of voice? That's probably what it is. That's probably why she doesn't look disappointed when she goes back to cleaning herself once the eggs are away. 

When April is done putting groceries away, Pippi gets up, stretches, brushes past April's legs again, and hops up on the couch once more to nap for a while longer. 

"Somebody's been up all night plotting schemes," she jokes on the way up to her office.

Yes. Plotting cat schemes. Not doing anything else, like staying up late reading about her namesake, because she is a cat and cats can't read. Pippilotta yawns and curls up and naps, looking forward to lunch. 

Lunch is a bit late because April forgot about the passage of time again.

That's fine, Pippi is still napping, even though her lovely warm patch of sunlight has still long since fled. She'll wake up to the sound of kitchen noises, though. 

April is making scrambled eggs for two. Well, more like scrambled eggs for one and a half. Pippi can be the half.

Pippi will be very happy to be the half! Pippi will wake to the sizzling noises and stretch and clean herself a bit, and then wander into the kitchen like she has no reason to believe that she has anything special to expect. April is cooking at a hot stove so it's probably not a good idea to rub against her legs, so instead she'll wait in a half-loaf in front of her food bowl, like a queen waiting to be served. 

"Do cats know not to burn their tongues? Better not risk it." She serves Pippi's half portion onto a little plate and waits for it to cool while she nibbles gingerly at hers, then tips the contents of the plate into Pippi's food bowl once they're no longer fresh off the pan and eager to scorch incautious nibblers.

Pippi can groom herself during this delay, as though there's no reason whatsoever to be offended by this heinous slight of not giving her her food immediately. 

Once served, though, she digs in heartily, purring as she eats the eggs possibly just a little bit faster than she should. 

"Great. Now don't get diarrhea," she instructs.

Pippi ignores this admonishment in favor of eating more of the tasty tasty eggs. This probably won't be a problem later (and if it is, there's a cat door to outside which April was extremely kind enough to install). 

Well, lunch complete, back to work.

Pippi finishes her lunch by cleaning the egg residue off of her whiskers and mouth, and then takes this opportunity to explore her new domain more fully. The office door is closed and April will probably be annoyed if Pippi scratches at the door, but her bedroom door is open, so Pippi takes full advantage of this situation. Checking under the bed and over the bed, poking her nose under bookshelves and bureau and stalking around inside the closet. 

Satisfied, she goes on to explore the rest of the house. 

April is oblivious to these goings-on!

She might find some cat hair later, but cat hair just a fact of life of life to April now. Or will be, once she realizes. 

The basement contains, in addition to a gnome door and her litter box, which Pippi can take a moment to relieve herself in, a small lounge area, complete with TV and couch. And... some video game consoles, apparently. Pippi hasn't seen April play anything yet, and is curious to know what she plays. Hopefully games conducive to having a cat on her lap while playing them. If not she may need to find some other games to play. 

Satisfied with her explorations, Pippi curls up in a cozy corner of the the basement couch, and takes a short nap. 

April emerges from her office in the late evening and does in fact head downstairs to play video games. Her lap is perhaps not optimally amenable to cat while she's rolling around in We Love Katamari.

Unfortunately for her, there is a lap that Pippi has been cruelly and unaccountably denied entering all day, and she's not going to pass up the chance to worm her way into it now. 

🎶 This lap is full of elbows 🎶
🎶 And that's just what she'll do 🎶
🎶 If you insist on lap time now this girl will elbow you 🎶

Hmph. She's clearly not doing it on purpose, but clearly April is very into her video game and is not making proper allowances for cat. 

For entirely unrelated reasons, after a few minutes of being randomly elbowed by an enthusiastic April, Pippi will sidle out of the lap and sit next to April on the couch and give her paws a wash. 

"I am sorry, but also, you definitely brought this on yourself," she says, bouncing in place as her trash orb rolls its way to victory. "Woo!"

Brought what on herself? Pippi decided to get out of the lap and wash herself for entirely unrelated reasons. No elbows were involved in this decision. 

She does turn to look at the screen to watch April succeed at trash-ball-rolling though. 

Hers is the most successful trash ball. Woo.

It does seem be going rather well for her, at least as far as Pippi can tell. Which isn't very much because she's just a regular cat. But it does look like the sort of thing that Pippi might like to play, if she could bat the ball of Stuff around herself. She could do with a few things to play with in general, in fact. 

After a few minutes of watching Pippi hops up off the couch to crouch on the floor, so she can reach up and bat at the lopsided orb on screen. 

"You know, that's a good point," she says. "I wonder..."

A minute later when she's done with the level, she grabs her phone and looks up whether she can get a stuffed katamari. A stuffed katamari specifically designed as a cat toy may be a bit much to ask for—nope, Etsy's got her covered.

Pippi is too far away to see the screen, and probably couldn't understand what she was seeing even if she could since she's a normal cat, but it does seem like she probably communicated her desires successfully. She settles back into a loaf on the floor to watch the goings-on on the screen, only occasionally reaching up a paw to bat at the trash ball for a moment before going back to the relaxed loaf. 

The next level she plays is an outright race, which significantly increases ambient elbow hazard levels, but luckily Pippi is not in her lap anymore.

Pippi does her best to help by batting the ball back in the right direction whenever it gets too far away from where it's supposed to be (going off the track to pick up extra trash to become bigger is apparently okay, but going into the water not so much. At least not until the ball is big enough to start picking up boats). 

"It's a shame I can't trust you not to eat magnets," she remarks cryptically.

Pippi isn't sure what she means by this (not that she can understand what she's saying in the first place, of course), and so continues batting at the orb on the screen when her help is required. 

Okay, Cat-amari is April's new favourite game. She already liked this game a lot, but the 'help' just takes it to the next level.

Well if April is having a good time playing games with her, then Pippi is quite happy to keep helping her out when she needs it. 

Eventually she yawns.

"Okay, bedtime," she says, turning off the game. "Night, Pippi."

...Pippi is going to follow her upstairs, isn't she.

Yup. Pippi is a curious kitty, and wants to see what April is up to! Even if it is probably just brushing her teeth and things. 

Brushing her teeth, gently evicting the cat from the bathroom so she can pee...

Pippi can be evicted without much trouble. She washes herself outside the door waiting for April to leave. 

And lo, she returns! Straight across the hall and into the bedroom.

Straight there? Without stopping for a loving shinrub from her favorite kitty? 

Okay, okay, fine, feline affection will be grudgingly tolerated.

Well, good, because feline affection is going to be applied! With some purring once Pippi realizes she's stopped to allow her to show her affection, and not having to give walk-by affection. 

"I don't know what I did to get you to like me so much. I feel like I'm looking at a friend going 'your taste in men is gonna get you in trouble someday' only in this scenario I am also the men."

If Pippi were capable of understanding human speech, she would point out the numerous things April has done for her, such as let her into her home and do her best to give her food and water and then also give her cat doors and also how playing the video game was surprisingly fun even though she knows she wasn't really doing anything -- but of course Pippi is a perfectly normal cat that cannot understand April or communicate this in any way. The best she can do is rub up against her legs in a cozy fashion and purr. 

"I guess if I was the man in that scenario, telling my girlfriend that being into people like me was going to cause her problems, I would want to reevaluate my life or something, but I don't feel like doing that so I'm just gonna go to bed. Night, Pippi." She attempts to be free of cat.

The cat allows April to free herself from her without much difficulty. and leans back on her haunches to watch April enter her room and close the door behind her. After a moment or two she'll wander off to do perfectly normal cat things, like go to bed herself. 

The following days begin to establish a pattern. April gets up, makes breakfast for herself and Pippi, works for a while in her office, has an early lunch if work isn't going well and a late lunch if it's going either very well or very poorly, then half the time forgets to eat dinner at all before bed (but, when she does remember, feeds Pippi too). The post-work evening time tends to involve video games, but sometimes she lounges in the basement den with a book instead. (The couch in the front room/living room seems to be purely decorative.)

(That's good because the couch belongs to Pippi now. She lounges on it when it gets good sun during the day.) Pippi's pattern, once she figures out what April's is, is to be ready for breakfast when breakfast is served, and then entertains herself while April is working. There isn't terribly much for a perfectly normal cat to do just yet. She spends a decent amount of time poking around inside the pirate ship and using it to sharpen her nails (sadly there's no rigging for her to climb), a decent amount of time lounging in the sun, and a decent amount of time exploring the house looking for pests. Despite the cat doors, she doesn't spend much time outside, as far as April can tell. 

She shows her new roommate great respect and affection -- rubbing up against her shins, purring about the food and her touches, and doing her best to cadge as much lap time as she can (which is much less than she'd like). And she doesn't make any messes whatsoever, going in the litter box whenever she needs to, if she's not going outside. In fact, with the frequency of how often she goes outside as opposed to in the litter box, April will probably have to change it less often. 

Pippi, of course, does her best to ask for whatever food April is eating when it would befit her to have some (less often than she'd like), and helps out with April's video games as best she can, depending on the game. 

April is very conscientous about looking up all the foods Pippi asks for to find out if they kill cats, and pretty conservative about interpreting ambiguous results, but if Pippi wants extra of anything that's safe for her to eat then April will make extra. She grumbles a lot when she has to deal with the litterbox, but she still does deal with it.

Her house is pretty pest-free overall, though Pippi can probably find some bugs to commit little kitty war crimes against if she tries hard and believes in herself.

After observing that Pippi has claimed the Useless Couch as her own, April has an idea.

One evening after work, instead of heading down to the basement like usual, she heads down to the front room and sits on the Useless Couch.

What's this? For a moment Pippi wonders if she should be territorial about her new space, but she's more curious than anything else. She perks up her head to see what April is up to. (And to see if there is a lap available for her to colonize, of course. If April is going to sit in her domain, she should have to pay the toll.) 

"Hey, you," she says, making inviting lapward gestures.

Oh, well, perfect. Not too fast, of course, because it's not like April is giving Pippi something that she needs or anything, Pippi makes her way over to the lap, and hops into it. She turns around once in it, and then starts kneading a leg (being careful to keep her claws in). 

Scritches ensue.

"It's not like I'm gonna do this every day," she cautions. "But, you know, this is basically your room now, it's the logical place to go if I want to hang out with you." Scritch scritch. "I wonder if I should move your pirate ship here? I have no way to find out if you think that's reasonable. Or maybe the bed? Is it weird to sleep in the kitchen? I guess it's not any less weird to sleep in the alleged living room. Maybe I'll move the pirate ship here anyway, though, I'm always afraid I'm gonna kick it across the room by accident when I'm coming down the stairs."

Pippi is a perfectly normal cat that cannot understand human language, so she doesn't really have a good way to tell April that she'd be perfectly happy with having this room be hers now, pirate ship and all, but she can purr at her words anyways. Well, she might be purring anyways due to the scritches but she can purr lots. 

Sadly, due to being a cat still, she also can't tell April that she'd be happier if the pirate ship had rigging or something good to climb, but that's just how things are. Perhaps she can demonstrate by climbing on the couch more when April is observing, now that April seems happy to designate this room as her own. 

"Yeah, okay, the pirate ship can move to the shitty coffee table and then if you don't hate that maybe I'll move your bed in here too one of these days." (The shitty coffee table is not especially low quality, or wasn't when it was first made, but it's very old and battered to the point where no amount of amateur refinishing can smooth over its scarred surface any longer.)

Pippi has no good way to respond to this presently other than even more purring, but more purring is definitely what she's going to do. 

"You're very fuzzy," April observes, petting her.

It's true! Pippi is very fuzzy! And she can wriggle happily under April's hand if that helps any. While purring, of course. The purring is definitely happening. 

"I still don't know what I did to make you so happy but I guess I can't complain." Pet pet.

If Pippi could talk or communicate (and understand what April is saying, which, being a normal cat, she cannot), she would tell her about how she hasn't been mean to her once and she's been trying to make sure the things she feeds her are safe and also the cat doors and the food and the litter box and letting her into her home and everything. (Some of the initial stuff might have been a ploy or something, but April is a very good roommate for cats and this seems like a very relaxed assignment for Pippi.) Pippi is glad she's well-cared for despite the fact that April did not originally realize she wanted a cat. 

But she can't say any of that so she just purrs more. 

April settles in and pets the cat for a good long while, occasionally musing aloud about the book she's reading or the game they played yesterday or a thorny coding problem that's been giving her trouble.

After the longest solid block of lap time Pippi has ever had, she yawns and nudges Pippi out of her lap. "I gotta make dinner. And move your pirate ship."

But... lap..... 

Pippi regretfully yawns and stretches a bit to bring herself back to wakefulness, responding to the nudging, before hopping out of the lap and onto the floor to wander around a bit before dinner. 

"Your cooperation is appreciated."

She grabs the pirate ship and moves it to the shitty coffee table, glancing at Pippi along the way to try to gauge her reaction.

Pippi follows her as she picks up the (slightly scratched up) pirate ship, follows it and April to the coffee table, and when the cardboard construct is placed in its new home, hops from floor to couch, climbs up to the arm of the couch, and hops onto the pirate ship. She settles into her new location, looking at as though a queen on her throne. Yes, this is acceptable. 

"Awesome."

In that case she will throw together some lazy noodles for dinner - probably not appropriate for cats, though if Pippi expresses interest she can double-check that on Google - and eat at the kitchen table while idly skimming news headlines on her phone.

There doesn't seem to be much in the way of meat or eggs or anything in there, so Pippi can turn up her nose at April's food after giving it a sniff, and go and consume her own. 

After dinner, she cleans up the kitchen and goes to bed a little earlier than usual.

And Pippi can watch her go through her usual bedtime rituals, and then curl up in her own bed and go to sleep herself. 

The next morning, April steps out before breakfast to grab a package from the doorstep. Bumping the door closed with her hip, she tears it open right there on the spot.

"Ta-daa!" she announces, holding up a frankly adorable little crocheted katamari. "Got you a present, Pippi!"

!!!!

Pippi looks up at the object April is holding with her eyes wide open, a little bit ready to pounce. (Also that is the object from the video game, the Katamari thing. Is April going to drop it? Is Pippi going to get to play with it?

She tosses it gently toward Pippi's couch.

Pippi watches it land and pounces on it, tail high in the air with delight. She bats at it a few times, and watches it do it's not-very-straight rolling across the floor for a few bounces before coming to a stop. Then she pounces on it and bites it. This is a good object. She picks it up in her mouth, stalks over to April, and rubs up against her legs purring, before scampering off to drop it on the floor so she can roll it a few times before pouncing on it again. 

-

Pippi continues to bat the ball around her room for a while, knocking it around and occasionally pouncing on it.

After about 10 minutes or so, she'll take a break, taking it up to her pirate ship in her mouth, and dropping it there, paws wrapped around it a little like she's guarding a treasure. 

"Well, that's adorable."

All right, time to make breakfast. Cereal for her, wet food for kitty.

Cereal is of no interest to Pippi, since April knows cats shouldn't have milk, and so she will companionably eat her wet food, making sure to keep her new toy no more than a foot or so from herself. (Not too close to the food, though. She doesn't want it to get dirty.) 

Munch munch. "Am I living with a tiny hoarder?"

Pippi will not (can not) dignify that with a response, and continues eating her food, pretending that April hadn't said anything at all. (It's her first toy! And it's from the video game they played together! Of course she's going to treasure it. So there.) 

"Too cute."

She finishes breakfast, clears her dishes, and trudges upstairs to her office.

And Pippi will finish up her own breakfast, have a big drink of water, clean herself, and go back to amusing herself and napping in the sunlight until April decides it is lunchtime, whenever that may be. 

Today is one of those days when April comes stomping down the stairs at 2 PM, cursing incomprehensibly about software engineering over the sound of her audibly growling stomach.

Oh dear. Will brushing against her ankles in a snuggly fashion help at all? (When she's safely at the bottom of the stairs and unlikely to trip and hurt herself.) 

She sighs, and attempts a smile, and crouches down to pet the cat, and makes eggs for both of them.

Eggs! 

Pippi is delighted at the prospect of eggs, and will stay at a safe distance watching April cook, occasionally batting the ball back and forth. 

As usual, she gives Pippi's eggs a little time to cool before serving them.

That's probably for the best but that doesn't keep Pippi from wanting them. She'll stare up at them with wide eyes as they cool, waiting impatiently for her tasty treat. 

"That looks like the face of one who does not know how hot frying pans get. Patience."

Okay, there, April's eggs no longer hurt to touch so Pippi can have hers.

Patience? What's that mean? Pippi cannot possibly be expected to understand human speech, so she has no understanding of the meaning of the word. Not when there's tasty treats on the line. (She's glad that April wants to protect her, though.) 

Once the eggs are served, Pippi falls on them delightedly, eating yellow curd after yellow curd. 

"See normally I'm flattered when someone likes my cooking this much, but you are a cat."

Pippi pays this comment no mind, and continues eating happily. Soon she will be done and can go thank her roommate for this tasty meal, but she cannot do this until she is finished. 

She scarfs her own eggs and starts cleaning up.

Soon, Pippi is done with her own food, and softly pads over to April to rub up against her shins and purr to thank her for the eggs. Once she's not holding fragile dishes, that is. 

"Awww. You're welcome."

Pippi purrs, and rubs up against her shins a few more times, softly brushing her with her tail, before stalking off to catch a patch of sunlight. 

It's a couple days later when April, having observed the success of moving the pirate ship, tries moving Pippi's bed into the front room. She makes sure Pippi can see her do it, on the theory that surely an object being in a different place is less confusing if you watched it go there, and also if Pippi doesn't want April touching her bed she can probably complain about it and then April won't touch her bed and it'll stay where it is.

Pippi watches her move the bed with apparent curiosity and no complaints, stalking a short distance behind her as she moves the carboard box with blanket to the living room that is essentially her own room now. Once April has put the bed into place, Pippi brushes past her shins affectionately, and plops into place, kneading the blankets around a bit before settling in for a short relaxing nap. 

So far so good!

"Daisy's coming over tonight," she mentions as she steps away. "I don't know why I'm telling you this."

Pippi is still a normal cat that cannot understand human speech, and so has no reason to be mildly excited about the words that April is saying. She still perks her head up a bit, but that's because April is talking to her. No other reason. 

April, who unironically believes this, just smiles to herself as she heads upstairs to get some post-lunch work done.

Later in the afternoon, she comes back downstairs and announces, "Impromptu grocery trip, I wanna bake cookies. You probably can't have any."

Cookies are in fact not a cat-friendly food! Not that Pippi in any way knows this, or that April is intending to make cookies, of course, but she's still going to perk up and watch her leave with her cart, before settling back into her newly-moved bed. She'll inspect the groceries when April returns. 

She returns with cookie ingredients, cookie decorating supplies, and a few cans of beans. Nothing very enticing.

Pippi watches from her usual corner with interest, and while she perks up slightly at the cans of beans, she slinks back down when she realizes that they are not cat food. A pity. Eventually, when the groceries are all put away (or put on surfaces for imminent cookie creation), Pippi stretches, lifts herself up, and imperiously stalks off, passing by April for a moment to brush past her legs. 

"Figures. See you later, Pippi."

Cookie time! She is going to draw dumb little cat faces on all the cookies, because she can. Her enthusiasm outpaces her skill but it's fine, that's part of the charm.

The doorbell rings partway through the decorating process.

Pippi goes to answer the door. She cannot open the door herself, of course, but she can hop out the recently installed cat door and say hello to Daisy. 

Daisy laughs. "Oh hey, you!" She leans down to find out if Pippi would like scritches.

Oh, Pippi would very much like scritches. 

"I am being supplanted in my own home," says April, opening the door. "I made cookies! You're just in time to help decorate!"

"In my defense, you're not nearly as fluffy," says Daisy. "How much creative freedom do I have over these cookies?"

"You're just gonna draw dicks on them, aren't you. Get in here already."

Pippi looks forlornly at Daisy's hand for a moment when she stops providing the pleasurable scritches, and then follows the both of them inside through the now open human door. 

"This is now Pippi's room, by the way," she adds as she leads Daisy through the front room toward the kitchen. "I sit on the couch when I want to hang out with her."

"I don't know why you told me that when you want my help decorating cookies," says Daisy, beelining for the couch.

If she's on the couch, that probably means more scritches, right? Pippi hops up next to where Daisy is sitting and looks at her and the awaiting lap. Is this lap for her? 

It is! It is for her!

"You two have fun, then. I'm going to be over here eating all these cookies by myself once I finish drawing very stupid-looking cats on them."

Daisy snickers, but, importantly, doesn't stop petting Pippi.

Pippi is perfectly happy to continue to be pet. There may also be some purring involved. 

Cozy little creature.

Contrary to her stated intentions, when April finishes decorating the cookies she brings out a plate and sets it on the coffee table next to the pirate ship.

"Oh, they do have dumb little faces!" Daisy exclaims.

Pippi perks her head up. The cookies appear to be decorated in a very crude (and adorable) cartoony approximation of her face. And they also are not something she wants to eat, which is a travesty. She puts her head back down, hoping for more pets. 

Scritch scritch.

April hands Daisy a cookie since Daisy is clearly not going to stop petting Pippi long enough to grab one herself, then sits down next to her and gets in on the scritching.

Purr? Purr. Puurrrrr. 

Awww.

"These're really good," says Daisy, half-intelligible around a mouthful of cookie.

Pippi a little bit wishes she could try one but she wouldn't be able to taste it right and right now she is being scritched and pet and it is very good. 

Very important to love the cat.

"Yeah I was just kind of like 'I'm going to make cat cookies when Daisy comes over' and then I made it happen."

Pippi is mildly impressed with her charge about that but also she is still being pet and this is still very good. 

"I had no idea Pippi was such a cuddlefiend."

"Yeah, seems like she loves human attention. Can't relate."

It's true, Pippi does enjoy human attention. You can tell from all the purring.

April divides her attention between cookies and cat.

As delicious as the cookies are, Pippi is the clear winner from Daisy's perspective.

Pippi has no problem with being the main recipient of attention. Pippi should always be the center of attention. And be scritched. Just like that. 

How about adoring cooing noises, is she good with those?

Pippi is more or less indifferent to adoring cooing noises. That said they are often accompanied by pets, like the ones she's currently getting, so she has no reason to complain. 

Seems fine then.

Any chance Daisy could intersperse those cooing noises with tales of her ridiculous coworker drama?

No.

Okay, maybe Pippi is slightly smug about the cooing noises then, since it means she is undistractedly getting all the pets and scritches she is properly due. 

"Can I interest you in a katamari?" she asks the cat, fishing up the orb from beside the couch and giving it an enticing wiggle.

In theory Pippi is probably more interested in snuggles from Daisy than being distracted by the crocheted toy, but perhaps she shouldn't be entirely monopolizing April's friend. She perks up at the sight of the bumpy object, tracking it with her head. 

And lo, the orb was tossed.

And then it is pounced upon! After extricating herself from Daisy without hurting her, of course. Pippi bats the ball from side to side a bit, taking a step or two to grab it when it goes askew in one direction or another due to its unusual shape. 

"What is that thing?"

"I'll explain later."

Pippi bats the ball a few feet across the room, watches it unevenly roll across the floor, and then chases after it and pounces again, biting it and shaking it around a bit, before letting it go and doing it again. 

"So how've you been?"

"Oh I see, this was all a ploy to get my attention off the cat. Too bad, she's still adorable."

As proof of this, Pippi knocks the ball across the room again, scampering past them as the katamari rolls its way near to the way into the kitchen, her tail wagging a little for balance (and cuteness). 

"See?"

Well, now she's giggling.

Pippi knocks the ball towards the kitchen, pauses, and then rolls the ball the other way, back into view, stalking after it like its an unaware creature that she's ready to pounce on. 

"I admit defeat. Nothing will save me from the cuteness."

She pats April's knee comfortingly. "There, there. It's a journey all pet owners must face."

Pippi bats the ball back the other way, and after a few more iterations of this, she has, by purely random chance, ended near the kitchen and so out of sight of April in Daisy, still playing with her toy. 

"Alas! Tragedy! Woe! I guess I'll have to entertain myself recounting office gossip after all."

"Yessss. Triumph at last."

Pippi continues playing with her toy for a bit while listening to the humans talk -- not that she can understand what they're saying as a perfectly normal cat, of course. After a while she takes a pause to head downstairs for a short bathroom break. 

By this time the humans have munched their way through the whole plate of cookies and gone to the kitchen to refill the plate. April is making tea.

Daisy is explaining why she thinks two of her coworkers are secretly dating, but gets distracted seeing the orb again. "You still haven't told me what that is. What'd you call it again?"

She hums a snatch of music under her breath and pours two cups of tea.

"Let's take this downstairs and I'll show you."

Heading back up the steps towards the kitchen, toy in tow, Pippi pauses partway up as she sees the humans descending the stairs. She stares up at them for several moments, and then heads back downstairs to see what they're up to, brushing past their shins affectionately once they've safely reached the bottom. 

They are up to: video games!

Oh, video games! Pippi knows what to do with those. She'll sit near the screen, looking up at it, tensed and ready to help out if her help is needed. Is April playing the Katamari game? 

Indeed she is!

Oh good! Then Pippi can help out by batting the ball of rolled up things back the right way when it bounces off of something or heads too close to a cliff or the water and stuff like that.

"This is the cutest thing I have ever seen."

Pippi is over here making sure that the trash-collecting orb is going the right directions, and not the wrong ones. She's not doing it constantly, most of the time she's on the ground watching carefully, ready to pounce, but when things start to go the wrong way she'll leap up and paw at the ball until it's going the right way again. 

"Woo! Go Pippi! You're a star!"

With her tail swishing enthusiastically at her new cheering section, Pippi continues to help, guiding the lopsided ball over a particularly narrow bridge so it doesn't fall off. 

"Whew, we did it!" she says when she reaches the end of the bridge. "Anyway, yes, now you understand about the katamari."

"I may never understand the katamari. But at least now I've seen it."

Pippi is still watching, ready to intervene when her help is required.

At the moment she is mostly rolling up miscellaneous debris, but - oop, there, she bounced off something that was a little too big to grab and now she's spinning out of control in the wrong direction.

Then Pippi can pounce and steady the ball with her paws, and get it rolling the right way again. 

Her totally ineffective assistance is deeply appreciated.

Pippi is glad to help! And is clearly enjoying it very much. 

"So, just to be clear, the game doesn't actually accept cat input, right? Are there video games for cats?"

"I don't know if there are video games for cats but this isn't one. If there are video games for cats maybe I should get some."

Pippi has no way to understand what they're talking about, of course, so she will continue to help guide this ball in the right directions when necessary instead of being curious about what games they could even have for cats. 

Daisy is now looking up cat video games on her phone.

"Good news: cat video games are real," she reports. "Bad news: the reviews of this one say that it interrupts the gameplay with ads. Why?? Why advertise to a cat??? Truly we live in a fallen world."

"Ads?? Is this a phone game? Maybe they're hoping the cat will accidentally paw up some purchases while the owner isn't looking."

Pippi's tail stops swishing for a moment for unrelated reasons. After a moment it goes back to swishing, with just as much enthusiasm as before as she keeps the katamari from rolling off the edge of a cliff.

"Absolutely despicable," Daisy concludes. "Ooh, nice save!"

"Thank you. Wait, you were talking to the cat."

Pippi certainly has no way to understand what words they're saying, of course, but she can understand that Daisy is happy about something, and so of course it's about Pippi, clearly. She continues watching for more scenarios where her help is needed.

Daisy continues to cheer for Pippi whenever something cool happens.

April continues to affectionately tolerate this.

Pippi continues guiding the ball away from edges and towards things that will make it bigger. 

And after a couple more levels, "Whoof. Okay, I'm done for the night. ...my tea got cold while I was playing video games."

"It sure did! Mine, meanwhile, was delicious."

She makes a face and tries a sip. "Eh, could be worse."

Pippi is also looking pretty tired after being so active for a while. She pads over to where the two of them are sitting, and gently brushes up against their shins affectionately. 

"Hey, Pip." Gentle scritches?

Pippi responds positively to the gentle scritches. She also hops up onto the couch and climbs into April's lap and curls up for a bit of a comfortable rest. 

Cozy.

"I need to get a picture of this."

"You do not."

Pippi, clearly oblivious to their discussion, purrs gently, arching a little into the hand petting her. 

"All right, all right."

Lukewarm tea and warm fuzzy lap friend. Life is good.

A comfy lap to rest in after a bunch of fun games. Life is very good. 

Life with Pippi is settling into a reasonably steady routine. Work, eat, hang out with cat, sleep, rinse, repeat. The katamari was enough of a hit that she feels like she should get Pippi more toys, but she can't think of a good one and keeps forgetting to ask Daisy for tips. She does make sure to keep coming to Pippi's room for kitty hangout time, though.

Pippi also seems to be pretty happy settling into the life that she has, sunning herself and playing with her toy. She might also wish she has more toys, or would if she could understand when April talks aloud about it, which she can't because she's just a cat. 

This time, when April comes into the room, Pippi is currently climbing and jumping around on the couch and environs, making her way from floor to seat cushions to backrest to armrest to pirate ship and back to the floor, in various combinations. 

"Somebody's having a toddler-with-candy moment. Wait, do cats get sugar rushes?" It is time, once more, to google a cat fact. "You can't even taste sugar??? Ripoff. I'm so sorry on behalf of Mother Nature." She plops down on the couch. "I'm warning you now, if you try to climb on my face, we will have a disagreement about that."

Despite the energy Pippi was showing before, she's still perfectly happy to end up in April's lap to be petted, no face-climbing required. She does make a detour through the pirate ship to get there, though. 

Pet pet pet. "Hey you. You're gonna need something to climb on that's not the couch, aren't you." She eyes the coffee table speculatively. "I wonder..."

Pippi stretches in April's lap, pressing herself into her hand, kneading her legs a little bit to get comfortable, before curling up a bit to relax under her touch. 

"Cute fuzzy kitty." Pet pet. "How would you feel about a much bigger pirate ship? You can't answer that. I wonder if I can hang rigging from the ceiling..."

Pippi has absolutely no reason to react to that. None at all. So she continues being petted cozily in April's lap, listening to her talk to Pippi and herself in words that Pippi definitely can't understand, the way she normally does. 

"Hmm." She shifts to petting Pippi with one hand and uses her other hand to awkwardly google a few things. Has nobody made a cat tree shaped like a giant pirate ship? Really? Tragic. She'll just have to be the first.

This is hardly the first time April has poked around on her phone while petting Pippi, so she's somewhat used to this treatment by now, and makes no fuss. The screen isn't angled anywhere Pippi could see, so she can't look at it curiously either. And April's hand feels really comfortable and good. She purrs, settling in a little and letting one eye close. 

Awww, sleepy cozy kitty.

After satisfying herself of a few basic design goals and materials sources, she puts her phone away and focuses on snuggling the cat.

Pippi really likes it when she focuses on that! You can tell from all the sleepy purring noises. 

Cuuuuuuuuute.

Pippi purrs some more, and nuzzles against her leg just a little bit.  

"You're too cute. It's a problem." Pet pet. "What are you gonna do to my grumpy cynical image?"

Sadly, Pippi definitely can't understand that, and so has no reason to change her behavior one iota. What she can do though is stretch a little, shift positions, and go back to nuzzling and purring. 

"Yeah, yeah." But despite her mocking tone, she keeps petting the cat.

The petting feels very good, and so does April, and this house, and everything in it. Pippi is happy here. 

"I'm gonna be out all day," she explains, "and I don't want you to get hungry. I mean, I figure if you get really hungry you can go out and terrorize the wildlife, but you know, short of that. Take care of yourself and please don't anxiously shred my furniture. I guess you can anxiously shred your couch if you really feel like it."

Pippi goes over to the bowl, noses the contents a few times, eats a bite, and then eats one more. Food sampled, she takes a big drink of water and then wanders off to curl up in the sun. She brushes past April's shins as she leaves, though, wrapping a tail around a leg in an affectionate gesture. 

"Yeah, well, so's your face. See you later, Pippi."

And she's off!

Well, while April is gone, Pippi can take a nice nap on the couch. That's probably what she'll be doing all day while April is gone, as there is no reason for her to be doing anything else with the house to herself. 

Six hours later, the sound of good-natured cussing drifts up the front steps.

The voices involved may be familiar.

Oh good! Pippi perks her head up from the spot where she has definitely been spending most of her day napping (though when April does check on the bowl of food, later, it will be somewhat depleted, along with the water bowl). 

April opens the front door, and she and Daisy commence wrestling a great big wooden pole in through it.

Pippi hops down and observes their antics with interest. Making sure to stay a good distance out of the way, but curiously watching for sure. 

Step one: get the dang pole into the living room.

Step two: More Lumber (in smaller pieces).

Step three: a couple of shopping bags containing other tools and materials.

Step four: stand the pole upright, next to the coffee table on the side opposite the couch.

"How did I end up here?" asks Daisy, standing on the coffee table holding the pole in place.

"Out of love for my cat."

Now April has to assemble the base for this thing by herself! An observant viewer might speculate that she and Daisy did some construction work before they got here, because there are already various holes and notches and other bits that let her put together all that More Lumber into a frame that she can attach firmly to the base of the pole using a screwdriver and a lot of elbow grease.

Pippi does not have elbows that function that way, and so cannot help. She can, however, sit on the arm of the couch like a throne, and watch as April does all the hard work of putting the base on the tall pole, occasionally cleaning a paw. 

Unaccountably, after she finishes putting together the base, there is Even More Lumber left over!

Daisy gets down off the coffee table to help April assemble the crow's nest.

Pippi watches them put together what is clearly for her with great interest. She might also be fidgeting excitedly a little, for all her attempts at looking unworried about how long they're taking. 

Well, she's going to have to wait a bit longer, because after April takes her turn standing on the coffee table to get the crow's nest screwed into place, the two of them start pulling big rolls of thick twine out of the shopping bags and winding it tightly around the pole from bottom to top.

Pippi may have let go of pretense a bit at this point. She's clambering back and forth between the (smaller!) pirate ship and the couch, looking in their direction occasionally, tail swishing back and forth. 

Partway through The Winding, April leaves Daisy standing on the coffee table continuing to wind and heads downstairs to drag out the stepladder. That lets her get up to the very top of the pole and keep winding the twine past the floor of the crow's nest. At that point they can give it the final tie-off.

"Well," she says, standing back, "it looks better than I expected but worse than I hoped. —oh, we forgot the mat, Daisy gimme a hand—"

They shuffle a rubber mat under the base frame to add some friction and protect the floor.

April starts grabbing miscellaneous debris off the floor, empty rolls of twine and so on, and shoving it back into the shopping bags while Daisy admires their handiwork.

Pippi jumps to the floor, and paces back and forth, and once it's clear that the actual construction work is done and no more work is going to go into the pole, Pippi takes a bit of a run up and scampers halfway up the pole, holding on with her claws. She pauses, looks around, and then climbs the rest of the way, only slightly slower than she did to begin with. Before long she's at the top in the crow's nest, looking down at the humans from her perch. 

"Success!"

"You know, on a real pirate ship, the mast would have sails. And rigging."

"Sails and rigging are in the works! But I'm okay with this mast specifically not having them. It doesn't need to be a flawlessly accurate pirate ship."

Having finished cleaning up, she is now getting out a measuring tape.

Daisy is quickly drawn into April's efforts to plan out the rest of the ship.

And from her high-up perch, Pippi watches. 

After being up there for a couple of minutes, she jumps down, brushes up against both of their shins, purring a lot.

"Awwww." Scritches for Pippi?

Pippi will happily accept scritches! She will continue to purr whilst being scritched. 

Cannot scritch, too busy designing kitty architecture.

Too bad for April! Daisy will be over here with the fuzzy friend.

After a minute or so of getting scritched, Pippi will scamper off to climb the pole once more. This time she gets about halfway up, turns sideways, and jumps off the pole, landing on the soft couch cushions. Hopping down onto the floor, Pippi pads over to where April is carefully at work, brushes past her affectionately when she's not literally in the middle of doing something, and then goes back over to get more scritches from Daisy. 

"Hello to you too," she says as Pippi passes by.

Cat? Cat! Cat. <3

Pippi flops into a loaf on the floor next to Daisy so she can pet her easily, watching April as she measures and designs. 

What a good and cozy loaf, perfect for petting!

April is filled with Thoughts and Plans and Ambitions. And measuring tapes. Okay, the measuring tapes remain outside of the April, for now.

Pippi cannot see the Thoughts or Plans or Ambitions directly, but she can certainly see that April is having a good time figuring out something to do with the room, and Pippi is certainly happy about more things to play with too. She observes with interest. While being petting and purring, of course. The pets are very important. 

"All right," she says eventually, "I think I've got a plan mostly put together. Who wants dinner?"

"But you see, in order to eat dinner, I must stop petting this cat."

"Suit yourself." Up she hups.

When April heads into the kitchen for food, then it's time for Pippi's food as well. So, leaving Daisy behind, Pippi stretches and heads over to the kitchen and waits by her bowl. Which admittedly is half-full of kibble, but still, maybe she'll be getting something nicer? 

Spaghetti for the humans in the room, and— "that looks like a cat who wants me to dump that out and get her some real food." So, wet food for Pippi.

Spaghetti is not a Pippi food, sadly, so she will content herself with the wet food. Perhaps one of these days Pippi will convince April to give her bacon, but today is clearly not that day. She tucks in happily. 

It's decent spaghetti. A fine reward for a job well done.

"So, same time next week?"

"If you're up for it, yeah!"

Pippi continues eating her food as though she does not understand what they're saying or when she can look forward to more pirate ship, as that would require a much greater understanding of human language than she could possibly possess. But with any luck, soon there will be more things for her to play with! She tucks into her food with renewed vigor. 

Daisy stays long enough to have a cup of tea after dinner (and pet the cat some more), then goes home, with a promise to be back next week for more piratical shenanigans.

Once Pippi is done enjoying Daisy's pets and once she has left, Pippi goes and finds April, and rubs up against her ankles, purring quite a lot. 

"Hey, you. Somebody likes her crow's nest, huh?"

Pippi purrs some more and wraps a tail around one of April's legs. 

"Awwwww."

See, the problem with this arrangement is that if she tries to pet Pippi she'll fall over. "Adorable little tripping hazard, you are."

After a few moments Pippi unwraps the leg and goes and brushes up against her other one. 

"I see my job is to stand here until you're done loving me." But she doesn't sound mad about it.

Cats cannot understand human speech, of course, but they can understand tone, and so it's perfectly reasonable that Pippi has no reaction to what April is saying other than to make a figure eight through her legs purring happily, brushing her tail against April's shins.

"At this rate I'm afraid to finish the pirate ship. I'll be trapped for a week. There will be no escape."

Pippi purrs again, does one more figure eight loop, and wanders off to go play with her new toy. 

"I'm glad you're having fun," April calls after her.

When April goes to go shopping this week, she'll find Pippi sitting by the door, casually cleaning herself. 

"Good morning." She hefts the cart into the air to get it past the cat.

The cat moves finishes cleaning herself and stands, walking around so she's standing behind April. 

"I see my little tripping hazard is in fine form today." But she still successfully wrestles the cart out the door.

Once the door is closed, Pippi pushes her way through the cat door that was installed just for her, and stands a foot or so behind April, waiting. 

She puts the cart down, locks the door behind her, and heads out.

If she looks behind her at any point as she travels, she will see a familiar orange-and-white striped cat following behind her. 

"I'm being followed," she remarks. "Tailed, you might say."

Pippi makes no response to this, and continues following her, a short distance behind. 

Sure, she can grocery shop like this. Why not.

Pippi follows her all the way to the grocery store. Does it look like the sort of place that will allow pets inside at all? 

April has no idea but is planning to find out by trying it.

Well, Pippi is just going to follow April into the store then. 

They definitely get some funny looks, but it turns out that it's surprisingly hard to go up to a stranger in the grocery store and ask why she brought her cat. Pippi therefore gets to see April trundling through the aisles picking out food for the week. She does grab both eggs and bacon.

Pippi is mostly just following behind, though she does react positively when April puts both of these things in her cart.  

She does run ahead a little bit to eye the food at the meat-and-fish department, when they get there. She stands below, staring up at all of it. 

"Greedy kitty. I don't even know how to cook half that stuff!"

"Meow."

"No. I'd say 'if you want fish you can pay for it yourself' but that would be cruel. I guess 'if you want fish, too bad' isn't that much less cruel, but it feels less oppressive, you know?"

"Meow."

Pippi is hanging her head a little bit, though, as though she can tell this is a lost cause. 

"It's like she understands everything I say." Onward to Pop-Tarts.

Pippi meows one more time, then follows gracefully behind. 

Anybody at the cash register going to complain about the cat? No? Good. Homeward!

Pippi trots happily behind, tail in the air. 

"Well, at least you're not wallowing in disappointment."

Pippi cannot understand April, and simply follows her, keeping her eyes on the grocery cart. 

"Since the groceries are pre-inspected do I get to put them away undisturbed? Guess I'll find out."

When they get close to the house, Pippi runs ahead a bit, and goes in first through the cat door. 

When April enters the house, she'll find Pippi in her customary spot, cleaning herself, ready to watch the groceries go away. 

"Figures."

The usual grocery ritual ensues.

Pippi watches, perking up as the eggs and bacon go past. When the bacon goes by she meows softly. 

"Am I hearing a request to the chef?"

"Meow."

"Maybe for breakfast tomorrow, if I remember."

She finishes putting the groceries away and sets the cart back in its spot.

Pippi looks away for a moment to wash herself when the bacon is put away, since she has no way of understanding the words that April is saying, as she's just a normal cat. But when April is done putting the cart away, she still goes and brushes past her legs in an affectionate manner before heading to her room to climb up her crow's nest once more. 

Awwww.

She does, in fact, make bacon the next morning.

Pippi hops up on the kitchen table to watch her work as she's cooking. 

"Good morning, Pippi." She stifles a yawn. "Please don't step on the stove."

Pippi curls up into a loaf and watches her (and the bacon) intently. 

"How do cats like their bacon?" she wonders. "Well, let's try fairly soft and cut up into bits, and see how that works for you." She takes some pieces out of the pan a little early and cuts them into approximate squares, and in between frying the rest and making herself some toast she finds a moment to make sure Pippi's bacon squares are cool enough to serve.

Pippi makes no comment on how she likes her bacon, of course, and once the bacon is ready and served she will hop down from the table to her bowl and eat the cooled bacon squares, tail twitching in enjoyment. followed by a very very long drink of water from her water bowl. Once she's done eating and drinking (and cleaning the fat off her whiskers), she looks around to see what April is up to so she can properly show her appreciation for the treat. 

Standing at the counter eating breakfast because she was too lazy to sit down!

Well if she's standing then it will be very easy for Pippi to thread between her legs (when she's not in the middle of taking a bite) and rub up against them, purring happily. 

"The bacon was a hit, is that what I'm hearing?"

The only answer April gets is more purring and more ankle rubs. 

"I'll take that as a yes."

After a few minutes of showing her appreciation, Pippi wanders off to go take a short nap on the couch. 

Saturday rolls around, and April once again fills Pippi's bowl with kibble right after breakfast and heads out to meet up with Daisy.

Pippi pads to the door to say goodbye and then watches her leave out the window. 

She's out for the next several hours, then comes back huffing and puffing and explaining her creative vision around an armload of lumber.

"...better to overbuild than underbuild, right—shit, I have to get the door." Lumber rattles.

"We really should've thought of that ten seconds ago when we picked up this load."

"Hindsight is 20/20." Rattle rattle. "Aha!" The door swings ajar, and April shoulders it open, and she and Daisy shuffle in around it.

Pippi is napping on the couch. She perks up her head, stretches, and then hops up on the back of the couch to perch and see what the humans have brought her this time. 

"Hey Pippi."

Currently it seems like the humans have brought her a big pile of wood.

They head out to the car again, and the pile of wood gets bigger.

Pippi watches the growing wood pile with interest!

She cleans herself when the humans are not present, but when they are she stops and watches them carry even more things into the house. 

"Right, okay, let's make this happen."

This time they remember to lay down the rubber mat first. Then they start assembling a suspiciously pirate-ship-shaped frame on the floor, centered on the existing mast. The coffee table gets shoved up against the couch out of the way (with care and attention to make sure they don't trap any paws or tails in the process), but April lays out a coffee-table-shaped patchwork of cut-up cereal boxes on the floor in its place, and the frame seems to be getting built around it.

Pippi is clearly curious about what they're doing, watching from her perch, but as of yet is making no moves to distract them from their work, simply lounging comfortably atop the couch as they build. 

Piece by piece, one carefully identified pre-cut piece of wood screwed onto the next, the ship comes together. It's definitely not an incredibly accurate pirate ship. The central mast with the crow's nest remains separate from the outer frame of the hull. Two more masts go up, one in front and one in back, but they're devoid of sails and rigging and they look a little silly that way, just an upright two-by-four waiting to be decorated further. There's a big hole in the side for it to overhang the coffee table.

All together, though, it sure is starting to look a lot like a pirate ship.

Daisy staples old bedsheets to some of the plywood sections, to make it a slightly better flooring material (making sure none of the staples end up on top where a paw could snag on them). Then she attaches those sections to the inside of the frame, on a level slightly lower than the top of the coffee table, and although the ship's hull is currently an empty wooden skeleton, an astute observer might be able to imagine perching on those flat bits and peering out those portholes from within the cozy concealment of the hold. And in fact, the very next thing they do is start fitting the outer skin of the hull into place, turning the portholes from redundant apertures in a structure made of nothing but apertures to genuine windows in genuine walls. (The portholes are also carefully sized for cat.)

"We are ridiculous," Daisy concludes, standing back and observing their creation.

"I wanted to get the upper deck on there today but I think I might need a break first."

"Yeah, same. I'll go put the kettle on?"

Thumbs up.

It sounds like it's time for Pippi to explore her new structure! She jumps down off the couch, walks through the hole where the coffee table currently isn't, and hops up onto the carefully padded lower deck to poke her head out of one of the portholes. The portholes do seem to be very well sized for cat. 

"One day, hopefully later today, there's going to be a roof over your head when you sit there," April tells her. "I don't know why I'm telling you this."

(An amused snort from the kitchen.)

Pippi continues to peer through the porthole. Eventually, she jumps through, brushes past April's ankles, and pads back over to the construction to see what else it has in store for her. Mostly this involves climbing around on the half-completed structure. 

April yawns and hauls herself off the ground to stagger over to the kitchen and sit down at the kitchen table. "I'm glad you like your pirate ship," she says to Pippi on her way past. "Stay tuned for more shenanigans as soon as I feel human again." Half to herself, she adds musingly, "Is it weird to say 'feel human again' to a cat?"

Pippi hops down after a half a minute and follows after April and Daisy. When she sees April collapsed at the kitchen table, she goes over to her to rub against her shins appreciatively. 

"Hey you."

Pippi meows in response and looks up at her. Does her lap look like it would be accepting of a cozy bundle of fur and muscle? 

Debatable. She's a little too flopped over the table to have much room in her lap at the moment.

Well then, instead of climbing onto her lap, Pippi jumps up onto the table from a nearby chair, and brushes up against her face and arms, which are conveniently on the table for her to rub up against. While purring. 

"That's my face," she half-jokingly complains. "Pffpllffpfpff." But she straightens partway up to get her face out of the fluff and lifts a hand off the table to pet the cat.

Pippi will curl up on the table and accept April's pets. There may also be more purring. 

"Daisy, help, my cat won't stop being adorable."

Daisy rolls her eyes and pours the tea.