The kitten would not stay in her bed. rswfire had put it there on the floor, a designated place in a room that already had designated places, and she declined it in favor of him — climbing, crossing, making biscuits against his neck while he held the camera at an awkward close range and named what he was seeing. Tortitude, he said, already convinced of it. Her nails needed cutting. Across the room, Bailey registered the whole arrangement and was, by rswfire's account, not happy at all — not happy in the slightest.
He held two things at once, and said so out loud repeatedly. She was still contagious in his mind. The boundary was real, stated and restated — you're a contagious little cat — and yet she was on his neck, then his knees, then his shoulder, and he let it stand, noting only that this was a bit much, that he was not quite ready for this, that it was probably good for her even if it was not good for him. The containment held as a principle while proximity continued as a fact, and he narrated the gap rather than closing it.
From the strange angle of the handheld camera he took her measure. One point seven pounds. That is so tiny. So tiny. She sat on his shoulder and he said it again — you're so small, you're so tiny — and then his hand found a little bone sticking out far enough that he named it concerning, turned it over aloud, decided it was probably normal, probably just underweight, said the vet would have noticed if it weren't, and set it against the future: mostly when she gets more weight. Assessment made in real time against a baseline he could point to, then filed.
She turned toward the window and looked out, and he followed her attention into a life she did not yet know the shape of. He didn't know what they were going to do about that yet. There would be a harness, a box, training. Campgrounds, walking, maybe. Not hiking. Certainly no roaming on her own. Part of your life is over — said plainly, to the animal, as a boundary of the new system rather than as a loss to be softened. Outside the window it was a weekday and there wasn't much going on out there, and he said that too, twice, the way a person says a thing that is simply true of the day.
Then he turned back to Bailey. You are going to make Bailey so mad. He called him over — come here Bailey, come here Bailey — and watched him from across the containment line, reading his eyes, reporting the tail wagging, saying what he wanted the arrangement to become: he needed Bailey to be a big brother to her. This was a tiny little thing that needed their help. He noticed, mid-sentence, that she was no longer doing the hiccup thing she'd been doing before, and marked it as good news. He noted that she was all over the place, all over the bed, on a side of it he said he would never reclaim.
Settle down, he told her, over and over — settle down, sit somewhere, don't move, just chill, can you do that. A sound came from somewhere and he heard it. Bailey was not happening, and rswfire said so, and then said it's okay Bailey, Bailey I love you, come here. He admitted he didn't know what to do. He would ask AI, he supposed, because it was going to have to be controlled interaction, and yes, this was going to be a process. Behind him she moved again, and he felt it before he saw it. Then she settled, finally, somewhere on him, and the recording ended where his position did: okay, she's going to rest. Okay. See, I'm stuck here.