A Cup Of Tea
an excerpt

There's a stray cat on the porch, yowling about something, and Joe finally twitches in his sleep and his eyes open. He makes a small noise, echoing the stray, as he makes his way out of bed with an accidental movement, falling onto his feet. The cat yowls back. Joe answers it as he pulls on a pair of jeans, creased and wrinkled and ripped and awful, and after a moment's pause the cat replies. They volley like that all through the hallway and kitchen, where Joe digs under the cabinets for the kibble he of course would never have bought, no never. He'd hid it fairly well, he was proud of that, and he yowls back to the cat as he scoops some into a bowl.

The cat finishes the conversation with a simple "Thank you" before just tuckering in.

"You're welcome," Joe replies without thought. Living with Lee had infused him with at least the barest amount of politeness. A very small part of him recognizes that while the cat is flea ridden and disgusting as hell it has probably not caught anything that allows it to talk, and that part tells him so quite loudly, but he just shrugs and reaches over to pet the cat.

The Cat (he has already named it that, Capital Letters and all) slaps his hand away. "Fleeeas," he (Joe has now decided) admonishes, and it doesn't occur to Joe that now The Cat has hands and is using them to shovel bits of kibble into his mouth.

"I can buy flea medication," Joe offers and The Cat grunts, rocking back onto his haunches to eat faster, jiggling slightly on the balls of his wholly human feet.

If Joe wasn't Joe he might be disconcerted with this but as it is he just spreads out on his back on the porch, which is slightly damp from yesterday's rain and is cold on his naked back and on the bits of his ass his pants aren't put on well enough to cover. He yawns and listens to The Cat's teeth gnashing together, all thirty-two of them, and they morph into a very human smile.