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“Look, mama, a kitty!”
Koji stopped, looking back over his shoulder, only to see a little girl, about four or five years old, running towards him with a bright as sun smile on her face, her adorable pigtails bouncing with her every step. She reminded him so much of Akira when she was so small that were he in his human form, he’d have grinned ear-to-ear.
However, he was out on a trip again, in his cat form, and he was trotting by a nice family home when the little girl spotted him. She was most probably coming back from the playground with her mom.
“Hi, kitty-san!” the child beamed at him as she crouched down to look at him better, and Koji practically melted on his paws.
He meowed back, and the little girl took that as a permission to initiate physical contact. So she slowly reached out, as if she was afraid Koji would run away, but when he didn’t, she began stroking his head, her touch so gentle and careful that he was sure she had her own kitty, or kitties, at home.
“Can he stay with us, mama? He must be lost!” the girl stated when her mother joined them, a pretty lady with a kind face and a nice smile.
“How do you know, sweetheart?” she asked, caressing her child’s hair lovingly.
“He said it!”
“Perhaps it was just a greeting, honey. Look, he has a collar. There must be someone who’s waiting for him back at home.”
The woman reached out slowly then when Koji still stayed in place, letting the little girl pet him, she picked up the silver medal on his dark blue collar to take a better look at it, most probably hoping to find some information about this cat and his home.
“Hello, Koji… You have a pretty name” she smiled when she found his name written in kanji on the medal, and he couldn’t help his meow. “You’re welcome. You see, sweetheart? There’s a message on his collar” the woman turned to the child, and the little girl leaned closer.
“What does it say?” she asked curiously; so she couldn’t read yet.
“’If lost, return to Osaka Continental’. Maybe one of the employees there is his owner.”
I’m gonna kill John, Koji thought, not being able to decide whether he was amused or annoyed. The collar was his idea, and Koji agreed to wear it while being outside of the hotel in cat form so people wouldn’t think he was a stray, but as far as he knew, the medal had only his name in kanji. Well, it seemed he was wrong.
“Is it far away, mama?” the child asked, still stroking Koji’s soft little face, and he rubbed his head against the small, gentle hand.
“No, not really. Are you ready to go home, Koji?”
Koji mewled his agreement, and the woman carefully touched his back to see how he reacted. When he didn’t spook out, she picked him up, and he shamelessly made himself comfortable in her arms, resting his head on her shoulder and just blinking back at the people staring and smiling at them. The ten minutes long walk to the Osaka Continental was without any incident, and soon mother and her child crossed the threshold of the hotel’s main gate.
“Umm, excuse me?”
Akira whirled around when she heard the uncertain voice of a woman behind her back, and she needed every ounce of her discipline not to burst out laughing when she spotted her father, in his cat form, in the lady’s arms, his soft little face way too smug for his own good.
“Yes, how can I help?” Akira asked, now smiling; it could be written off as just being polite with the potential guests.
“Uh, so, we’ve found this cat wandering around our house, and his collar says to return him here if lost, so… Perhaps you know to whom he belongs?”
Akira glanced aside when the lady said “we”, and she spotted the little girl, blinking up at her shyly from behind her mother. Perhaps the sheer size of the lobby and the many people around scared her, she thought, feeling bad for the child. So she smiled at her, waving friendly. The little girl waved back.
“Yes, he’s quite well-known here” Akira answered, fighting a grin. “Feel free to leave him here with me, he’ll be fine.”
“Alright. Thank you so much” the woman nodded, handing Koji over.
Akira took him without missing a beat, but in that moment, the small girl stepped forward, looking up at them with big pleading eyes.
“Can I say goodbye?” she asked, her voice small and sad, and Akira just wanted to wrap her in a blanket and give her a cup of hot chocolate.
“Of course.”
Akira crouched down, letting Koji jump out of her arms and walk to the child. The little girl knelt down, took Koji’s face between her tiny hands and kissed his soft little forehead gently.
“Don’t get lost again, Koji, I don’t want you to get hurt” she said, and Koji bumped his cold little nose against her face as an answer. “Promise you’ll be a good kitty.”
Koji mewled his agreement, his heart melting, just like Akira’s, and the girl stroked his head one last time as a farewell.
“Bye-bye, Koji!”
Akira waited until mother and her child were out of earshot before turning to Koji, with an ear-to-ear grin on her face.
“Making new friends, I see” she teased, but her dad just yawned, showing off the rows of his tiny but razor-sharp teeth, then he jumped on Akira’s chair and promptly curled up for a nap.
Akira just shook her head with a fond smile as she scratched his head between his ears, then she let him enjoy his catnap.