The grey tom was watching.
He was large, with a sleek, otter-like pelt. It shone with the light of the moon behind clouds. His tail flicked in eager anticipation. It was the only thing that moved. His eyes were deep, blue and rippling with a clear-pool like irridescence. His nose twitched with a foreign smell.
The grey tom was watching.
From the south crept a cat. It moved slowly and slightly, showing the first tom its hiding place by only the whisper of ferns aganst fur. Without a notification of coming out, both cats simultaneously burst from the shadows with a burst of speed. They halted barely a whisker-length from eachother, snarling and bristling, tails lashing. The sound of waves on the sand rushed around them.
The grey tom was thinking.
"Hand them over, badgerface," the grey tom hissed.
The new cat lunged forwards, her claws missing the grey tom's ear narrowly.
"It was not my choice to have these kits!" she yowled. "We both have stones weighing us down, Far-goer. You already have a mate. I am forbidden by the Great Force to have kits. You have brought this upon yourself, aswell as upon me. Beyond this point of moonlight and stars, I will not speak with you. I will answer only to the Great Force you denied to bring me these kits."
The grey tom was still, frozen in a fighting pose. The she-cat beckoned with the slightest movement of her tail, and out of the holly bush from which she sprung, tumbled four tiny berries. It was hard to believe they were kits. They were all silent.
"I have not named them," the she-cat answered the unspoken question in the grey tom's mind. "Because they are not mine. You will say that you found them, tangled in a gorse bush, and you and your mate will good-heartedly adopt them." The grey tom nodded ever so slightly, casting a look on his four new kits. He gathered them with his tail and they padded over to him with curiosity alive like a fire in their eyes. The grey tom started on the journey back to his home.
"One more thing," the she-cat called. The grey tom halted but did not turn around.
"I was never here, I never had kits, and you never had anything but rivalry between you and I."
The grey tom spun around to find nothing but the waving heads of tussock. The waves of the sea crashed down. There was a tiny mewl from one of the kits and the grey tom silenced them with his tail. With a moment of silence and pounding wariness, the grey tom and the kits whisked away into the night, running the opposite direction of the cat the grey tom loved.
