Bivy & R Excerpt

She flipped through a history of The Spanish Inquisition and the cat jumped up onto the bed, arching her back into Elle's stroke as she absently ran her fingers along her back and tail. She came home with a tag that read Georgina, but it didn't fit her. She tried Louise, but she came and went as she pleased. Then she called her Asshole while she defiantly displayed her anus. That she responded to, but it felt mean at times like this when she was being affectionate. "Raspberry," she said, taking a cue from R. The cat turned her head at the sound of her voice, and she took that as acceptance. It wasn't exactly descriptive for a brown and white tabby, but at least it was kinder. She rubbed her head and said, "It must have been hard for you, being taken from your home and dropped at the shelter. Like an unwanted book. That's right, you're a book that no one wants to read. No one but me." Bivy, the big lug, took a heartfelt gift, vandalized its pages, unceremoniously boxed it, and discarded it with no sentimentality. Why should he care that R went through all that trouble, gave it to him to cherish for a lifetime? She held the book up to the cat, a finger pointing at the offending ink. "Look at this. You don't treat a book this way." Raspberry scratched at the page, experiencing the book through her claws, as a toddler discovers the world through their mouth. Elle put Doomsday and The Spanish Inquisition back in the bag, exchanging them for a cozy biography of a serial killer. Raspberry stretched herself onto the floor and followed her into the kitchen, howling for something better than the dry stuff she had strewn across the floor.