Fiction: Mut's Familiar (part 1 of 1, complete)

[dialecticdreamer]

Mut’s Familiar
By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams
Part 1 of 1, complete
Word count (story only): 1313


:: This story falls under the Polychrome Heroics umbrella, but is only thinly connected to the Gentle Soul and Finn Family story arc because it involves Zipper’s brother-in-law and no major characters of either story arc. Written for Kzin’s prompt call in August of 2020, from an idea suggested by acelightning, with my thanks. ::




“I’ve said it every week since you had this kooky idea, and it’s Thursday, so it’s time to say it again,” Don Peyton declared, wagging a finger at Fakih. “It’s tradition for firehouses to have dogs, not cats!”

The Egyptian man smoothed a hand over his deep widow’s peak, though he wasn’t yet ready to think of the b-word, or to shave the hair that he did still have, because it was entirely without any gray at age forty-one. With his children, a second wife, and all the drama that came with having an extended family if not under the same roof, then living in the same county, he was proud of his dark hair.

Fakih just wished that there were more of it. Instead of answering directly, he rubbed a hand over the short, fine black fur on his Peterbald cat. “Ignore him as usual, Mut,” he advised the female cat. “Don might be a fine fireman, but he knows nothing about majestic animals such as yourself.”

The man standing in the doorway between the fire house kitchen and the den shook his head with exaggerated slowness. “I told you, calling the cat ‘Mutt’ won’t turn her into a dog any more than calling you Irish will make you a redhead.”

The corners of Fakih’s mouth twitched, but he frowned severely to stop their progress. “You’re confusing genetics with geography. Again.”

Footsteps brought the last member of their team into view. She had her arms full of laundry, piled over a wicker laundry basket. Black hair poured over her shoulder, held by a thick pink scrunchy. “I swear, I’m going to tear up the chore chart the next time I get stuck with laundry and Fakih’s cooking in the same day!”

Don stepped forward, taking the basket and putting it on the fourth recliner in the room. It had the worst view of their television, and was seldom used for anything but holding a pile of equipment as they inspected it every morning after their shift began. “You know, Konani, I agree with you. How about I take the laundry rotation three weeks out of four, we shift Fakih to the kitchen cleanup for three weeks, and you cook for three weeks?”

Mut marched off Fakih’s lap, then twined around her legs while she thought. “That sounds long enough to keep from getting frustrated at daily changes, but not too long, and if we change it up for a week, then everyone gets a break.” Konani crouched down to pet the cat, then frowned. “Do you think that you have time to give Mut her weekly bath, Fakih?”

“It’s like begging for trouble, because while she enjoys the bath, it’s got a lot of details to it. I’ll wait until after supper,” he sighed. The Egyptian picked the first item off the laundry basket and began folding it neatly. “Here’s a question…” Fakih trailed off, staring at the way Mut continued to demand attention from Konani.

He cleared his throat. “You’ve got something that she wants, but it’s not food. Not on your person, I mean. That’s her ‘walking’ mode, not ‘stalking’ mode.”

“You’re a cat whisperer, not a fireman,” Don teased. He, too, collected an item to fold, pausing to check the tag to see whose tee shirt it was.

“He reads that cat’s mind,” Konani laughed. “So, what do we do for the rotation week? Pick random things or everyone does our second favorite job? That way, we only get stuck with the one we hate if someone is out sick?”

“Sounds good to me,” Fakih declared. “When do we tear up the current chore plan?”

Don hummed, and set the folded uniform shirt on the arm of the recliner. “Hey, Konani, does your wife still work at Eye on the Pie? If we’re careful about how we phrase a casual conversation with your wife, it won’t cause a spate of calls.”

The Egyptian man tossed a uniform shirt at his coworker. “Superstitious nonsense,” he scolded. “Ordering hot food will not make a callout magically keep us from eating a hot meal!” He waited a beat. “That only applies to ambulance crews, right?”

Laughing, the other man caught the garment. “It’s not nonsense! I made a spreadsheet. The first thing it told me was that Mister Waterford has more falls in the last week of the month than any two of the three others.”

Konani hummed. “Have we tried to get senior services out to help him?”

Fakih nodded. “Four times.”

“Okay,” Don mused. He paced as he folded the uniform shirt still dangling from his hand. “There’s a sense of cyclical pressure, fatigue… Who’s in his support system?”

Mut stopped what she was doing and began winding herself around Don’s legs in a figure eight, slipping confidently between his steps.

Fakih watched the cat, then slowly began to smile. “She’s right,” he breathed.

“Who? Konani?” Don asked.

“Mut. She got Konani’s attention. She got your attention… What if Mister Waterford is just lonely? He gets to the point where he can’t take it anymore, so the smallest fall is enough for him to call us instead of crawling to the nearest chair and pulling himself up? I’m not saying that he didn’t fall… I’m saying, what if he got to a point that he’d rather have help picking himself up just to have company?”

“We can’t just drop off a cat with him,” Konani protested.

“Of course not! But we can ask him if he wants to foster an older cat or two, and we could start a program for the whole area…” Fakih’s brow furrowed, emphasizing the sharp widow’s peak that swept too far back to be stylish. “Let me talk to my family... “ He sighed, even as he grinned. “If this works, he’ll call us for the troublesome falls, but not for the ones that he can recover from on his own.”

“What about socializing with people?” Don wondered. He laid the folded shirt on the back of the recliner and grabbed a pair of uniform pants.

“Interactive lessons in pet care, done over video chats. Plan two a week, subject to callouts, and have regular alternate slots in case there is a callout. No one has to wrangle a ride, no one has to go out and risk perfume allergies…” Fakih nodded.

“It’s not our job to create a whole new support group,” Konani protested.

“You finished your probationary year six months ago,” Fakih told her gently. “We get called out for ten things before the eleventh is a fire of any kind, so yes, it is part of our job. Making the community safer for everyone means putting out fires, but it also means making sure that people have community.” He rubbed a hand over his hair. “I learned that when my wife’s family treated me exactly the same after she died, and exactly the same five years after that, when I told Ama that I wanted to remarry.”

“Wait, I thought that your wife was your mother-in-law’s daughter!” The young woman sighed, waving the matter away. “I’ll probably need a family tree drawn, so that can wait. Say that I’m convinced. What do we do next?”

“I ask my brother-in-law for information from a therapist who’d at least know where to look for the effects we’re hoping for, Don chats up that cute clerk at the animal shelter, so they can pick likely senior cats,” Fakih grinned, “and you draw up that new chore chart while I go call in a pizza order with your wife.”

He angled through the room, crouching as he passed Mut, and stroked her from the top of her head to the base of the tail. “We’ve got a plan, so let’s get on it.”

30

Comments

[fuzzyred]

😁😁🐱🐶🐱

Yay!

[dialecticdreamer]

Now I've got two stories to finish and post, along with my usual morning routine! MORE STORIES SOON!

Re: Yay!

[fuzzyred]

Yay! Good luck!

[kengr]

Sounds like some good plans.

I am curious about what "Mut" means in whatever language is relevant.

Mut

[dialecticdreamer]

Mut is the Egyptian goddess of motherhood, the "Mistress of all the G-ds," and is also one of the oldest in the collection of stories that make up their pantheon. Her symbol, of course, was the cat (and the cow). Her more aggressive incarnation, Sekmet, had the head of a lioness... The implications are probably the source of thousands of jokes no one wrote in stone.

Re: Mut

[siliconshaman]

Not written in stone, no, but pencilled in charcoal on pottery shards yes. The British Museum has a collection and published an annotated Egyptian joke book not that long ago. [it was available on their web site, I don't know if it still is.] and now I really regret not getting it.

Re: Mut

[dialecticdreamer]

Now I'm VERY curious! Must research after prompts posted!

Re: Mut

[ysabetwordsmith]

Hell, now I want it.

Re: Mut

[siliconshaman]

I do recall in the back blurb it saying it had the oldest known variant of the 'why did the chicken cross the road' joke.. although frustratingly not what it was.

I check btw, it's not on their web site any more. Which is annoying.

Re: Mut

[ysabetwordsmith]

Try ABE Books.

[siliconshaman]

Mut knows her business!! and I like the way they pro-actively figure out what's going on and set about dealing with it.

Figuring out

[dialecticdreamer]

Right now, it's only a hypothesis, one that they need to test. But if social services have come out four times and NOT seen the problem, it's probably not loose rugs or slippery tile floors, you know? So, they're brainstorming to cut down on the number of emergency calls from him, because his underlying needs are being met in more proactive ways.

Re: Figuring out

[ysabetwordsmith]

If he's not tripping over objects, it's not an external problem, it's internal. Some old people lose core strength and/or balance. Often it's either an illness (like inner ear decline) or a side effect of medications.

And have they railed the house? Sometimes falls can be prevented just by having something to grab, which is why some older homes have a thing like a stair rail about waist height around the rooms. It serves as a bumper rail for chairs too.

Re: Figuring out

[dialecticdreamer]

Railing the house isn't something he's thought of-- figuring that's too expensive for his budget. However, with Boss Blaster's habit of picking up properties that need a little cleaning up, it's well within Bobbie and Kato's skill levels right now. Just see if they can get the landlord to agree (and if he argues, I can see Boss Blaster buying the house flat out and continuing to rent it... at a lower rate, since the previous landlord was after all the cash he could squeeze from the tenants in his properties.

Re: Figuring out

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Railing the house isn't something he's thought of-- figuring that's too expensive for his budget.<<

True, but it's a LOT cheaper than, say, widening a door. All you're doing is sticking something on what's already there. If you buy stair railing, it's built to take the weight but:
* costs a fraction of handicap rails
* comes in any length you want
* has a zillion styles/colors to match decor
* offers different shapes for better grip

>> However, with Boss Blaster's habit of picking up properties that need a little cleaning up, it's well within Bobbie and Kato's skill levels right now. <<

Well, yeah. If you order it cut to length, all you need to do is 1) find studs, 2) level the rail, and 3) drive a bunch of screws. If you want to save a little money on cuts, you also need a fairly precise hand on a saw.

Hmm, they might want to invest in building a woodshop somewhere in the neighborhood for this sort of work. You can make a very nice one in a garage.

>>Just see if they can get the landlord to agree (and if he argues, I can see Boss Blaster buying the house flat out and continuing to rent it... at a lower rate, since the previous landlord was after all the cash he could squeeze from the tenants in his properties.<<

Point.

For future reference, there are a lot of low-cost, low-effort ways to make a house more accessible, like putting a booster under the toilet seat, changing light switch covers so they contrast with the wall, and adding a ramp to one door. Do that, and the neighborhood gains an accessible or elder-friendly house for the long term.

Also keep an eye out for other houses that are easy to adapt that way. Before building codes, the widths varied more, so if you find a house that already has wide doors, the other changes are pretty easy. Especially watch for the ones that doubled public space with a parlor and a living room: you can turn one of those into a first-floor bedroom if there isn't already one.

Or hell, if you find a house with narrow clearances, kit it out for blind people instead. Paint the wall a color that won't show fingerprints easily, or better yet, panel it. Give each room a distinctive flooring. That sort of thing. Not all disabilities need the same accommodations.

And this would dovetail neatly with Boss Blaster's plan to have ADA sex workers.

Hmm ... has he seen Simon's vehicle yet? I'm sure Boss Blaster would go nuts over that, just because hand controls are different. :D

Our supervillains are so cute.

[readera]

Mut is such a good cat name! 💖💖

Thank you!

[dialecticdreamer]

I actually had a cat named Mut, a stray we adopted. She was... imperious is the word that fit her best, even at a one pound of body weight and ten of curiosity.

Re: Thank you!

[readera]

Lol

*Prrrrr*

[shadowdreamer]

This is what community services are supposed to be for. Frankly, I feel like as a society, we start slipping into dangerous territory when we tell people calling for help is something that should only be for an emergency.

Re: *Prrrrr*

[dialecticdreamer]

I agree to the purpose-- However, I'm also aware of how badly overstretched our social networks have been for the last ten years, not even factoring in he current miasma. People stopped handling SMALL problems as neighbors, stopped getting to know the neighbors, and it just reached breaking point a generation later.

Re: *Prrrrr*

[shadowdreamer]

And at this point, we have trouble trusting our neighbors, even when we'd *like* to reach out to them for help, because of that deliberately reinforced self isolation.

It's all just, a mess.

Re: *Prrrrr*

[dialecticdreamer]

One stick is easy to break. A bundle is much stronger. (Which, by citing that, makes me an OG fascii-st, LOL!)

[acelightning]

What a delightful story! Thank you! (And Mut's relationship with Fakih isvery much like Loki's relationship with my husband.)

Thanks!

[dialecticdreamer]

I loved the opportunity to flesh out more of Abioud's family!

[kellan_the_tabby]

...okay, but did they get to eat their pizza while it was still hot? ;)

Yes

[dialecticdreamer]

I believe that the majority of emergency crews DO get interrupted on their meal breaks about half the days of their work year. However, the superstitious aspect is born from confirmation bias.

Re: Yes

[kellan_the_tabby]

I'm glad!

I often get interrupted halfway through lunch at craft shows & SCA events -- but when people apologize, & tell em it's fine, if I make it through an uninterrupted meal when the booth's open, that's not a GOOD sign.