Cats in the Curiosity Shop
 

Closed for a restart. The new OOC thread is in the relevant forum[/I].

Cats in the Curiosity Shop

The doorknob was dusty. That was the first sign that no one had been for some time. Inside the store the odds and ends stacked on shelves had all stopped tinkering and ticking with the stopped clocks over the glass case that displayed the jewelry. The smell of the old man that everyone called “eccentric” took it's leave and left dust behind, laid in blankets over the glass counter tops until it stopped at the edge of a spread fan pattern, where a cat's long bushy tail swept back and forth like a metronome.

The busy tail swept back and forth. The cat itself was covered in nearly as much dust at the rest of the shop, the exception being its large, blue-grey eyes that watched out the windows for signs of people coming towards the door.

The big cat blinked, then stood and stretched, her mottled white underside brushing the glass counter. She turned and faced the insides of the store, moving her eyes around before sitting again, facing away from the window.

“He's not coming back,” she announced, as small tinks and clicks began to sound among the clutter and dust. “It's time to go.”

From within the dusty clutter of the curiosity shop, the other cats began to emerge...


Mirri
Quiet Man Cometh
Breed: Norwegian Forest Cat, mature adult female with litters.
Colour: Tortoise shell with white underside. Blue-grey eyes.
Features: Tiny beads over the tufts on the tips of her ears.
Quirks: prefers a tea bag in her milk if she can find one.
Attitude: mature and endlessly patient. Having raised multiple litters to adulthood, she tends to act somewhat matriarchal when in groups with other cats.

Ref.

Ciaran an Sionnach (keer-an)
Espy
Breed: Abyssinian/male, young adult.
Colour: Coat color is reddish-brown, eyes are gold.
Features: Has a hole and gold earring in one ear (there's some background story to this), and a thin leather collar with a feather. He also has a jagged scar on the right of his throat.
Quirks: Is strangely interested with feathers, as well as other things that drift around. Can be seen uncharacteristically chasing flower petals or downy feathers.
Attitude: Aggressive and sarcastic at times, but also has a softer side. Can seem rough and fights more than his share out in the alleys at night.

Ref:


Sekhmet (Cameo)
Fey
Breed/Gender: Sphynx/female
Colour: 'blue'
Features: Being hairless Sekhmet often can be found sporting old fur pieces 'acquired' from ladies jackets or cuffs. She also has a pince-nez she will wear when reading or doing research.
Quirks: Sekhmet fancies herself a bit of a scholar...unfortunately all she knows she's read from the antique books the humans left lying about.
Attitude: Sekhmet can come across as a bit of a know-it-all. She's very quiet and will spend hours with her books so it's not unusual for her to have issues interacting with the more boisterous in the colony.

Ref:


Quintus
Funkduder
Breed: Russian Blue, Male
Colour: Grey fur; Blue Eyes
Features: Fake Bronze Left Mechanical Eye and Ear (think steampunk)
Quirks: Stares at Shiny Things.
Attitude: Quick to judge; does not take kindly to blind side tackles; very fickle
Sample:


Rin
Demonskid
Breed: Japanese Bobtail, kitten.
Age: Kitten (2 months)
Sex: Female
Colour: White, Brown, Black
Features:, a small pink nose and bright blue eyes
Quirks: She'd rather play then do anything else, unless its eating or sleeping.
Attitude: Happy Go Lucky and Fun

Ref.

Vicious
Vicious_Whisper
Breed: Scottish Fold
Colour: Basic medium grey with medium pink stripes.
Features: Spiked black leather dog collar. Has a small purple bone chew toy that smells like catnip.
Quirks: Was raised by dogs and tends to mimic dog behavior. Have you ever seen a cat 'wagging' it's tail? She has an unusual love for dogs as her adopted mother was a small Terrier / Shizu mutt.
Attitude: Kinda derpy. Has "Silent Bob'cat" moments.


Zmey
Mirror Gardens (status unknown)
Breed: Female Burmilla
Colour: Pure white, save for her paws and tail tip which are all a subtle grey color, with pale blue eyes.
Features: She wears a pocket watch that hangs on a chain around her neck.
Quirks: Is obsessed with knowing the time, and is quick to defend her only possession (her watch).
Attitude: Curious but cautious. Does not trust others quickly, but she’s not skittish and will give others a chance.



Simone
Wicked (status unknown)
Breed: Bengal
Colour: silvery grey with black spots and stripes.
Features: hazel eyes, black nose, wears a white gold gold wedding band like a bracelet on her left front "wrist."
Quirks: She swishes her tail around when she's nervous. Her back ripples when she's annoyed. She has a curious habit of looking at her own nose and swishing her whiskers around if she thinks no one is paying attention to her.
Attitude: a little bit snotty and unjustly so since she currently lives in the alley behind the shop.





Dhavala
whitexsuicide
Breed/sex: Rag Doll/ Female
Colour: Same as picture
Features: Has a Light blue collar with a small silver bell.
Quirks: Loves string, so yarn is one of her most favorite things to play with. Also window shopping. She just loves to look around some place find all the hidden treasures she finds.
Attitude: She is very nice, and kind, but shy when it comes down to how she feels.
Ref

- The Curiosity Shop is located in an old, rundown town and sits near the outskirts. (The town is not modern, technology range hovers around standard rural and steam-punkish, more or less.)

- A fire started under unknown cuircumstances has forced the cats to leave their shop and set out on their own.



Mouschi
Passion Pit
Breed: Ragamuffin, female
Colour: Calico
Features: Mouschi has very soft fur, as she makes sure to take extra care of it. Her eyes seem larger than normal, but perhaps it is just the way she looks at the world. She has one thin golden bangle around her right forepaw with an inscription she cannot read.
Quirks: Secretly wishes she was a house-cat.
Attitude: She is very quiet, not because she is shy; but because she enjoys silence. Mouschi is very calm and welcoming of others, but because of her quiet nature, she has a hard time getting to know other cats. If another strikes up the conversation first, they may find Mouschi isn't as she first appears.

Reference Image:

Jinx (shop cat)
Poggio
Breed: Ocelot
Colour: Albino
Features: Outside from being an Albino nothing much.
Quirks: They will develop with the story.
Attitude: Brash and curious he is a young kitten.

Refs.

Will be missed.

A delicate sneeze, then another, announced the mottled bit of rabbit fur adjacent to the counter was, in fact, NOT a discarded muff. What little light made it down to that level glinted off the old brass frames of the Pince-Nez as a face peeked out. "Well, yes, I rather imagine he's not. No time like the present, eh Mirri? If I recall Eccentric has left his lunch, once again, upon the table without partaking. If we don't get to it first there might not be much left."

A wrinkled body stretched out from under it's cover and Sekhmet flexed her claws before padding towards the back room the humans called the 'Kitchenette'.

With a groggy yet annoyed hiss, a lithe fox-colored abyssinian clambered halfway out of his pile of rags, tripped over a ribbon, and executed a neat but unseemly roll onto yet another albeit flatter pile of scrap cloth. The already-pissed Ciaran, not a morning type, scrambled back to his feet and shook the dust off his head. Stretching, he flicked his ears to rid them of some bits of lint, and without warning sprang onto the table to get an early start on the very stale crackers.

Mirri padded quietly after the other two cats, making her way into the kitchen still in her grey layer of dust. She sniffed at the abandoned pitcher of cream, now at room temperature and starting to separate. Very carefully she tipped the small pitcher onto the side plate, leaving the pitcher not quite empty, and doing the same with Eccentric's cold tea though the latter action left sloppy rings around the base of the teacup. She ignored the solid portions of the meal in favour of her milk tea.

"I meant," she said in between laps, "that I think he's gone for good this time."

(general note: if there are little quick things you want to add OOC, you can do that here too. Just colour it grey. :))

Ciaran, having finished off the rest of the crackers with alarming speed, yawned and stretched again. He didn't care an awful lot about the Furless, but its departure might cause some difficulties...

His thoughts wandered to the ocelot kit who had yet to wake up.

The small kitten wrestled with the fabric that surrounded him in his basket. He was having a wonderful dream. His ears twitched at the sound of other paws softly walking on the wooden floor. Jinx quickly opened his eyes wanting to know what all the fuss was about. He exuberantly bounded after the rest of the felines into an area of the shop he didn’t really care for, just in time to hear the last of Mirri’s statement. He purred mournfully then spoke making his presence known to the group. “But who will feed us.” That being said he slowly made his way near Mirri and her saucer staring at her with large begging eyes before pawing at the rim of the plate.

Making a silent leap up to the table Sekhmet watched as the other two picked out the choice bits they prefered. The sounds of the kit making his way from his bed reached her large ears as she pondered Mirri's statement. "A good question kit," Sekhmet examined the left overs on the plate and carefully rolled off the stale bits of bread to get to the ham he'd piled so nicely on the food. She still couldn't fathom why the one who ran the shop would eat something so bizarre as the red-soggy thing that sat beside the food.

"I'm not much one for 'hunting' but if I recall correctly, there's a food place not far down the block. We can probably obtain food from there." Pawing at her face she knocked her glasses off so they wouldn't get in the way of eating and set to daintily tearing into the meat.

About to move on to the small loaf of bread near the edge of the table, Ciaran noticed the kit. Dragging the whole loaf down near the saucer, he tore it open and looked at Jinx briefly before padding back into the main room. This particular morning, he wasn't in the best of moods, and he knew better than to hang around others when he was this annoyed. Maybe he could search around the rooms for more food.

No problem Espy. I haven't read the series though I've heard of it. We can just assume it's in his character. I won't be fussy about it.

Mirri glanced over at the kitten and continued lapping at her meal. Stretching forward on paw she tipped over the remains of the tea-less cream onto the now mostly empty meal plate, it pooling by the rim on the uneven table.

Glancing over at Ciaran as he leaves with his loaf of bred, Mirri asks her other question casually, "do you think we should stay?"

Ciaran blinked. Suddenly remembering something, he dragged what was left of the bread towards the kit and pushed it towards him. His exasperated expression clearly voiced, "Eat."

"If he's not coming back...there isn't any point in staying. But where would we go? We...at least, the kit, can't stay in the alleys. There are too many other strays there. I suppose I could do some scouting to see if there's decent shelter outside this shop."

He narrowed his eyes at the bread. Jinx did not like being told what to do but his stomach argued with him loudly. “I can!” He protested rather proudly at Ciaran. He bit off a chunk of the bread that had been given to him. Instead of eating the bread Jinx started to look around the room. He wondered if there was a water source in the room, like the room he had secretly dubbed hell. The Eccentric had nearly drowned him in that room and his mouth tasted like chemicals for a week.

((....Washing machine by accident? XD))

Ciaran glared. "Really now." Turning to Mirri, he mused, "We should get everyone's approval first...and maybe Quintus could help later," he added, glancing at the Blue's general direction.

Quintus turned his head towards Ciaran from the window sill. "I think we should keep living in the store, whether we run around and look for food or not." Quintus hopped down from the window to the ground. "But either way, there's a bigger problem. How are we going to get out from this place? It's not as though we could just walk out the front door, or I would've done that already."

Finishing off her meal Sekhmet squinted around at the colony. "I agree, we should use the shop as home, there's plenty here to keep us occupied. All we need Out There for is food, and that shouldn't take too much effort." Besides, she left unspoken, the fact of the matter was most of them wouldn't do well as Alley cats, they hadn't the instincts. Eccentric had gathered them all here after their other Homes had let them go.

"He's gone and locked the door this time...I was hoping otherwise," the Abys muttered, thinking about how he used to be able to get out. "Those round things..." he wondering, staring at the bronze handle sticking out of the door, "...what are they called? Doorknobs? Well, they probably won't be of any use to us. Quintus, what can you do about those windows?"

Quintus hopped back on to the window sill. Starring at the window sill, there was chance to get out. "The window here is open a crack. If we found something to wedge it open, we could get out, but without a way to close it, we'd be letting all the cold in."(aka a lot of stray cats)

As Jinx nibbled he listened to the rest of them. It could not have been that hard to get out of the building, but then why would they leave? Didn’t they have the magic white box that was full of food? All they needed to do was figure out how to open it. Surely another Eccentric would come around. When he was finished Jinx pounced on to the counter and strode up the transparent part of the wall that Ciaran was talking about. He perched himself on the ledge watching the world outside the shop, just as he did many times in the display window of the main room. He watched Quintus try to open the window.
A sense of adventure was itching in his paws. “Why don’t we go and find another Eccentric?”

Quintus immediately stopped what he was doing, almost as if someone pricked him on his blind side. "No one can replace Eccentric," he said sharply, and hopped of the sill, searching for some sort of lever to possibly lift the window later.

Ciaran wondered to himself. [i]What's the big white box called...? Ree-free-jerr-ater? Anyways, he was sure there was food inside. He'd seen the Furless take food out of the box's belly, and even though that made him feel queasy, he padded to the Slippery-Square room and stared at the box, mentally willing it to open. After a few minutes, he decided it wasn't enough, and tried to paw it open.

Try as he might, the door was firmly shut. Or stuck.

"Quintus...It. Won't. Open," Ciaran growled, gritting his teeth.

Retrieving her glasses Sekhmet wandered over to the white box, the Ice-box, and wandered from side to side. Watching Ciaran knaw on it she sighed. "What we need is something to get around the handle there, then we can pull it open." Looking at the kit she nodded to the room. "Go find us a nice bit of string, or one of those silly things Eccentric used to hand around his neck."

Listening to the interplay between the cats, not about to go anywhere until she finished her milk-tea. "I can fish" she commented, "there's a stream not far from here, out beyond the houses." She finished lapping up the remains on the plate before adding, "There's a window upstairs. The latch it broken. Push it hard enough and it will open, but it's up high and there's no sill."

Height...should not be an issue. Ciaran padded upstairs, and, seeing the window, searched around for what the Furless called "cardboard boxes".

"I need help with this!" he yowled down the stairs.

Jinxed swished his tall for a moment. He didn’t know why Quintus was so angry and protective over the Eccentric. Beyond the transparent wall was a buffet of Eccentrics. He watched their blurred grey outlines scurrying about with interest before turning to do Sekhmets command. He bounced off the window ledge knowing exactly where to find what she requested. Locating the Eccentrics abandoned private chamber, Jinx looked about the room for anything he might have left behind. At last he came across the piece of fabric he used to wear around his neck abandoned in a darkened area of the room. Quickly, he returned back downstairs to the others. Jinx was not one for loneliness despite his bravado. He dropped the cloth at Sekmets feet. “What is wrong with a new Eccentric Quintus?”

"Good kit," Sekhmet gave Jinx a fast head rub and picked up the length of cloth in her mouth. With a fluid leap she made it onto the counter beside the ice-box and paused. Placing one end of the material underfoot she took the far end in her mouth and carefully leaned out to wrap it around the handle part. As soon as the bit of fabric was through she let both parts fall, and they trailed down to the floor.

Pleased, and purring, with herself she hopped back down and looked at the newly created handle. "All we need do now is have a cat on either piece to pull and we can open the white box." Sitting on her haunches she watched all the others going about like a bunch of kits on a 'nip high. "The only dilemma with a new Eccentric is they might not be 'cat' people you know, or worse even, prefer Canis lupus familiaris." She shuddered and contemplated going to get a bigger fur-bit.

Mirri finished up her milk-tea, licking her lips and whiping an imperceptible bit off her chin before stretching again and moving towards the ice box. "If we choose to stay, then we will have to see what manner of new man comes to us when he comes." A sizable cat, she had some body to throw around, and grabbed one end of the fabric, looking expectantly at Sekhmet.

Not sure if Mirri is expecting Sekhmet to help or move out of the way. That can be left to interpretation ;).

Well Sekhmet's not big...so this can be hillarity in 3...2...1...
"Oh, right, right," eying the bit of cloth on her side she looks at where it loops over the door and then at the ground. That silly ground that lets no cat get good traction when they really need to catch something. Taking it between her teeth she faces away from the box, mayhap the extra bit of force from this direction will help....

Ciaran shook his head, wondering what the others were doing, and left the mess of cardboard boxes for a bit. Taking the stairs four by four, he wandered into the Slippery-Square room and nearly slid into Sekhmet. He backed up a few paces, and sat down half in amusement, half in boredom.

((By the look of it, Ciaran's the strongest cat around here...Quintus might be on par.))

Jinx watched the elder cats with mild amusement. Scurring over to the others Jinx also grabbed what he could of the fabric and began to pull in the direction with the others.

Mirri looked at Sekhmet, in her furs with the tie in her mouth. She looked at her for a few more seconds before setting her feet, claws digging into the slippery floor. "

Perhaps one of you would help to pry the door while we pull?"

When Sekhmet looks ready, Mirri gives the tie one long, steady pull...

(Mirri isn't a fighting cat, but Norwegian forests are in the upper end for size, and probably weight. She would have nasty claws though (superb climbers I'm told), and isn't having much issue on the floor ;)

I'm assuming that Mirri has one side of teh tie, Jinx and Sek have the other, maybe.)

She'd thought she had this...but physics was not on her side. As the not-all-fluff Mirri began to pull Sekhment felt herself slide. Digging her nails in more she tried to scrabble along, but she knew she'd loose ground quickly.
Forest cats are the second largest domestic cats behind main coons, they're great climbers and jumpers, by also the biggest snuggle bugs in the world!

I thought Ragdolls were at the top followed by the Main Coon and Norwegian Forest. Meh. Not really important right now.

Wonder how's Jinx is managing?

Sensing Sekhmet's slide, Mirri eases up on the tie, hoping to prevent a skid into the rather hard surface of the icebox.

The little kitten scurried on the floor. His legs appeared like one of those old time cartoons moving as fast as he could but not really traveling anywhere. He felt the tie go slack, but kept trying anyways. When Jinx hit the hard surface of the ice box he let out a small yelp and finally let go of the fabric. Angry but more frustrated then anything, he clawed at the tie. Finally giving up, he bounced away from the tie far enough to turn and see the other two. Shaking his head he went to go investigate the rest of the store.

She knew she wasn't the strongest, but apparently she was not even a deterant to friction and drag. Giving up, the ice-box door not showing any sign of even a crack, Sekhmet dropped the tie and licked at her mouth to clear the taste of musty silk. "Sorry, apparently the math isn't on my side. Ciaran, want to give it a go? I'll...uhm...keep the kit out from underfoot."

Ciaran flicked an ear, keeping a smirk to himself. Standing up, he strode over to the icebox and took Sekhmet's end of the tie in his jaws, then backed up slowly.

((Are we actually gonna be able to open this darn thing? XD))

Well, apparently rats are strong enough to open fridge doors from the bottom.

Before picking up her end of the tie again, Mirri says to the others, "Perhaps one of you could try and work the door from the bottom, while we pull."

She picks up her end of the cord, looking over to Ciaran to be sure he's ready.

Without further ado, Ciaran started pulling, keeping rather low to the ground. His lithe body tensed; the sinewy strength he had teased out from his fights in the alleys showed through the tight muscles.

((Er...Fridge door = vaccuum, so be prepared for hilarity after it opens...))