Keys and Cats and Crossbows, Oh My!

Summer. As much as Dawn had liked school from time to time, there was nothing like summertime. And in Sunnydale it was even better: the monsters kept their appearances down to a minimum, and since everyone left town for more exciting places anyway, there were fewer damsels in distress.

This summer was a little quieter than usual, though. Tara was gone, Willow and Giles were in England, Spike had disappeared. Xander wasn't even around as much as he usually was, saying that things were busy at the construction site; his company had won a bid to work on building the new high school. Buffy said he was trying to avoid the whole Anya issue by avoidance. He was sailing down the river Nile in a construction site-shaped boat, Buffy had said.

Anya came over every now and again, but she seemed restless, like she didn't know what to do without her store. And it didn't look like she was doing too well with the vengeance business, either. Anya sometimes made vague references to having recently granted a wish or having cursed someone, but in Dawn's honest opinion they were probably just made-up stories. She couldn't imagine Anya actually really getting back into vengeance.

So usually it was just Buffy and Dawn - and Miss Kitty Fantastico.

The cat was a terror.

She climbed curtains. Left clumps of fur on freshly-laundered stacks of clothing. Sharpened her claws on bed posts. Batted the remote control under the couch. Knocked over objets d'art and pictures and plants. Liked to sleep right in the middle of the stairs, sending (on one occasion) Buffy head-first down the stairs. ("Gotta thank that Slayer healing," Buffy had said later on when the bruises had disappeared.) Considered Joyce's roses her own personal litter box. Brought home voles and starlings. Ate more cat kibble than any girl kitty had any right to do - without gaining an ounce.

Sometimes she was cute enough, and fun to pet, and would sleep with Dawn at night when she wasn't in the mood for midnight mouse hunts or sleeping on the stairs. This was her saving grace. The Summers sisters weren't sure if the cat had always been like this, or if the fact that her 'mommies' had disappeared was the cause of the misbehavior. But so far nothing they had tried had curbed it.

Dawn lifted up the next crossbow and glanced over to Miss Kitty, who was lounging regally in the sunlit patch of grass beside the sidewalk. "You realize you're spoiled, don't you?" she said to the cat, who blinked, gave a sun-sneeze and went back to napping.

Sighing, Dawn began to clean the crossbow. This was a job that Giles had assigned to her before he had left with Willow. Once a week, she was to take Buffy's crossbows (the girl had four altogether!), clean them, lubricate the moving parts with a magic-enhanced grease and then reload them with fresh bolts if needed. Dawn wasn't sure what was so special about the grease: it looked, felt and smelled just like any other grease type stuff that her dad had ever used on the car or around the house. Except for the fact that, when she got a really good whiff of it, it occasionally smelled ever-so-slightly like freshly fried bacon.

"Hey, Dawn, how's it hangin'?"

Dawn turned to see Janice walking up the sidewalk. Had it been most anyone else, she would have scrambled to hide the crossbows or come up with a witty explanation, but with Janice she didn't have to bother. Ever since the incident at Halloween, Janice had known something of the truth: not the whole story, mind you, but enough that the sight of Dawn cleaning some very medieval-looking crossbows on a beautiful summer morning would not freak her out.

"Hey, Janice. What's up?" Dawn set aside the crossbow and the rag she had been using to wipe it down.

The girls spoke for a few minutes, agreed to go swimming, and giggled at the names of which boys from their grade might be there - all the while not noticing how Miss Kitty Fantastico was starting to eye the discarded crossbows...

"DAWN!"

The girl frowned and turned around, coming back down the stairs. She wondered what had tipped Buffy off to her return home. 'Must have been the door slamming, you dolt!' she told herself.

"Yeah?" said Dawn hesitantly.

"Dawn, oh dearest sister mine, have you happened to see what's happened to my crossbows?" asked Buffy in a saccharine voice.

"Your crossbows? What do you mean-?" Suddenly, Dawn remembered that she had left them on the front porch earlier that day. "Oh, no. I'm so, so sorry. What happened? And, um, please don't kill me?"

Buffy took a deep breath. "This is what happened," she said, turning like Vanna White and pointing, not to oversized letters, but to her crossbows, set out on the coffee table like conversation starters.

Or, rather, what was left of the crossbows. All the metal mechanical parts were still there, but the wood and leather frames and handles and bolt shafts were chewed, gnawed, bitten, worn, clawed, scratched and all-around desecrated by -

"What happened? Who did this?" asked Dawn.

Buffy's eyes narrowed as she pointed towards the culprit, who sat calmly in one of the stuffed chairs, licking her paws daintily. "The cat, what else! She did it!"

The 'she' in question looked up momentarily, licked her lips, and went back to the fascination that was chewing at her claws.

"I've already talked to Giles," Buffy continued, starting to calm down a little. "And he assures me that the stuff he had you use on the crossbows is not going to kill the cat, but he's FedExing us a potion to make sure she doesn't get sick. And he'll find the replacement parts and everything so Xander can help us fix the crossbows and bring them back to usability."

Dawn hung her head in shame. "Shall I assume this means my allowance will suddenly be nonexistent?"

Buffy exhaled. "No. And that's contingent on you finding Miss Kitty a new..."

"...Home," Dawn said to Miss Kitty, who was squirming in her arms, anxious to explore now that she was out of the cat carrier. "See? You'll like living here," she added, finally setting the cat down. Then she looked back up to the cat's new owner. "Sure you've got everything? Water dish, food dish, litter box-"

"Don't worry, Dawnie," said Clem. "I've got everything under control. And I promise not to take her to poker night."

"Okay." Dawn glanced around again, seeing Miss Kitty Fantastico pounce on some cobwebs in a corner of the crypt, and then looked back at Clem. "Well, see you around," she said.

Clem smiled. "Okay. Say hi to your sister for me."

"Will do." With that, Dawn left.

Clem looked down at the cat, who had abandoned cobweb-pouncing and was now looked up at her new 'daddy'. "So, what will it be?" he asked Miss Kitty. "'Passions', or something from my fine video library?"

The cat meowed.

Clem chuckled. "'Passions' it is."

[End]