The next morning the door chimed and Amelia immediately rolled out of bed. Her hair was awful and she only pulled on her pajama pants since she was already wearing an opaque nightee that said ‘if I’m asleep leave me to the fire’. Forsythe didn’t come over much in the mornings since he, Hunter, and Elisha had moved into a house several miles away. Occasionally he would pop over and make breakfast but he had a key.

Aidan poked his head out of the washroom, toothbrush jutting from his mouth. It was one of the new sonic ones that moved around in your mouth. It was weird to watch it moving his cheeks and lips around while he spoke around it. “Forsythe?”

Amelia mumbled and hit the door control. She stared out in the empty hallway for a long moment before looking down. “Just George.”

“Oh. It isn’t Tuesday, is it?” Aidan frowned before he disappeared from view once more. She heard the sound of him spitting out the toothpaste.

“No. I think someone must be on vacation. We get extra George day.” Amelia muttered. “C’mon George.” She stepped out of the way. As if he perfectly understood the invitation, the cat stalked into the room and immediately went over to the balcony sliding glass door and plopped down, ears alert as he looked out over his domain.

George, as the residents of the block had named him, was something of a legendary or extraordinary creature as far as Amelia and Aidan were concerned. In Illinois, at some point, the rodent population had started to explode. There were any variety of means that were used to control the population that were proposed. One was an increase in waste disposal control. If trash was handled in different fashions, state officials thought, the population would level out and there would be fewer mice and rats. Rodents that had started to pop out during daylight hours and were unafraid of the population were becoming a real menace so it didn’t take much to pass a law that required city waste disposal changes throughout the state.

These mandates said that all waste disposal had to happen in a certain way. Dumpsters and other time honored trash receptacles were replaced with containers that were one way. Even if the rats and rodents went in looking for food they wouldn’t be able to come out and could be disposed of much the same way normal trash was. Well, instead of solving the problem, it escalated the rodent situation. The vermin began invading homes instead of trash bins and landfills. If nothing else, this frenzy seemed to swell the rodent population. Bold daylight raids where mice darted underfoot at outdoor cafe and bistros. Mice and rats competing with the usual birds that fluttered about hoping for scraps.

This was shortly before the legendary cat clause, pun intended, was put into effect. A city official read a proposal from a student at the University of Illinois in Springfield saying that rodent population could be kept under control by allowing and promoting certain natural predators.

Of course, eagles, hawks, and owls were already being protected by a number of state laws. The student proposed the first cat way stations and city stray cat policy. What began as an experiment in and around the small college campus showed wildly positive results. Three cat stations were put in and around the campus. These cat stations lured in stray and feral cats with food, and even had buttons that distributed food. In addition, the floor tilings were heated. Automation would put the cats to sleep if they entered without scanning through with a chip. The cats, while asleep, would be placed in a small comfortable tube where they were chipped, weighed, and scanned for pests and diseases. Fleas, ticks, and flies were immediately destroyed in the tube with low level and harmless light waves. If it was the cat’s first time entering without a chip it would also be sterilized if it was female and spayed if it was male while the cat was asleep.

The whole process left the cat weak for approximately half an hour and much healthier by the end of it. Originally that had been the only function. Since the institution of the wildly popular and effective vermin control plan, the cat clause, these small way stations had been further modified with small warm sonic air vents that would blast cat appealing temperatures of air as well as shake off excess dead skin, matted fur, and dirt. Additionally, animal control was told not to pick up stray cats in the area around cat stations. Special status cats that had already been chipped were allowed to remain on the street since they were fixed.

The result, cats like George. George was healthy, sleek, fed, and friendly. The new cat waystations even had human voice recordings in them so that the cats wouldn’t grow to overly fear humans. Not that it had been a problem for many years. Cats on the street were no longer met with fear or disdain, and since they were disease free and friendly as a result even children played with them without their parents feeling the need to rescue them. There were so many changes and upgrades to the cat waystations that even Amelia wasn’t sure how they worked anymore.

It was all planned, monitored, and normal -- cats were the controlled population kept to monitor the vermin population. That was where any semblance of normal ended for George. Amelia had never in her entire time living in Illinois seen a cat exactly like him with his intelligence and temperament. She was pretty sure he was the Emperor cat of the city and did only deign to favor them with his presence because he had gleaned something special about them. He had, for lack of a better word, adopted her building and chosen to reside with Aidan and Amelia for certain days of the month.

The first time George had appeared he had, just like he did before he wandered in today, rung the terminal doorbell. She had since seen him do it to doors in the hallway where she and Aidan lived and it had amazed her that he had expertly leaped three and a half feet into the air and jammed a paw on the call button. Then he would wait patiently, tail flicking, to see if anyone was home to answer the door.

“George. Come sit with me.” Aidan was drying his hair with a towel as he came into the room. He sat in his desk chair and spun it around facing the couch. As if George had been waiting for this development all along, he got up, stretched in front of the glass, and then moved to the couch to sit across from Aidan.

Amelia loved this. It was George and Aidan chat time.

“You two never cease to amaze me.” Amelia muttered.

In concert both George and Aidan cocked their heads and turned toward her, staring for a moment and acknowledging her words or voice, and then turned back to each other.

“George. I have something important to ask you,” Aidan began seriously.

George set himself down on the couch eyeing Aidan distrustfully. It wasn’t, Amelia decided, because he actually distrusted Aidan. It was just expected of an Emperor cat that he had to hear his loyal subject out before deciding whether or not to go along with him.

“Are you even really a cat?” Aidan asked.

George tilted his head at him, laying his chin on his paw. His general demeanor seemed to express boredom. Then his eyelids started to droop as if he were terribly tired. Slowly, they began to close.

That was only the beginning. Over the next half hour Aidan queried George over and over, asking him the strangest of questions from his diet to how many humans he had dominion over. The cat might have seemed like it was just responding to his voice but there were times when an eye quirked open as if he were surprised.

“Do you have time today to do this?” Amelia finally asked. Normally she would have sat and listened to the whole crazy spiel. The last time George was in residence Aidan had been trying to dope the cat with catnip and convince him to become his real life wizard’s familiar. Aidan was certain, he told Amelia, that he was actually some sort of magical construct cat and all that was necessary was to convince the cat that a mutually beneficial relationship should be formed between him, wizard, and George, wizard cat. George had looked bored to death even if he didn’t budge from his spot. It had amused Amelia that he had perked up when Amelia suggested that the cat should be the wizard and Aidan the familiar.

“Why don’t I have time? There are no lectures I’m giving this week.” Aidan looked baffled, raising an eyebrow at her. “What could be more important than convincing George to-”

“Ah. Got it then?” Amelia grinned. The way Aidan had interrupted himself and paused into silence made her think he had finally remembered.

“Oh. Airport. I was supposed to go pick up Raven and maybe War right?” Aidan winced. “That was about half an hour ago wasn’t it?”

“Yep.” Amelia smiled at him.

“Why didn’t you remind me?” Aidan accused her, trying to shift the blame to her. She could almost seem him telling Raven that this was all her fault.

“I did. You were brushing your teeth, milling about, spacing out. You don’t wake up very well.” Amelia snorted, ignoring the part where she had stayed in bed herself. “After that you should come home. I told Sen and her friend Shade that we’d take them dungeon spelunking somewhere. So naturally you have to go so I can just stand in the back and look pretty.”

Aidan was up and shrugging on his long coat. Amelia bit her cheek so she wouldn’t tell him how dashing he looked. She had already told him and earned herself a closed smirk like he didn’t believe her. Still, it was the first coat he grabbed so she had to figure he had been slightly pleased with her compliment even if he didn’t necessarily agree with it.

“Why doesn’t anyone ever ask me to stand in the back and look pretty?” Aidan complained raking a single hand through his short hair.

“Aidan. I would love it if you stood in the back and looked pretty with me.” Amelia grinned, pleased with the softness she heard in her voice.

Aidan glared at her, his face turning really sour before it finally dissolved into a smile. “Why must you be so powerful?”

“I’m Empress. It’s expected.” Amelia responded loftily. George followed Aidan out the door, and when cat and man were clear of the door, it hissed shut.

Amelia turned to her terminal, convinced now was the time to reach into the ethernet and figure out more of the mystery of the internet forum troll that had provoked Aidan. Then it occurred to her that he had forgotten his hat. He looked even more dashing with the hat. Amelia grinned and grabbed it, pulling on her shoes as she skidded to the door and dashed out after him.