Mittens Has Class

Chapter 15: Never Corner a Cat

"Be sure to pack it in tightly."

Mittens fought the urge to say 'that's what she said', as she troweled soil around the seeds of her project plant. Her teacher, Doctor Bahr, wasn't particularly receptive to humor, her practical mind having trouble with getting most jokes. More often than not, Mittens found herself having to explain a punchline or silly comment, which only ever received a dry and unamused response.

The woman wasn't ever stern about it, just didn't have much appreciate for levity. She couldn't really understand the point of a good joke. Conversely, she also seemed oblivious to the silliness of her student being dressed up as a cat. It was as if the woman had catgirls in her classes all the time. A great example being the that she'd provided Mittens with a larger-handled trowel than the rest of the class, without any kind of prompt or comment to it. Amusingly enough, Mittens had packed her slim-styled paws, expecting that she would need to change them out. However, Doctor Bahr just accommodated her usual ones.

Aside from the teacher's deadpan attitude, the class itself hadn't been half as exciting or interesting as Mittens had hoped. In almost a month, this had been their first actual day handling real plants. The rest of the class had been an abundance of reading from the textbook Doctor Bahr wrote, which was even more humorless than the professor herself, and a lot of very monotone lectures. There had been a couple interesting research projects, where the class had to seek outside material and summarize it, but these had been few.

Getting to finally get 'paws-on' with the plants was a refreshing change. Better yet, this marked the beginning of a project where they were to actively study the plant's growth over the next couple of weeks, meaning they would be coming to the lab regularly. It wasn't orchids and eggplants, but then every cat had a soft spot for little beans.

"Once you have the soil well packed, pour a generous amount of the fortified water into the pot." Doctor Bahr said as she was walking amongst the various tables. "Make sure your name is on the pot, take your pictures, and place it on the rack in the window."

Producing her large sharpie, Mittens carefully wrote her name along the curve of her pot in nice block letters, then pulled out her phone to get a few pictures. She noticed a couple of the students were also taking selfies with their plant. One girl was taking dozens of shots of hers, applying various filters to them to see what looked best.

It made Mittens consider doing something silly with hers too, but she opted to just take a couple regular snaps, for the science, and carry her little pot over to the window racks. As she was setting hers down, she noticed the pot being set down beside it had the words 'Your Name' written across it. She gave a little giggle and looked to the girl putting it there.

"Well played." She chuckled in admiration.

However, the girl looked at her with a completely confused expression on her beautiful face. "Huh? What is?"

Mittens pointed to the pot, giving her a knowing grin. That only seemed to make the girl look more confused, which increased when she looked over at Mittens' pot and saw an actual name on it. "Oh! Oh crap!" She said suddenly, a light of revelation dawning in her big blue eyes and she quickly grabbed her pot back up, spit on her thumb, and began furiously trying to wipe off the words.

Mittens paused a moment, mouth slightly ajar at the revelation that it hadn't been meant as a joke. She could see the dismay on the poor girl's face at the fact that the permanent marker wasn't really coming back off, just smearing into a fuzzy version of her goof.