The next few days were incredibly busy for me as I had to learn to juggle all the jobs and responsibilities that I was getting from both the Guardian and the Matriarch. I was quickly coming to understand that those two really did do a trial by fire when it came to dominant cats such as myself. I don't know how they handled a cat that couldn't hack it, but I was determined not to fail and so I waded through the work.
As soon as I had a rough budget worked out for the introduction of tech to the spread-out housing of the pride I called Wild Valley and talked to Robin and Lea about the install. I also got in touch with the suppliers and began the process of locating where core Pride Security should be located. Our current security office was completely unsuitable since there were no provisions for the kind of upgrade that we were performing. After looking through all our options I finally had to shake my head and consider the fact that we might have to build ourselves a new building for the security and data-center.
Unlike most of the Packs that we had visited along the way here from Wild Valley the housing for the pride was spread out around one corner of the territory. The main Pride House may be the administrative center for the Pride but the housing for most part, was spread amongst the houses of the various family houses that made up the Pride. My house was one of the smaller examples of that policy, some of the houses, though difficult to spot from the air, were quite large and housed several dozen cats. The whole reason for the difference was down to the basic social differences between cats and wolves. If the entire pride had been forced to live under one roof there would be chaos, since we didn't operate in a rigid structure the way wolves did.
Most of the territory was wild terrain that backed onto more wild lands, some of which had been logged in the past, though those lands were recovering as trees were growing back. The one issue with those parts of public lands was the ever-present roads, which allowed humans to get closer to our territory than most weres preferred. Therefore, we always had patrols running, though those patrols would, at most, have three cats in them, since we operated better with smaller numbers.
When I finally realized that we couldn't use and existing building for the new security office and data-center I had to bring that to the attention of the Matriarch and she had understood, after I had spent a good deal of time explaining the reasons why. The new building, like our other buildings, would be well concealed, and relatively close to the Pride House since it would be the new place from which the Pride's security would be administered.
I couldn't really finalize the details of the network system that we were going too be using, since that really fell outside my area of knowledge, instead I had to ask Adam's son, Robin, to come and take a look for himself on what we needed to do to get us a reliable network link. I was frustrated several times, both with work, and the occasional game that I still played, when my own network connection failed due to the vagaries of weather.
When almost a week had passed since I'd joined the Pride and dove headlong into the business of getting the Pride to a more modern level the Matriarch finally pulled me aside.
"Mark, I love you drive and dedication to the Pride's welfare, but you have ignored one thing."
"I don't follow you Matriarch, I'm doing this not only for our Pride but also for myself. If I didn't do the best job that I knew I was capable of I'd feel like I'd not lived up to my oath. Furthermore, my work ethic has always focused on that. I'd rather do a job right the first time, rather than do it more quickly but make mistakes."
"She chuckled, and how much have you been listening to your cat? Most cats don't like to work non-stop from the time they wake up to the time they fall asleep and yet here you are doing just that."
