Double Trouble

Day 1

today i was like 'huh i need to update that self-indulgent oc fic'
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About halfway to Tugger's human house,  Cleo had demanded to be let out his arms so that she could explore all the new scents on the sidewalk. So far, she hadn't wandered off, but it was taking a bit longer to  get home then it would have if Tugger had carried both the kits.
Luckily, Maria didn't want to get put down. Tugger would almost assume that she was asleep, but he could feel her head shifting as she tried to subtly look around.
The streets in the neighborhood they were currently in were not busy at all, because they were just a few blocks from Tuggers human home. It was a weekday, and normally kids would be at school, but Tuggers humans had suddenly packed bags a few days ago and said how they would leave on this day right after lunch.
Tugger had no idea where they were headed off to, but there was a calendar in the house that marked off the days that they were gone and circled the day that they would come back, so he knew when he would be alone.
His original plan had been to go out and about. He would go to some clubs, sing a few songs, pick up some Queens, Toms, or even both at once, and have a good time overall. The cats from the Junkyard wouldn't find it strange, Tugger was known to vanish for multiple days at a time.
Then, the day after the humans had begun packing and marked the days on their calendar, Tugger had gone to visit his old street-cat friends. Brises had been the last one he had visited, and she had offhandedly mentioned needing to find a new den for the cold weather, and he had offhandedly mentioned the absence of his humans, one thing had led to another, and here they were.
Tugger could see his human's house down the street. It looked like every other house, except both the cars that were usually parked next to it were gone, confirming that they had left.
"What's that?" Asked Cleo from behind Tugger, and he quickly turned to make sure she wasnt getting in trouble. Marias grip on him tightened.
Cleo was pointing at the large fence that one of the neighbors had erected a while back. Sometimes, Tugger would hear a Pollicle Dog barking on the other side.
"Ah, that's just a fence. It's to keep us all safe from the Pollicle inside, so that it doesnt come and try to eat you!" He pretended to growl at the kit.
She giggled, but the other kit whimpered a bit. He quickly reached his paw up to rup her back.
"We're almost there, girls!"
It didn't take much longer for them to reach the house. Tugger led the girls around to the backyard.
The back door has a large cat door at the bottom of it. They had quickly figured out how indecisive the cat was, always wanting in and out of the house, and installed a cat door so that he wouldn't be meowing at them all the time. He still constantly meows at them, it was just his personality, but now he could get in and out of the house freely whenever he wanted.
He easily pushed it opened, then held it for Cleo.
The door was made for a large cat, specifically a Maine Coon like himself, and a Singapura cat would not be able to easily push it open, much less a Singapura kitten.
The inside of the house was big to Tugger, but he couldn't even imagine how giant everything looked to both the kits.
He lowered Maria to the ground again, letting her awe at the room. She looked around at everything in wonder, and then back at the cat door they had just come through.
Cleo, as expected, had already begun climbing on everything. This must have been a hard task for the tiny kitten, and she had only managed to climb onto a few books that the human kits had left on the ground.
She stood proudly on all four paws. Neither Cleo nor Maria were old enough to confidently walk on two paws yet, like most of the kittens at the Junkyard knew how to do. They could stand there, they could practice, but neither of them would probability try and run around on only two. They would have to wait until they were just a little bit older for that.
But these two kits that he was babysitting were kits, and he had to remember that, and keep them safe! They couldn't go breaking anything, falling from anything, eating random things, all that junk.
And there it came; the crash from another room.
While Tugger had been thinking and plotting to himself about keeping the kits safe, they had both vanished from the room. The crash was, obviously, caused by one of the two kits, as there were no other animals in the house that could have caused it.
Quickly, Tugger raced over to where he had heard the noise.
On the kitchen counter sat both Cleo and Maria. They stared over the edge at the mess that had been created, not even noticing when Tugger entered the room.
On the tiles of the kitchen floor were the shattered remains of a beautiful looking bowl. The bowl most likely was sitting on the counter after the humans rushed lunch, one of the human kits had probably forgotten to put it away.
If it had been any other bowl, Tugger wouldn't have minded, but he had seen the human mother taking careful care of this bowl many times, and scolding him when he got too close to it. Tugger might be a troublemaker, always doing what he's told not to, but he knows when enough is enough, and breaking his human's favorite bowl was a sure way to end up a street cat again.
Here the bowl was, shattered on the ground. The bowl was decorated with flowers, and a name that Tugger couldn't read was carved into the bottom. Now, the flowers lay all over the floor, scattered as if the tiles were a field.
The biggest threat in this situation, however, was not the broken bowl of the possibility of becoming homeless again, but the kittens on the counter.
Both of them looked like they wanted to cry. They obviously hadn't meant to knock over the bowl, and were very sorry that they had.
Tugger sighed.
"How did you two get up there?"
His only reply was Cleo, shaking her head.
Instead of asking anymore questions, which would probably lead to some sobbing kits that he did not want to or know how to handle, he proceeded to sweep up the shards with his tail, moving them out of the way. When they were moved, he positioned himself a decent distance away from the kitchen counter, holding out his arms.
"Which one of you wants to jump first?" He called up.
To Tugger's surprise, Maria edged to the lip of the counter and launched herself off and into his arms, not letting go of his mane until she felt her paws touch the ground. Cleo followed as soon as he was facing the counter again, catching him a little off guard.
When both the girls were off of the counter he turned to them.
"What happened back there?"
The answer was delivered by Marias quiet meow.
"We just wanted to see what was going on, we didn't mean to knock anything over!"
"Yeah yeah yeah!" Cleo frantically chimed in. "It's an adventure, you see? And if there's an adventure, then we gotta do it! We just wanted to look inside the pretty container, we didn't know it would break!" The little kit gave her the best kitten eyes. "Are you mad at us Uncle Tugger?
"Oh, of course not!" He responded. He could never be actually mad at a kit, they didn't know any better, and these kits had never seen anything like this before.
He was, however, worried and concerned, which are two emotions that The Rum Tum Tugger rarely expresses. These two had barely been here for ten minutes, and they had already caused trouble? How was he going to handle them for the next few days? Maybe it would be better if he went and got Brise, letting her stay with the kits in his home while he went and looked for her new den. Or he could invite a more responsible cat, like his brother, over to watch them.
No, he couldn't. He had promised Brise that he would watch these kits, and The Rum Tum Tugger could do that. He never turned back after saying he would do it, that's just how the cat was! Tugger could be responsible! And Munkustrap was in charge of the Jellicles, busy protecting them from intruders. He wouldn't have time to come and kit-sit!
There was a pull on Tuggers mane.
"Uncle Tugger? Are you okay?"
Tugger quickly shook himself out of his thoughts, and put on his calm and cool face and voice.
"Of course, sweetheart!" He purred. "Now, would you like to figure out where to sleep?"
Cleo looked confused.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, you'll have to see!" He replied, setting a paw on each of the kits backs to lead them down the hallway.
He pushed open the first door he saw, which was the human she-kits room.
The room was decorated with bright pink colors, and fluffy blankets were thrown all over the bed and floor. Drawers were pulled open, clothing strewn around the room and hanging off the side of the dressers. She had probability been looking for something before the family had left.
A large mirror, one of Tugger's favorite things about the girls room, was hung above the messy bureau drawer, which had a chair partially shoved under it. He used the chair, jumping up from it onto the vanity, and taking a minute to admire himself in the mirror before turning back around.
"One of your options is this lovely room! The human kit who lives here has lots of fluffy blankets and pillows for you to sleep on."
Both the kits just stared at him in confusion.
"What does fluffy mean?" Asked Maria.
Tugger leapt off the drawers easily.
"Well, why don't you come feel these and find out for yourself?" He replied, holding up the corner of a brightly colored blanket.
Cleo pushed her sister out of the way and grabbed the blanket out of Tuggers paws, sinking her sharp claws into the material.
"Wow!" She gasped. "Maria, come feel! Come feel!"
Maria, much more calmly than her sister, came up and took a piece gently in her paws. The little kit didn't say anything, but Tugger could see how big her eyes got. The kits had probability never felt something like this, and it made Tugger happy to see them experiencing this for the first time.
"Well? What do you think? If you don't want to sleep here, we can look in the other room."
"There's more than one room!" Shrieked Cleo, jumping up and down on her paws. Poor Maria covered her ears. Tugger smiled a bit.
"Right this way, ladies!"
He led the kits to the room across the hall.
This room was where the human tom-kit slept and played. The bed in this room was a little bit smaller than the one in the other room, but from what Tugger could tell, the human tom-kit was younger than the human she-kit. Beds seemed to have different sizes depending on how old you were. When Tugger had first been taken in, the human tom-kit had had a bed that was even smaller than the one he had now, although the shed-kit's bed size hasn't changed at all. The human parents, the Queen and Tom of the house, shared one large bed, so Tugger had to assume they were very old.
The bed was neatly made, and the only thing that seemed out of place was the open drawer. Tugger, however, knew that it was always left open because he occasionally slept in it. It made him happy to know that the human had thought of him, and he puffed up his tail a bit with pride.
"This here," He said, turning to the girls, "Is the tom-kits room. He has a nice drawer that I sleep in sometimes, or you can hop up onto the bed. There's not as much stuff on the floor, which is nice."
By the time he finished talking, Cleo was already attempting to climb into the drawer.
He purred in amusement, and went over to give the small kitten a boost.
"What do you think?"
Cleo responded in a muffled meow, "Very deep! How do I get out?"
"Oh shi- shoot. Hold on, I'll get you."
It was a good thing that Tugger was an adult cat, and a tall one at that, because he didn't even have to climb into the drawer to get the little kit. All he had to do was stand on his tip-toes and reach his arm in, she grabbed onto him tightly as he pulled her out.
At last, the little kit was safely on the ground again. Tugger stood back, paws on his belt, and observed the two.
"So, you guys know where you want to sleep?"
"Yeah yeah yeah!" Chanted Cleo, while Maria just nodded.
"Great!" He replied, already headed towards the hallway.
"But.. Uncle Tugger? What do we eat?" Asked quiet Maria.
"What do you mean?" He replied, slightly confused.
She shifted nervously from paw to paw.
"Well, I don't smell any mice or rats or even bunnies around here, and there's something blocking the fish that I saw so we can't eat those. Are you gonna starve us?"
Tugger bent down until he was level with the anxious kit.
"My humans leave food out for me. I have bowls of this weird brown stuff, I have cans of tuna, or we can go outside and hunt. Whichever you want!"
The little kit's eyes widened.
"...Whatever we want? Really?"
He nodded, smiling. "Really! What do you want to eat tonight?"
Cleo jumped up and down before her sister could answer.
"Tuna! I want tuna!"
"Well, Maria? How does Tuna sound?"
She nodded in agreement.
"Great! You two can go wait in the kitchen, just stay away from the broken bowl. I don't want you to get hurt!"
Both the kittens nodded, and they scurried off in one direction while Tugger went the other.
The humans didn't think he knew this, but Tugger knew where the tuna was kept. They 'hid' it in these tiny cans that you could easily poke a claw through , and those tiny cans were kept on a high shelf in their bathroom, along with a litter box that Tugger made a habit of never using because it was just humiliating.
The bathroom had a closet door. There was what the humans called a handle on it, but the handle was broken or something, for Tugger could just reach a paw under the door, pull, and it opened up. From there, it wasn't hard to jump up the shelves and knock down three cans of tuna.
They fell to the floor with a clang, and he jumped down after, making sure not to land on them.
From there, all he had to do was carry them over to the kitchen where the girls were waiting!
"Ladies," He purred, setting down the cans. "Dinner is served!"
Little Maria inched her way up to one of the cans.
"But, Uncle Tugger, this doesn't look like it could be eaten..."
He chuckled.
"Ah, but you haven't seen the magic happen yet!" Tugger responded, and then extended a few claws, poking them through the tin of the can. He dragged the claw along the rim, just as he had seen the humans do with their fancy fake-claw. Humans obviously weren't as blessed as cats, and had to mimic a lot of their natural assets, like claws.
He set the can down and started working on the other two cans as the kittens watched in amazement.
When it was all finished, he brought the small tin up to his face, and began to eat right out of it. Maria copied him, heaving with her tiny arms to bring the can up to her face. The other kid just leaned down to give the food a tentative taste, before gasping in amazement and digging in.
They finished in record time.
"Now, kits, why don't you go to where you want to sleep while I clean up? We all have to sleep well so that we can be ready to explore tomorrow."
A mix of both energized and tired, the she-kits jumped up and stumbled out of the room.
Tugger grabbed the cans, making sure not to nick himself on the sharp edges, and tossed them out the window. He had done this a number of times before, and knew that there was a large container that was kept outside specifically for the humans' trash. Sure, The Rum Tum Tugger will do as he does, but he does enjoy having a clean living space!
He slowly wandered down the hallway, peaking into the areas that he had shown the girls, trying to find them. Eventually, he saw their tails peeking out from the blankets in the human she-kits room. He smiled at the sight.
"Goodnight, ladies," purred Tugger.
The response was quiet, most likely from Maria. Cleo seemed to be the type to pass out as soon as her head hit the pillow.
"'Night 'night, Uncle Tugger."