Crackfic!
Part I:
Rodney knew that a.), Kavanagh was out to get him, and b.) Kavanagh was evil. So he wasn't terribly surprised when his pony-tailed nemesis shot him with a beam of light from some Ancient device and turned him into a cat. What he hadn't realized was that Kavanagh, in addition to being out to get him and evil, was also crazy. So when Kavanagh grabbed him roughly under his kitty belly and said maliciously, "Time for someone to get neutered," Rodney did what any sane cat would do; he sank his teeth into the soft flesh of Kavanagh's hand, gave him a clawed kick to the crotch, and dashed out of the lab and down the winding halls of Atlantis.
Now Rodney was huddled in an alcove just across from his quarters, and thinking dark cat thoughts about Kavanagh, and what Rodney was going to do him just as soon as he had opposable thumbs again. He'd catalogued the changes to his physical self and was not pleased; while he still appeared to have his human faculties, he was a cat, or whatever the Ancients had instead of cats. He was hungry and felt dirty from where Kavanagh had grabbed him, and it didn't help that he had a strong urge to lick himself clean. Apparently his Ancient gene hadn't made the transformation, because he'd been furiously thinking "open" at his door for a good half hour without anything to show for it. And when he tried to voice his frustration with the entire mess, he was humiliated when the only noise he could make was a pathetic "mew."
Suddenly a pair of boots walked into his field of vision; Rodney craned his head up, and up, and up, and damn Sheppard for being so tall anyway. And what was he doing?
"McKay, are you in there?" Sheppard knocked on Rodney's door. "C'mon, you're going to miss dinner. And they're serving chocolate pudding...."
And now Kavanagh was going to make him miss Chocolate Pudding Day, which he'd probably planned on purpose, the crazy bastard, he knew Rodney wrote it on his desk calendar, and there was really only so much indignity that Rodney could bear. Before he could stop himself he let out a little involuntary "mew" of protest. And of course Sheppard heard him and peered into the alcove, and raised his eyebrows in that annoying way.
"Huh. A cat."
Rodney tried to roll his eyes in disgust, but apparently cats didn't have that ability, and he just made himself dizzy instead. And that turned out to be a bad idea, because by the time he got his equilibrium back Sheppard had scooped him up, his hands much gentler and knowing than Kavanagh's, and was eying him critically.
"I'm pretty sure that no one brought a cat with them through the gate," he said thoughtfully, even as he tucked Rodney against his chest and began to scratch behind his ears and Oh God yes, apparently there were advantages to this cat-thing after all. Rodney realized he was purring ecstatically and firmly told himself to stop, even as he arched his head into Sheppard's strong fingers, wanting more pressure and a different angle. The purring redoubled, and he didn't even know how he was purring anyway, and truthfully he didn't care. Much. "Where did you come from, buddy?"
Rodney tried to say, "Oh, how typical, you're not even a little suspicious of a strange cat that just appears in another galaxy, and by the way, it's me, McKay." Instead he meowed a couple of times and finished with an involuntary chirrup, and Sheppard laughed, the moron. Rodney contemplated swatting Sheppard with his new claws -- and hey, another cat-advantage -- but reconsidered when Kavanagh rounded the corner. His little fever-mad eyes focused unerringly on Rodney, who did his best to burrow himself into Sheppard's jacket.
"Colonel!" Kavanagh said with bright, false cheer. "You found my Fluffy! I was just wondering what had happened to him." Mentally Rodney upgraded Kavanaugh's punishment by a factor of ten. Fluffy? Oh, how he would suffer.
"He's yours?" Sheppard asked, his voice deceptively mild. "I wasn't aware anyone had brought live animals through the gate, Dr. Kavanaugh."
The evil bastard grinned even more manically. "Oh, he just came over on the Daedalus -- I just couldn't bear to be apart from him, you know? Thanks, here, I can take him --" Kavanagh reached for Rodney, who hissed as loud as he could and clawed viciously at his extended hand. Rodney wondered if it was undignified to be so happy that he'd drawn blood. Then he remembered that Kavanaugh's threat and hoped that he'd given him blood poisoning.
"He doesn't seem to like you much," Sheppard observed, as Kavanagh popped his finger in his mouth and glared at Rodney.
"Yeah, he's feisty," Kavanagh growled. "Don't worry, I'll take care of him."
Rodney instinctively dug his claws into Sheppard's jacket and hissed, desperate at the thought of Kavanaugh taking him anywhere; Sheppard curved a protective hand over Rodney's back, apparently getting the point.
"Why don't I take him for now," he suggested, using the special Sheppard tone that meant it wasn't a suggestion at all. "You shoud go to the infirmary, have Beckett check out your hand -- that bite looks nasty." He quirked his eyebrows knowingly, and Rodney gave a silent cheer that Sheppard wasn't as dumb as he looked. Kavanagh scowled, but seemed to realize that he'd lost the upper hand.
"By the way," Sheppard asked lightly, "Have you seen McKay?"
"I'm right here!" Rodney howled.
"As far as I know he's in the lab," Kavanagh shrugged, smirking at Rodney even as he cradled his wounded hand. Rodney would have frowned if he still had lips; just how was the greasy bastard planning on hiding the fact that he'd felinized Rodney? He wondered reluctantly if maybe he should have given Kavanagh more credit, or at least insulted his intelligence less often.
"All right then," Sheppard said, nodding in obvious dismissal. "Make sure you get that hand looked at."
Kavanagh paused for a moment, clearly torn, before he turned and headed back the way he came. Sheppard watched him go before heading in the other direction. He muttered under his breath to Rodney, "That guy is so weird."
Rodney couldn't help but agree.
Sheppard toted him into a transporter, then to Sheppard's own quarters, and even as a cat Rodney couldn't help but be vaguely annoyed at how Sheppard's doors whooshed open as he approached, like commoners bowing down before a king. Sheppard gently set Rodney down on the floor inside and crouched down next to him, pausing to run a big warm hand over his head and down his spine. "Where'd you come from, kitty?"
Rodney arched involuntarily into the caress before he remembered that he had more important things to be thinking about. "Colonel, it's me, McKay! Rodney!"
Sheppard chuckled and scratched behind Rodney's ears. "You're a talker, aren't you?"
Rodney almost howled in frustration. "Listen, you imbecile! Kavanagh turned me into a cat!"
Sheppard frowned, his fingers still kneading absently atop Rodney's skull. "Hope you're not like this all the time," he muttered under his breath. "But hey, maybe you're hungry. Are you hungry, kitty?"
"It's McKay! Of course I'm hungry!"
"I'm gonna take that as a yes," Sheppard said doubtfully, standing again and heading for the door. "You -- just stay here, okay? I'll be back."
As if I have any choice, Rodney thought glumly, watching the door hiss closed behind Sheppard.
With Sheppard gone he turned his attention to the man's quarters. Talking didn't seem to be working, but surely there was something in here he could use to spell out his predicament? Maybe he could point out letters in a book, or scratch his name into something, or spell out a message in dirty socks. Unfortunately, Sheppard seemed to have absorbed military discipline into at least one aspect of his life; the rooms were as spartan as a West Point dormitory. Rodney knew the man had to have a book somewhere -- hadn't he been reading War and Peace since they arrived at Atlantis? -- but it wasn't out. The floors were some sort of Ancient tile that resisted his claws; even Sheppard's bed was made, the covers pulled smooth and tight. Exasperated and exhausted, he flopped down on Sheppard's pillow and stared at his paw. His paw. He experimented with his claws, unsheathing them and then retracting them again. He'd always liked Wolverine, but this was ridiculous. He flipped his tail absently. And no, he hadn't liked Nightcrawler, either.
He was distracted from his melancholy by the hiss of the door. He tensed, thinking that perhaps Kavanagh had tracked him down; but then he recognized Sheppard's hair, silhouetted by the hallway light, and Rodney couldn't help the glad little chirrup that escaped him.
"Hello again," Sheppard said, and Rodney surpressed the urge to wind himself around the other man's ankles. "Miss me?"
"Not as much as I'm missing my power of speech," Rodney sniped. "And oh, my humanity."
"Okay, okay," Sheppard said, and set a heavy earthenware plate and bowl down on the floor. "Hope you like Athosian sort-of-chicken."
Rodney briefly debated the propriety of sticking his face into a bowl of almost-chicken, but his grumbling stomach won out over his dignity. And hey, here was another advantage -- whatever this stuff was, it tasted way, way better to his cat palate than it ever had to his human one. He licked the plate clean and looked for more while Sheppard puttered around in the background; he was just contemplating how to clean his grubby face when when Sheppard said "Oh hey, I'd better show you this," and scooped Rodney up. Rodney squirmed a little, but they only walked to the bathroom, where Sheppard plopped Rodney down into a sort of metal tray filled with shredded paper -- old lab reports, Rodney noticed half-hysterically. "I don't have to show you how to use this, right?"
Rodney looked up at him balefully, and thought of the thousandth way that he could cause Kavanagh's painful, messy death.