Olly Cat!
Olly hopped onto my lap and rubbed the top of his head against the underside of my jaw.
"Oh Olly Cat! Aren't you cuddly!"
"I am." He agreed, and turned in a small circle before lying down, paws batting at my hands.
"Aren't you adorable!"
"Mmm. I am. Very much so."
"When we are vigilantes fighting crime, you can dazzle all the crooks with your gorgeousness!"
"I plan on doing just that."
"When you invent a time machine, we can go back to ancient Egypt and they will revere you as the incarnation of the goddess Bast herself."
"I think I am at least twice as lovely as her already."
"When the ice age comes, you can be my little polar bear and we'll hunt seals through the ice!"
"What?" He pushed my hands away and scrambled down off my lap in a hurry, ears down and the pupils of his eyes wide with sudden fury. "What did you just say?"
"Erm, that you can be my polar bear and we can hunt seals?"
"What did White Cat say when you asked her that?" he spat.
"How- how did you-"
"Don't be such a lamb. She is a white cat and you're talking about polar bears. It isn't hard to put two and two together. It doesn't take a rocket scientist, does it? Which, you know, I actually am."
I looked away.
"You're not denying it!" he exclaimed. "I thought that maybe I was wrong. Maybe I had just jumped to the wrong conclusions. But you're not even denying it! You know, it's just occurred to me that you probably played the game where you're the Bond Villain and I'm your pet cat -a game which I by the way thought was quite racist but I didn't say anything because you like it- you probably played that with her too."
I couldn't contradict him there. I could almost feel him staring at me, all resentful anguish.
"You're awful." he said quietly. "You're awful, did you know that?"
"Oh Olly!" I reached out towards him but he cringed away from me, tail lashing.
"Don't touch me! I can't stand you! I can't stand any of this!"
He bolted away, paws skittering on the wood panelled flooring.
Oh Olly Cat. Why do I make such sad, sudden-mood-swings conversations for us when you're actually such a lovely gentle-natured boy?
(He's actually still sitting on my lap right now!)