Petrestroika Chapter 2

The Sunbeam Crisis

Chapter 1

War was declared with the quiet, final click of a closing door. The humans had once again abandoned the dacha to its fate. They had left him. Alone. With her.

Dmitri Alexandrovich Medvedev executed a tactical withdrawal. With silent, practiced grace, he leaped to his observation post atop the towering oak bookshelf. The position afforded him a commanding view of the entire living room theatre of operations. From this vantage point, he would watch and learn the enemy’s methods.

The colonist, Grace as she called herself with appalling familiarity, seemed utterly oblivious to the gravity of the situation. She conducted a brazen, unsanctioned survey of his sovereign territory. He watched, his narrowed eyes missing nothing, cataloguing her every transgression.

First came the supply lines. She approached his food bowls, sniffing at them with a shocking lack of decorum. Ona golodna. She is hungry. Dmitri’s lip curled. Let her starve. The humans had left no provisions for this unscheduled billet, a strategic advantage for him.

Next, she discovered the scratching post, a fine sisal-rope construction he had spent years sculpting to perfection. She gave it a tentative pat, then a single, exploratory scratch. The sound was agony. An act of vandalism. A defacement of a national monument.

Her tour of desecration continued. She batted playfully at the cord dangling from the window blinds, testing the perimeter’s defences. She peered with guileless curiosity behind the television, a known dust-bunny spawning ground he had long ago declared a demilitarised zone. Every innocent exploration was, to Dmitri’s mind, a calculated probe of his empire’s weaknesses. The creature was relentless.

An hour passed. The mid-morning sun, his glorious ally, began its daily advance across the Persian rug. It formed a perfect, golden rectangle of warmth. His rectangle. By ancient right and impeccable routine, it was time for his 10:30am strategic nap. Protocol demanded it.

He descended from his perch, a silent, grey shadow flowing from the shelf to the floor. He padded towards the sunbeam, every muscle anticipating the familiar bliss, then he stopped.

She was in it!

The invader was sprawled across the very epicentre of his sunbeam. She lay on her back, belly offered to the ceiling in a posture of such profound indignity, he felt a vicarious shame. Her paws twitched in some oafish, blissful dream. The sheer, unmitigated audacity of it stole his breath.

This would be the first true battle. This was a contest of psychological fortitude, a battle of will. Claw and fang were methods for commoners.

Dmitri positioned himself just at the sunbeam’s edge, ramrod straight, and began The Stare. He focused the full, unblinking force of his imperial disapproval upon her sleeping form. He poured every ounce of his aristocratic contempt into that gaze, a force that should have been potent enough to curdle milk.

One of Grace’s tufted ears twitched. A single amber eye cracked open, blinked slowly, and focused on him. A soft, sleepy “mrrrow?” escaped her throat. The sound of such guileless, friendly inquiry completely neutralised his psychic assault. Proklyat’ye! Curses! His most powerful weapon was useless against such primitive simplicity.

He shifted to Plan B, Strategic Encroachment. He lay down, feigning relaxation, positioning his body so a single, white-gloved paw rested just inside the golden border. The message was clear to any civilised creature. You are on my land. I am magnanimously allowing you to remain. Grace, in response, merely stretched, extending a paw of her own until it brushed against his. A gesture of peace or a mocking imitation of his own gambit? The creature was infuriatingly opaque.

The humans chose this exact moment to return for a forgotten wallet. They peered into the living room, and the smallest one pointed. “Aww, Daddy, look! Mr Fluffy and Duchess are holding hands in the sun! They’re already best friends!”

Dmitri snatched his paw back as if burned. The humiliation was absolute. The humans, oblivious, chuckled to themselves. A moment later, with the jingle of keys and a final “Be good, you two!”, they were gone again. The front door clicked shut, restoring the dacha’s quiet. Only then, with the witnesses departed, did Dmitri rise with as much dignity as he could muster and stalk away. The war for the sunbeam was lost, for now.

He spent the next hour brooding under the armchair, plotting. The colonist, meanwhile, had apparently tired of her blatant provocations. She rose, stretched in a grotesque, drawn-out affair that ended with a final, pointed insult. Her tail fluffed to an obscene size and gave a flick that was pure mockery. He recognised the gesture for what it was: a peasant’s boast, a crude and undignified flaunting of her minor victory. Only after delivering this final, silent taunt did she wander off, seeming to search for a space of her own, a place free from his constant, withering surveillance.

Then she found it.

In the corner, where the humans had left it, sat The Object. The plastic prison. The vessel of indignities. The “stress-free” carrier.

Dmitri watched, his heart a cold stone in his chest. Durak. Fool, he thought. Do not go near it. Can you not feel the dark energy it radiates, the lingering scent of antiseptic and fear?

Grace approached it with a terrifying curiosity. She sniffed the air vents. She gave the little plastic grille door a gentle tug with her paw. It swung outward with a soft click. She peered into the darkness within.

Dmitri held his breath. He braced for the moment her survival instincts would finally kick in, the moment she would recoil in horror and flee.

She did not.

Instead, with a small, inquisitive trill, Grace Beaulieu stepped calmly inside the cat carrier. She turned a small circle, nudged the interior with her head as if testing the amenities, and then curled into a perfect, brown-tabby sphere. A deep, resonant purr, like a tiny engine starting up, vibrated from within the plastic shell.

Dmitri remained frozen under the chair, a statue of pure, uncomprehending horror. He had seen many things in his lives. He had faced down vacuum cleaners, survived the indignity of a festive reindeer costume, and endured the existential crisis of the red laser dot.

This was madness!

This creature was not an invader, nor a mere colonist. This was something else entirely, something alien. This was a creature that willingly, gleefully, slept in the belly of the beast.

The rules of war had just been rendered utterly obsolete.

Chapter 1