There was a fresh aroma of lemons and herbs filling my nostrils as I took a sip of my tea. Satisfied, I placed the cup back on its coaster. I stared at the ceiling for a moment, turned my attention to the falling leaves of the tree on the other side of the window, held my hands together, then flicked my gaze back to Danielle. “Say all that again, so I can definitely reply ‘no’ in good conscience.”
“Oh come ooonn, I’m not asking for much…” Danielle whined, tilting her head and giving me a pleading smile.
“Oh, you absolutely are. As usual.”
“Okay, maybe I am,” she conceded, rolling her eyes, ”but you’re the only one I’ve got left to turn to! You wouldn’t believe the attitude of vets in this city,” she said scornfully. “All you ask is for a little spell and suddenly they stare at you like you come from Mars.”
I pinched the brow of my nose, looking down at the table. “Danielle. I understand where you’re coming from—I mean I’ve known you for years—but that just can’t be done, you know?”
Danielle’s new kitten, affectionately named Frankie, was an odd little one. He didn’t purr, he barely ate. He wasn’t skittish, nor unconcerned in that way only cats can be, but rather… depressed. A few vets around town had confirmed he wasn’t physically sick or anything, which ruled out the most likely explanations.
That’s where Danielle’s latest hyperfixation came in. Word buttons. Apparently she had found out that a few companies offered customizable paw-pressable buttons that you could record any word to, and then train your pet to recognize. Of course it worked best with dogs, but there was video proof on the internet that cats could be taught to use these buttons as well.
Danielle’s idea was that giving Frankie buttons to vocalize his needs could help. The issue was teaching him to use those buttons in the first place, and with him being totally unreceptive to all kinds of rewards, she hadn’t managed to get any progress to stick.
She pushed herself against the back of her chair, wagging the sleeve of her sweater around. “I just want him to be happy, you know? It feels like he’s suffering, and I just… I just don’t get what he needs. I’ve tried everything.”
From the smell of the open bags of cat food I saw in the entrance, and the amount of cat toys I’d maimed my feet on in the living room, I could at least concede as much. “I’m sorry. I don’t think magic can help.”
“Can’t it?” she retorted. “It grew my mom’s leg back after her accident, and it helped with the rehab afterwards. And it’s not like I’m asking you to grow him a limb, only to give a gentle push in the right direction…”
I rested my head against my hand. It wasn’t like I didn’t get what she was saying. From a purely literal standpoint, magic could probably help in some way. The issue was that anything non-physical was ill-adapted for animals, at least the parts of it that had been studied. It wasn’t like magically psychoanalyzing a squid had ever come up, save in student theses maybe. “I guess I can at least look through my spellbook, but I don’t think…”
Danielle’s eyes twinkled with gratitude and she grabbed my hand in hers. The knitted layer of wool between the two was unbearably soft. “Thank you! I’ll be right back.” She let go just as quickly and stood up, disappearing from my field of view into her bedroom.
Ah, jeez. I might as well have already said yes at this point; it would’ve led to the same result. I opened the window and whistled to conjure my grimoire from my car, parked a few floors down.
My first in-person meeting with the cat in question made me see the problem very clearly. Frankie was a distinguished black-furred shorthair with dull green eyes. He held a plush honey bee in his mouth. When Danielle placed him down on the ground, he glanced at me for half a second before letting himself fall on his flank, staring off into space. His breathing was perfectly healthy, surprisingly steady, even. He didn’t appear in bad health beyond seeming a bit on the light side, which did put his strange behavior under a certain kind of light. “I see. Is that his favorite toy he’s holding on?”
“Pretty much the only thing he ever likes, yeah. It has catnip in it, but I haven’t seen him care about the plant otherwise,” Danielle explained, swinging her sleeve from side to side.
I tapped my foot, thinking. “Maybe he’s lonely?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. It didn’t feel reasonable to just adopt a second kitty, so instead I tried to bring him to a cat cafe a few times. He got all the treats, friends, toys and attention he could’ve ever wanted, but that didn’t change things either.”
I clicked my tongue and replied. “Yikes.”
“Yeah…”
I opened my spellbook on its table of contents, then flipped to the mind spells. ‘Compel Truth’, ‘Inspire Confidence’, ‘Memorize’, ‘Calm Down’, this was all well and good, but all of these things were intended for a certain bipedal animal about a dozen times the kitty’s size. “I really don’t know, Danielle… There’s nothing in the grimoire about doing this to a cat.”
Danielle gave me a Look. A Look that, from her, I knew well. A Look that said ‘I can’t say it aloud because I’m the one asking something from you, but you gotta let go of doing stuff by the book’. It was kind of surprising how specific that Look was, down to the finest grain of meaning.
We kept eye contact for a long minute. I was the first to break, shooting my gaze to the ceiling. “Urrrrrggghhhhhffffffffine,” I groaned. I turned my head back down to the book on my lap and kept searching. I flipped pages, considering the implications of each spell, mentally crossing them out one by one. It was towards the end of the section, in the category aptly named ‘Prohibited for exams’ — because that was the only criteria I’d cared about back when I’d first jotted them down — that I finally found something that didn’t jump out at me as a blatantly terrible idea.
‘Boost Intellect’. Something simple enough and pretty general, and that had the bonus of wearing off quickly. Language barrier, memorization, emotional intelligence, it kind of did it all. As such, it was rarely used over more specific spells, as anything it could do, something more narrow could do it better. But when we talked about a situation where you did need everything to get juuust that tiny little boost? That was quite perfect for the kitty to memorize one explanation, then be back to normal with it still in its head.
I mathed a few of the magical equations off the top of my head. Then I pulled out my phone, asked Danielle for paper and a pencil, and did them again, because hell if I was gonna let a mistake happen.
About fifteen minutes later, I was done adapting the spell to the best of my ability, having double checked, triple checked, checked one last time for good measure, that we weren’t gonna end up with a cat fricassée. Admittedly that was quite a bit more morbid than the actual worst case scenario, but imagining apocalyptic end results helped keep my mind focused.
What stared back at me from the page was a melody. I tugged on the string around my neck and pulled out the whistle necklace I was wearing.
I finally stood up from my chair and crouched in front of Frankie the kitty. He hadn’t moved an inch. His ear flicked, and his eyes tracked me as I placed myself in front of him, but beyond that, he was still numbingly chewing on his plush toy, looking like the dictionary picture of understimulation.
Holding the whistle with my thumb and index, I placed my free fingers above their respective holes, brought it to my lips, and started playing. A sound like blowing wind soon emerged, and as I poured magic into my breath, it slowly refined into a clear sounding pitch. I read the spell I had worked out, playing it along.
My fingers danced on the metal pipe, repeating the Leitmotiv on loop. It had quite the complex construction, but thankfully years of training helped my fingering to keep up. A thin veil of magic emanated from the flute, wrapping itself around Frankie, coating him in magical pigment before it permeated his body. He lifted his head off the ground, his pupils widening. He started sniffing and gnawing at his fur, the small bee unceremoniously tumbling down his side. Undeterred, I continued playing. Every parameter, the pitch, the tempo, the length of the notes, the volume, the technical flourishes, everything was carefully manipulated to weave the tapestry that made up the spell just right.
A blue shimmer engulfed his head and his attention was brought back to me. He looked at the instrument in my hand and stood up right.
I slowly eased off on the blowing until it came to a stop, and wiped off the whistle with a handkerchief.
“Hello there, little one,” I said to Frankie as I made myself comfortable, sitting cross legged.
He blinked slowly, staring at me. I had his attention.
And I didn’t know what to say. What to say first, at least. “You’re, uh, probably confused, what with awakening to higher thoughts and all…” I started, immediately coming to a dead end. I had to focus. “Point of the matter is, this is important. I need you to listen to me here.”
Another slow blink. He sat on his hindlegs, still looking up at me.
I put my palms together. I had to be way more careful with my words than I had just been. “We… don’t know what’s going on with you.” Was it appropriate to say ‘we’? Was I a part of this beyond this spell? …Focus. “We want you to be happy, though. We want to help. But we don’t know what you want. What you need.” I turned my head to Danielle. “Can you bring me one of your buttons?”
She quickly stepped into the foyer and came back with a box of them. “I’ve only programmed the one for now.” The one she handed to me had a sticker from a label printer that said ‘food’. “Technically a bad idea, but since even that one didn’t work…”
I gently took it from her hand and pressed it. Sure enough, though garbled by audio compression, I heard Danielle’s voice sounding out the word as clearly as possible. That would do. I placed it in front of the kitty and he followed it with his eyes. “Each of these buttons… means something.” Explaining the concept of language was exactly as hard as it sounded. “When you need that something, or— or want, that something, you press the button. It’ll, uh… impart that meaning. If you see something that you know you will want later, just… meow at it a couple times, and your mom will probably take the hint, and make you a button. That way you can get it anytime. Okay?”
Frankie lifted a glance to my face, then back to the button, then straight ahead. His eyes looked elsewhere, like all his brain power was set on processing this information I had told him. It lasted for a good thirty seconds, before he set his sight back on the button, and tentatively pawed it a couple times until the “Food!” soundbite within rang out.
And just like that, the magical breeze left the kitty’s body, and he unceremoniously fell back on his flank.
I hoped I hadn’t made a grave mistake.
Later that evening, as I was eating takeout at home, my phone rang with a text from Danielle. “thank u so so so so much frankie baby is already using his button! as i was about to serve him his food i asked him if there was something he wanted, it took him like a few minutes of thinking but eventually he headed to the button and he pressed it!!!! Success!!!!!!!! Hopefully that wasnt a fluke ill continue to reinforce it in the coming days. thank u so so much ur a treasure and i couldnt have done this w/o u xoxoxoxo if u need anything in return im in ur debt”
I shot back a message to keep me updated on the situation, just in case unintended developments showed up.
Oh my, a magic temporary uplift spell sounds like it has some ethical implications
Does, doesn’t it?
*pushes button for putting flowers on Algernon's grave*
oh no,
temporary higher thought, hmm no ethical problems here definately fine and normal.