Page 20 of Catastrophically Yours
The scratching intensified. Long, deliberate drags of claws against wood that made Drew wince. Piper's security deposit flashed through her mind, but more than that—this was Piper's sanctuary, her carefully maintained space that Drew was supposed to be protecting.
Her phone rang. Another potential venue, someone she'd left a message with hours ago.
"Hi, this is Drew about the benefit concert space..." She tried to focus on the conversation while Pickle's cries provided an increasingly frantic soundtrack. The caller—manager of a community center with a decent sound system—seemed interested until a particularly piercing yowl made him pause.
"Is everything alright there?"
"Just... pet situation. Totally under control." Drew forced brightness into her voice as Pickle launched himself at the bedroom door with enough force to rattle the frame. "So the twenty-eighth would work perfectly..."
By the time she hung up, having somehow secured the venue despite the chaos, Pickle had moved on to new destructive possibilities. Somehow, he'd gotten into Piper's home office.
The sight stopped Drew cold.
Paper everywhere. Not just scattered—shredded. Pickle had apparently discovered that documents were satisfying to claw, and Piper's filing system now resembled a ticker-tape parade. Tax papers with client names barely visible through parallel tears. Insurance forms reduced to strips. What looked like budget spreadsheets—the kind of detailed planning that took hours to create—now existing only as confetti.
"No, no, no." Drew dropped to her knees, trying to assess the damage. Some papers were merely displaced, shuffled out of order but salvageable. Others had been thoroughly destroyed, important information lost to Pickle's claws and teeth.
A bank statement torn exactly through the account number. A medical bill—possibly related to Piper's father's situation—with half the reference number missing. Client tax documents that Drew couldn't begin to understand but knew were irreplaceable.
Pickle sat in the center of the destruction, grooming his paw with elaborate casualness.
"This is bad." Drew's voice cracked. "This is really, really bad."
She started gathering pieces, trying to match tears like a jigsaw puzzle. Some documents could be reconstructed with tape and patience. Others were simply gone, victims of Pickle's stress-induced rampage.
Piper's key in the lock at 11:47 sent Drew's stomach plummeting.
"Hey, how did the venue calls..." Piper's voice trailed off as she took in the scene. Drew kneeling on the floor surrounded by paper scraps, Pickle now hiding under the couch with only his tail visible, the home office door open to reveal further chaos.
"I'm so sorry." The words tumbled out of Drew before Piper could speak. "This is all my fault. Pickle was stressed, and I couldn't calm him down, and he got into your office, and I know how much time you spend organizing everything..."
Piper set down her work bag with careful precision. Her face revealed nothing—not anger, not disappointment, just the blank expression Drew had learned meant Piper was processing.
"Which documents?" Piper's voice was steady, professional.
"Um..." Drew gestured helplessly at the piles. "Tax stuff, I think? And insurance papers. Some bank statements. There's this budget spreadsheet that looked really detailed..."
Piper knelt beside her, sorting through the shredded pieces and organizing them by color and document type.
"He's probably picking up on how stressed we've both been," Piper said quietly, reaching for a torn bank statement. "Cats get anxious when their people are anxious. Between the benefit concert planning and my family situation, plus..." She paused, fingers stilling on a paper fragment. "Plus knowing this arrangement has to end soon."
Drew looked up sharply. "What?"
"It's been almost two weeks." Piper's voice remained carefully neutral. "We agreed on temporary housing while you found something permanent. Your applications must be processing by now."
The words hit Drew like a physical blow. In all her focus on organizing the benefit, on helping Piper's family, she'd somehowforgotten that her time here had an expiration date. That Piper was probably expecting her to move out any day now.
"I..." Drew started, then stopped. How could she explain that she'd stopped looking for other apartments? That somewhere in the past two weeks, this had started feeling like home in a way that had nothing to do with temporary arrangements?
"I'm upset about the documents," Piper continued, holding up two pieces of what had been a client tax form, checking if they could be matched. "But anger won't reconstruct them. Most of this exists digitally—we can reprint from my backup files."
The relief was so sharp it made Drew dizzy. "Really?"
"Really." Piper's fingers brushed Drew's as they both reached for the same paper fragment. "Though we should probably address the underlying problem before he escalates to furniture destruction."
They worked side by side, Piper's laptop retrieving digital copies while Drew handled the careful work of taping together what could be saved. The familiar rhythm of collaborative problem-solving settled around them—Piper's logical approach balanced by Drew's intuitive pattern recognition.
"Here." Drew pulled up a pet advice website on her phone. "Says that big changes and owner stress are the main things that set cats off like this. Recommends consistent routines, pheromone diffusers, and..." She scrolled down. "Creating safe spaces where they can retreat."
