Posted Jan. 29, 2020, 7:40 p.m. by Cadet Anders Taurean (Scientist) (Nicholas Tardive)
The instant Anders Taurean finished with all the routine ship check-ins, he found his quarters and checked on his cat. The Buenos Aires streetcat displayed unrelenting anger and, in spite of the young cadet’s fears, remained unphased by the reality of space flight. It kept him sane, boarding the Challenger with such a little monstrosity. A puff of evenly distributed black-and-white fur, this cat displayed Yin-Yang imagery while possessing multitudes more Yin.
Boxes containing what few personal effects the new cadet brought with him were clawed and gnawed to shreds, turned over spilling out their meager contents. Between finding a food the whirlwind of fur would find acceptable and cleaning up the remnants of its wrath, Anders had little time to relax before being called to his first shift aboard his first ship. During the graduation ceremony held for the Challenger‘s previous cadet crew, Anders spent most of the time sifting through Lt. Garth’s astroparticle equipment tinkering around with and cleaning the well-worn pieces.
Upon returning to his quarters, Anders expected to find the cat stood atop a mountain of its inanimate victims. Instead the room remained much in the relatively-cleaned state he had left it. Suspicious, he conducted a search through the quiet little apartment. The cat, unable to shrink itself to molecular size or turn invisible, appeared to be missing.
”…Major?” He called out, confused. Waiting another moment, he again called out, “Major Major?”
Ten more minutes of aimless wandering and calling out the cat’s name, Anders decided it must have somehow escaped. More confused than ever, he stepped out from his room to an empty hallway and looked to his left and his right a few times. Deciding left, the cadet turned and looked for any sort of hint of a loose cat; scratches along the lower end of the wall, any kind of markings.
The first two people he passed, both Ensigns, he asked: “Have you…seen a cat loose about this floor?”
Lacking any sort of luck, Cadet Taurean continued his frantic search, half-hunched rushing down the hall, popping up to confront the occasional passerby as to potential sightings of the cat.
(Cadet Anders Taurean, Science Division)
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