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namethat-i-oughttohavetoldyou · 2 years

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Eel!

And here it finally is, the long-awaited Tuggerstrap fic! It’s quite short and silly, but I am very happy with it. Although I mostly write the cats as actual cats, I very much have Nicky Wuchinger Tugger and Robert Marx Munkustrap in mind here. Gender cat and chonk cat, my beloveds. I’m a little shy to tag this, but: @falasta @cryptidvoidwritings I am finally pulling my weight here! Haha. Anyhow. My love to all who read/like/reblog and enjoy! ♥

“Uh-oh.”

That was the last thing that came out of Etcetera’s mouth before an avalanche of rubbish rolled over her, burying her up to her ears.

The tomkittens screamed, Jemima began to cry and Electra hid her face behind her paws. When she dared to look, George was plodding through the litter, whining and snuffling at the two small white ears sticking out. He shoved his muzzle downwards, nosing around like a newborn kitten searching for milk, and finally pulled Etcetera out by the scruff of her neck. Pouncival screamed again, but this time in joy, or so he claimed later. Still wiping tears from her eyes, Jemima scampered over as quickly as she could, worriedly batting at Etcetera’s flanks when she was close enough.

“Are you alright?” she asked, almost tuned out by Etcetera’s squeal (she was very ticklish), ears pulled back against her skull. She looked a lot like Bombalurina in that very moment, but none of those present dared to mention it. “Are you? You need to tell me!”

“I am,” Etcetera assured her, standing on her hind legs and bravely fighting off Jemima’s inquisitive paws, baring her tiny fangs in a hiss.

Jemima hissed back. She immediately felt a little better.

“George, you saved me!” George found himself receiving the biggest hug that Etcetera could offer, which wasn’t really that big, considering her small size. On the other hand, coming from Etcetera, everything felt a lot bigger than it actually was, be it a hug, a ladybug that she had discovered on her way to the den or a piece of chicken that she benevolently shared with her peers. Even Munkustrap seemed to grow a little taller whenever she climbed onto his shoulders, even though that was highly improbable.

If dogs could blush, George would have certainly done so, but instead he panted a little, tongue hanging out of his mouth and his tail doing the windshield-wiper movements that the other kittens just couldn’t seem to correctly imitate, no matter how hard they tried.

“George can be Cat Morgan,” Pouncival decided, and Electra nodded firmly.

(The avalanche had interrupted their play, or rather the distribution of roles. Etcetera had demonstrated an impressive amount of back walkovers to be cast as Etterberry, which had unfortunately placed her too closely to one of the haphazardly stacks, resolving in a chain reaction with the whole hill collapsing in the process. Luckily for the kittens, said hill mostly consisted of waterlogged newspapers and old shopping brochures, with the occasional book here and there.)

Tumblebrutus huffed and complained, but he was mercilessly shot down from all sides, so he sat down a few steps away, hugged his tail and sulked.

As his friends began their play, he examined the trash spread around him in a desperate attempt to stave off the advancing boredom. A big, colourful book caught his eye, half-hidden beneath a stack of Harrod’s catalogues turned paper mush. While he couldn’t read the title, the cover showed a big fish of some kind. It had teeth. Intrigued, Tumblebrutus crawled closer and freed the book from it’s paper-maché prison, gasping with delight when he discovered a second fish next to the first, which had even more teeth.

“Guys! Look!”

“Don’t distract us! We’re at a key scene,” Electra complained, not exactly knowing what a key scene was. Munkustrap always said it to Tugger when the big tomcat wanted to cuddle in the middle of the kitten’s designated story time, no matter if he just started the story or was in the middle of the most thrilling climax. Tugger never heeded Munkustrap’s plaint anyway, so maybe he just said that out of habit. Who was to say. It sounded very grown-up, at least.

“I’ve never seen so many teeth on a fish before,” Tumblebrutus said half-goading, half-astonished.

He needed to say no more; in less than a blink of an eye he was surrounded by his playmates, tiny noses and paws curiously nudging the book in front of them.

“Do you think it’s a book about monsters?” George whispered fervently, tail wiping his imaginary wind shield.

Jemima meowed impatiently from where she had been pushed to the back of the group. “Let me see, let me see!”

Pouncival ducked a little so she could climb over him and squeeze herself between the book and Tumblebrutus.

“Creatures from the deep sea,” she spelled out painstakingly, little forehead throwing wrinkles. “The sea is always deep, Gus said. Is there a flat sea?”

“Shallow,” Electra corrected her, hooking a claw into the soggy cardboard and opening the book to the first page. “Alonzo said that something being called ‘deep’ just means that the humans haven’t completely explored it yet, because it’s too far away. Like deep space.”

“Then how can they write books about it, if they don’t know?”

Electra didn’t know that either, so they settled on asking Alonzo later and concentrated on the book, whiskers almost brushing the pages and pupils blown wide. More than once they had to ask George to pant a little less so he wouldn’t drip on it.

Since Jemima was the only one who had been patient enough during Jellylorum’s lessons to actually learn how to read a little, the kittens surrendered the part of turning the pages to her, even though it was very hard, their curiosity almost too vast to stay on one double page for too long.

Luckily the texts grew shorter after they had troughed through two and a half pages of “preface” and subsequently argued about what in the world a preface was. Pouncival insisted that it was the “first face”, like the humans called their first names “prenames”, but thinking too long about humans having multiple faces scared them a little, so they left it at that and returned to the task at hand.

“Look, that’s an ew,” Etcetera pointed when Jemima leafed to then next page, showing a snake-like monster with small eyes and pointy teeth.

“It sure looks like one,” Tumblebrutus giggled, and Pouncival added: “It looks so slimy and slippery!”

“It’s not an ew, it’s an eel,” Jemima corrected them patiently, her small paw wandering along below the letters to not lose her place. “But it says here that they produce slime, so I guess you’re right.”

“Ew,” Electra said.

George shuddered. “No, eel,” he corrected.

“I’ll say eel now if something is slimy,” Etcetera decided before Electra could roll her eyes, and the other kittens thought that to be a great idea. It would certainly confuse some of the adults, and it could be their secret language!

Jemima’s paw had reached the bottom of the right page. She read aloud: “European eels, however, are not the only serpentine creatures that can be found in our oceans. As they both belong to the An-gui-lli-for-mes, what a terrible word, they bear close resemblance to...”

Impatient and excited, Electra reached out and flipped to the next page, and in the next second all six kittens screamed like banshees.

Jemima kicked the book away and buried her face in George’s flank, George began to howl, Tumblebrutus scrambled back so quickly that he stepped on Pouncival’s paw, crashed against Electra and making them both fall over, Pouncival cradled his hurt paw and cried, and Etcetera launched herself back into the same paper pile that George had rescued her from earlier.

Munkustrap was there before they could take enough breath for a second bout of screaming.

He gathered an armful of kittens and ushered the rest to hide behind his spread legs, pupils wide, whiskers spread out fully and ears erect to look out for danger.

When he couldn’t find anything unusual after a while and the screaming had quietened to a fearful whimpering, he set the kittens on his arm down and loafed, George flopping before him onto the floor and the other kittens crawling to hide under his thick fur. Munkustrap washed George’s face and ears with his tongue and purred, radiating so much calm and safety that another cat was drawn into the little pile, laying on his side and resting his maned torso on George’s forelegs. The silver tabby lifted an eyebrow into the cat’s direction. The Rum Tum Tugger smirked. They shared a long blink, then Munkustrap extracted a paw from his fluff and looked at the kitten that appeared beneath it.

“What happened?”

“Eel,” Pouncival sniffled, showing Munkustrap his injured paw.

“Eel?” Tugger asked, playful confusion in his voice, but the kittens were too drained to laugh about it.

Munkustrap examined Pouncival’s paw, finding only a small bruise that would vanish quickly with a bit of ice.

Jemima’s head popped out under Munkustrap’s chin, pointing at the book that lay sprawled on its back a few metres away. “It’s a monster book.”

“I see,” Munkustrap responded, exchanging a look with Tugger.

Tugger nodded, rubbed against George one more time and then stood up, sauntering over to the book. He pulled a paw back and lashed out, slapping the book until the kittens were certain the monsters inside had nothing left to give, and then he sat on it.

“Aha,” Tugger said, smugly grooming his paw. “Nothing to be feared now.”

Pacified, the kittens emerged from their protective living blanket. Pouncival limped noticeably.

“I’m sorry, Pounci,” Tumblebrutus said, sadly reaching out a paw to bat at Pouncival’s ears. “We ought to go to Jenny, she’ll make it go away.”

George jumped up, almost running Munkustrap over. “I’ll lead the way!”

“Very good. I’ll come meet you at the nursery later for a story,” Munkustrap said, quickly straightening up and ignoring Tugger’s immature tittering.

The kittens made agreeing noises and the small procession toddled off, lead by George and tailed by Electra, one or two of them giving the book a good smack when they passed it, just for good measure.

The two tomcats watched them go, Munkustrap shaking out his fur to smooth it out, hackles still a little raised from the sudden cacophony of screeching.

“Eel,” Tugger mused after Electra’s triangular tail had vanished around the corner, standing up from where he still sat on the offending book and examined the opened page.

“Moray,” he read, squinting at the letters, ears pressing to his skull without his notice.

Munkustrap joined him. “Oh. That does look terrifying. Poor things.”

The page showed a long, spotted fish with a gaping mouth full of sharp teeth, drawn in such a way that it seemed to jump out of the book.

“It’s very-” Munkustrap started, but in that moment Tugger hissed and arched his back, swiping at the drawing and ripping out almost half of the page. Then he sat back on his haunches, dragging a paw through his mane and yawned.

Munkustrap said nothing, but the grin tugging at his muzzle was certainly obvious and also went stubbornly ignored.

“I like my fish without teeth, please and thank you,” Tugger grumbled after yawning again, trying to hide his embarrassment.

“I agree.” Munkustrap closed the book to look at the cover. “Creatures from the deep sea. If they were looking for a book to be frightened by, they certainly found one.”

“Those look weird,” Tugger commented, abandoning his mane to look at the cover. “I don’t know about you, but I’m in a spooky mood. Let’s see what else they’ve got.”

“As long as it doesn’t end with your ripping the poor book to shreds…”

“Hush.”

Munkustrap grinned and hushed.

Tugger gave his paw a lick and leafed through the thick cardboard pages of the book, the smell of wet paper and mould rising to their noses. He saw Munkustrap scrunching his face from the corner of his eyes. Hand-drawn illustrations of the most interesting sea creatures adorned the pages, and the font was big and bold enough for even him to read, were he interested in doing so. He was not, and so he leafed on, halting here and there to giggle about especially strange-looking fish and various other sea-dwellers. Munkustrap had draped himself over his shoulder and purred whenever he remembered to do so, occupied with trying to read the texts quicker than Tugger could turn the pages. Every now and then he would chirp with soft annoyance when the page was turned just when he came across an exciting fact, but his annoyance was quickly forgotten as soon as they both set their eyes on the new page, hunting for information and entertainment like Bustopher for his next dinner.

“Oh,” Tugger said when they came to the last few pages. Munkustrap opened his eyes after his very long absolutely-not-about-to-fall-asleep blink and looked. Tugger lifted one paw and pointed at a small round sea creature, aptly named “puffer fish”. “Look, it’s you!”

Munkustrap’s purr broke off into a rumbling laugh that made Tugger’s whiskers quiver, a heavy warmth pooling in his chest.

“Oh? Am I really so prickly?”

“Nooooo,” Tugger sighed languidly, leaving the book be for now and rolling over. Munkustrap gave in and let himself be gently flung on his back with a little “oof”, Tugger landing on top of him like a purring, fluffy blanket.

“It’s just the shape that made me think of you. You’re round, even more so when you’re cold or angry.”

“Why, what happens then?”

“You puff up. Like... a puffer fish cat.”

“Oh, I see.” Munkustrap laughed again, an unworried, airy kind of laugh, letting his head fall back and stretching his hind legs.

(Heaviside above, Tugger was so in love.)

Legs sufficiently stretched and front paws comfortably resting on his chest, Munkustrap almost mourned Tugger’s weight on him vanishing as he lifted himself up and sat back on his haunches, even though breathing came a lot easier now.

Before he could complain, big paws began to knead his vulnerable underbelly, and Munkustrap felt a little weak with the revelation of how much he trusted this cat looming over him, of how he trusted him enough to let his claws get even in the vicinity of the most tender part of his body.

“So soft,” Tugger hummed appreciatively, gently pressing his muzzle against Munkustrap’s round belly, paws still making biscuits as if it was going out of style. Munkustrap sighed blissfully. A pair of black paws sunk into Tugger’s mane, starting to knead in kind, claws just short of reaching the skin underneath the thick, fluffy coat.

“So soft,” Munkustrap reciprocated with a dorky smile, his purr bubbling up again and vibrating under Tugger’s paws.

The heavy warmth in his chest was back. Tugger blinked a long, long blink and kneaded with a little more force, joyfully noting how Munkustrap seemed to melt under it, his own rhythm faltering. “My puffer fish.”

A playful frown. “Ah, now I don’t have a nickname like that for you – that just won’t do. Let me get up and see if I can find a long, cocky fish with big fins on its neck.”

Another “oof” followed when Tugger let himself fall forward again, paws shifting to make biscuits on the silver tabby’s sides instead, his head tucked under Munkustrap’s chin.

“No can do, ’m afraid. Gravity… you know how it is.”

“I do know. Seems to be especially bad in warm patches of sun.”

“You’re very warm. ‘S gotta have to do with it.”

“Am I? Then you’re probably right.”

They stayed like that for a while, their purring lining up and reaching the exact same frequency that seemed to make their very bones vibrate.

Then a small weight collided with Tugger’s back, and Pouncival appeared behind Tugger’s mane, paw fully healed and very unwilling to wait much longer for Munkustrap to come to the den and tell them a story at his own pace.

Munkustrap sighed and pressed a kiss to Tugger’s nose, who groaned in protest. But he gave in after three or four more kisses, because really, he loved hearing Munkustrap’s stories, and he loved to interrupt him in the middle of a “key scene” even more, so he held onto Munkustrap’s tail with his teeth like a kitten crossing the street with their mother and let Pouncival ride on his back like a cowboy on a wild horse, bucking and bouncing.

(Munkustrap had to put his paw down when the rest of the caboodle wanted to ride on Tugger, too, including George.)

“You’re a fluffer fish.”

“What, you couldn’t come up with anything better than that, my beloved puffer fish?”

“I would have, if you’d let me read the book.”

Mirrored smiles on white muzzles, one surrounded by stripes, the other by spots.

“There’s nothing I enjoy like a horrible moray…”

“Now I’m insulted.”

“Don’t be prickly, now.”

Munkustrap wheezed with laughter.

Everlasting eel, Tugger thought. I am so in love.

Me: (finds out that cats yawn and lick their paws when they are embarrassed) man I’m gonna use that in every fic ever (I’m not an expert in cat behaviour, so don’t come for me sjdkajskd) Fun fact! In my fics, all kittens with two “canon” names, like Sillabub and Jemima, are seperate kittens, and I wanted to use all of them here, but I constantly lost count and stayed with the 98 kittens instead. The others are still existent, of course, they’re just... napping somewhere. I love that I finally got this done. The cuddles and biscuits scene was there first and the Plot™ came afterwards. It worked out, I suppose! XD Thank you for reading, and I’d like to say one last word: Eel. <3 Oh yeah, and this Tugger and Munk are obviously not related. Just in case.

#cats the musical #munkustrap #rum tum tugger #tuggerstrap #namethat-i writes #namethat-i's catsiversary #general silliness <3

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