Tripod

“Abso-fucking-lutely not.”

“Well, what else are we going to do?”

“Call a fucking exterminator! This little bastard is NOT staying!”

There is a cat in the house. How the cat got into the house was entirely Steve’s fault. Sam warned Steve that the screen door didn’t latch after they accidentally smashed it while moving Steve’s things in. Sam told Steve he was going to the hardware store to get the new handle to fix the door. The door would have been fixed in an hour, but then the mailman came. And when the mailman came, Steve had to go out and say hi, leaving the front door open with the screen door unlatched. Steve swore his back was turned for only ten seconds. Sam just glared until Steve blushed and apologized.

But an apology does not change the fact that there is a cat in the house. And not just any cat, a three legged terror with a half dead mouse and muddy paw prints that the stupid thing has managed to get everywhere, including on the counter where it knocked the fruit bowl on the floor while it chased the mouse into the bread box.

Steve realized his mistake almost instantly upon returning to the house as the fruit bowl shattering to the floor had spectacular timing. He has since been unable to correct the problem as the three legged cat has evaded capture for the last two hours.

Sam is not thrilled.

“I mean, I’ve already taken care of the mouse,” Steve reasons. “I’m sure if we just leave the cat alone, he’ll calm down and be easier to deal with. We’ve been scaring him for two hours, wouldn’t you run away too?”

“No, Steve, I’d have had the common decency to leave when I’m not wanted!” Sam shouts uncooperatively.

“There’s a military base missing an experimental set of wings that might make you a hypocrite,” Steve says with only a hint of cockiness.

Sam’s cheeks flush but his jaw sets in defiance. He holds the expression for a moment before deflating. "Fine. You have a point," he concedes, turning to walk away.

"Where are you going?" Steve calls after him.

"That tripod," he spits with angry insensitivity, "already got mud and blood on everything in sight. He doesn't need to piss on it too." Sam exits to the garage to get the cat litter he keeps for oil spills.

Steve shrugs and finds the cleaning supplies for the mud and blood.

The next day, after the cat has not made an appearance in at least twelve hours, Steve buys some cat food. When Sam stares him down, Steve says he did it to maybe lure the cat out of the basement that Sam scared him into. Steve shakes the food bowl for a half hour before giving up. In the morning, some of the food is missing. Steve refills it before going for his morning jog.

Two days after that, Steve notices a cat shaped patch of loose hair on his bed, but the cat himself is not there upon waking. Sam finds a hairball on his bed. Sam makes Steve do the laundry, which Steve thinks is fair since the cat is his fault and Sam was gracious enough to let Steve in his house in the first place, the least he can do is not wreck it.

Their living situation was born mostly out of mutual agreement after some bullying and compromise. Steve left the hospital AMA under the condition that he stayed in Sam’s guest bedroom so Sam could keep an eye on the worst of the injuries and help keep the impossible-to-reach bandages clean. Super soldier notwithstanding, it took two weeks to get back to relative normalcy. He still had some pain getting up and down stairs, but breathing and eating no longer caused any discomfort.

By the time Steve was back to good, Sam busied himself convincing Steve to move in. He had a valid set of arguments that were ultimately unnecessary because Steve agreed immediately. He did not want to go back to his shot up, bloody apartment. He hadn’t gotten around to making it a home anyway. The apartment was pre-furnished and he hardly spent time there for all the missions he was assigned to and the others he volunteered to join. It was his home more out of convenience than actual want for the space.

Living with Sam was better, even with the extra laundry duty.

Sam fills a glass of milk and leaves it on the counter while he goes to get the mail. When he returns, it’s shattered on the floor. His glass cups dwindle down to five of the original eight. Steve purchases Sam a set of plastic cups that match his dish set. In the same shopping trip, he purchases a scratching post and a bag of assorted cat toys.

“Tripod needs exercise,” Steve says.

Steve doesn’t say how he spent at least three hours researching tripod cats earlier in the afternoon. It started as a distraction from his Bucky obsession research, but morphed into something not heart wrenchingly painful so he didn’t stop. Then, when his afternoon prospects became either visiting Peggy or more Bucky, he did the selfish thing and went to the pet store.

“Did you. Oh my god,” Sam stutters with a brokenly hysteric laugh. “I don’t even know where to start.”

The cat toys are scattered about the house every morning, some stuck under the couch and the coffee table quite clearly out of Tripod’s reach. Steve searches under various surfaces and piles them all back up in the middle of the living room again before going for his morning jog.

“We cannot keep him,” Sam says, watching the entryway to the living room. Steve is leaning against the counter, mug of coffee in hand while Sam flips pancakes and bacon and eggs. Tripod is sitting on the couch, visible for the first time in two days.

“I didn’t say we should,” Steve shrugs.

“We need to take him to the shelter, what if he’s microchipped?”

“What if he’s not?”

Three days after that, Tripod jumps onto Steve’s lap. He leans his missing limb into Steve’s chest and starts kneading bread with his remaining front paw while Sam looks on from his spot on his oversized Lazyboy recliner. Tripod looks up at Steve and squeaks a meow, then chirps like a pigeon when Steve rewards him with a scritch behind the ears.

Steve looks up at Sam like a deer in the headlights. Sam caves. “We take him to the vet. If he’s not microchipped, he can stay.”

Sam makes the appointment, not trusting that Steve wouldn’t lie to him about the results of the microchip scan. There is no microchip. They spend the fifty dollars to get it implanted. Sam also bullies Steve into doing the responsible thing and hanging a few posters at the vet’s office and calling the local shelters, just in case. They leave the vet’s office with a tips sheet for how to adapt to a three legged cat that Steve was too polite to decline.

Steve waits a cursory week, but when no inquires about the lost posters come, he spends a fortune on the cat. He gets a second scratching post that has four levels and a ramp. He gets catnip balls and large mouse shaped plush toy that won’t get stuck under the couch. He buys more cat litter, and several actual litter box to replace the large tub they had been using. He buys the large bag of cat food and, by recommendation, an electric water fountain to encourage hydration. He gets string toys, a cat cube, and a cat hut.

It takes three trips to bring it all into the house. Sam quietly judges Steve while he unpacks his purchases for an unimpressed Tripod.

He puts the second scratching post in front of the sliding back door in the kitchen. The perch on the top needs to be vacuumed of cat hair regularly. Sam invests in a spray bottle. Actually, several. They came in a three pack and Sam bought two. He keeps one in every room.