Forums » Sci-Fi Roleplay » Cat and Mouse (1x1 w/ Schrodinger's Cat)

It was dark over the city: hardly a creature was stirring, excluding the mouse. He was curled up in a hole dug in the city garden, a tiny little nest made of his many findings; coins, jewelry, a watch that glowed oddly, really anything that would catch the eye of a wandering rodent. He considered himself an adventurer, out on a quest for bobbles and trinkets all around the world; London, that was.

Currently, the mouse was half asleep, nibbling on a nut vigorously for dinner. The flower bed he was nesting in was near the center of the garden near a bird fountain, where birds chattered loudly. They didn't seem to bother him though.

Of course, what the mouse didn't know yet, was that a cat was also stirring in that dark hour. The orange cat crouched patiently, easily a good 50 meters away. Typically birds would have caught the interest of the cat as well, but it's hard to ignore hundreds of years of hardwired instinct. Those instincts were honed in on the mouse in its nest.

As time has passed, cats and mice have evolved interesting methods to make the chase simultaneously more difficult and more easy in turn. Cats evolved to hear the ultrasonic noises that mice make and mice evolved to have a heightened sense of smell which was especially keen in detecting their predators. And thus the game continued.

In another time, the cat might have reflected on this and thought it funny. Instead, he crept slowly forward, waiting and watching to see if the mouse had realized his presence. His yellow eyes were focused on the flower bed where the nest was. He felt like a tightened coil, ready to release all of his energy at once. Still he waited. If he weren't careful, the mouse would get away and the dance would continue.

The mouse's ears were perked, small munching noises coming from the hole in the ground. The chatter of the birds seemed to overpower the noise of the cat's footsteps. All would go well for the cat, assuming he stepped carefully and didn't somehow disturb the avians.

A tree stood near the garden, and some of its branches had fallen to litter the ground, as it was fall. A light blanket of leaves dusted the park, something the predator would have to keep aware of.

[Roll 1 d6 for event.
1 = step on crunchy leaves/twigs
2 = disturb birds
3-6 = safe: continue on to recieve rodent dinner]

The cat's sharp yellow eyes detected the carpet of leaves on the ground. Autumn could certainly be a noisy time for a predator, but luckily the cat was agile. He skirted around the leaves where he could and placed his feet carefully to avoid the devastating crunch where he couldn't avoid them. His slow trek took him nearer the mouse's home.

The closer he got, the more intense was his desire to catch the mouse. Although truthfully he felt no hunger pangs, his focus continued to drive him onward. Just before he reached the wall of the flower bed, he paused, as if unsure of his next choice. Then he padded quietly upon the nest to look for its opening, hoping to catch a glimpse of the rodent inside.

The mouse was visible from the outside, if just barely, along with the glint of light off various small trinkets. The watch continued to glow and pulsate a soft yellow around its face.

The body of the cat appeared to block out the moonlight, reaping the hole of it's glint and instead bathing it in the soft yellow of the watch. The mouse glanced about, confused before looking up to see the cat. Startled, he began to burrow further, a difficult feat considering all of the treasure scattered about.

At first, the burrowing mouse only enticed the cat more. He pulled his paw up to reach at the hole, but then looked a little more closely at the objects scattered around the nest. Various trinkets, mostly shiny when the light touched them. The glowing watch especially grabbed his attention. A moment was all he really needed to start second guessing himself and break away from the hunter's mindset.

"Wait!" he called, a hint of disappointment in his voice.

He couldn't know if this was an intelligent creature right away, but he has his hunches. And naturally he'd just scared the living daylights out of the mouse.

"Wait? Do you take me for a dimwit?!" He was now out of reach, eyes glinting a dark green from deep in the soil. "I'll not have myself stewed tonight."

The soil was soft and spongy, the cat would find, the tunnel narrow. Digging might have produced some promising results, though it might bury the burrow in dirt.

The cat smirked when he got an answer, and an especially cognisant one at that. The cat chose not to dig in the soil and instead sat on it haunches, taking a much more indirect approach to things.

"I didn't know that you were intelligent. My sincerest apologies. Instincts are hard to break, as you must well know yourself."

The cat's eyes shifted to the shiny baubles littering the mouse's nest and he tilted his head. "Any particular reason you collected these objects? Or did you just like how shiny they were?"

Since he'd sat back, moonlight would again be glinting off the shinies in the nest, and maybe even showing a little more of the mouse, provided he hadn't pulled some of the soil to block the entrance into his makeshift getaway hole.

The mouse was still wary of the cat, though he relaxed somewhat. The light bounced off of the precious items and reflected his face as he spoke. "I collect them because people don't take good care of them, and I do. Plus, they're shiny." He was about to point out that he walked on two legs, unlike other mice, but relented. There was no need to berate the cat. Yet.

The rodent stood firmly, paws on its hips. "Name's Sparky. I'd invite you in, but I'm afraid I can't accommodate you large folk." Instead, he drew a rag from his pouch (which was on a belt he wore) and started scrubbing the shinies meticulously.