Name: Branchy StargM006 Gender: Male, intact Breed: Wild Coat: Blue Dark Checker Classic Tabby Eyes: Yellow Genetic Code: B+//b (Blue, Carries Brown) CD//tcl (Dark Checker, Classic Tabby) +//e (Carries Recessive Red) +//och (Carries Cherry) +//+ (Homozygous Yellow Iris) Size: 50 Domestication: 64 Friendliness: 36 Noisiness: 23 Parents: Father: Ash Red Recessive Red Dark Checker Dianthus M033 Mother: Brown Barless Classic Tabby Coreopsis CaeliF008 (Father: Burny Mac (M133), Mother: After-Rain (F146) Siblings if known: (plenty) Mate: Offspring: Current Location: Art By/Born-Adopted From: Kitsu / Stargleam Cattery

Nothing prepared Barney for the sight of one particular winged cat. Even if there were half a dozen of them flitting around Dry Cove now, this one hit him in a way that was Vortal. Because there was one thing that did connect him to many other dimensions' worth of himself: one particular cat, in his childhood. And though 'this' Barney hadn't gotten a scar from rescuing his 'first cat', he absently felt the one on his own cheek in sympathy while a memory that was not his own played through his mind.

*** from Nine Half-Lives ***

Come to think of it, Barney realized that his one visible scar, that inch-long thing on his left cheek, had been caused by a cat. Well, not caused by, so much as happened because of . Barney appraised the cat that lay stretched half-over his lap. Whatever was on the television was of no importance to either man nor beast, but it played endlessly in the background as Barney picked up the cat's sleep-limp tail.

That other cat, how old had Barney been? Maybe six? No, seven. He'd barely started second grade. Kids had gathered around a particularly old tree in the neighborhood and claimed that a squirrel was up there being menaced by a pair of ravens. But it turned out that it was a small cat. Grey, like Max, only a more solid shade as he recalled. It had been a noisy one, so unlike this cat soundly sleeping on his lap now.

That one, though, fought with a nerve that Barney always respected. He'd bat at the one bird, the other would try taking a bite out of it. Barney had enough, started climbing the tree to get the birds away from it, and maybe bring the cat down. When the old tree chose to give out to the termites and fire damage, rot and gravity, was of course when Barney had just managed to shoo the birds and take hold of the terrified feline.

His mother claimed that he was very brave, but that he ought to have called an adult out. She held his hand when the stitches went in. She wouldn't let him keep that cat, either. But it kept coming around: he saw it perched in their own yard's tree, looking at him through his second-story bedroom window at times.