Daniel was awoken by an insistent knock around his front door. He got up, yawning, and grabbed his phone from the side table as he made his way out of the bedroom. As he passed by the living room, he had a look at the cat cave he bought yesterday. It was empty, the creature apparently having gone out. He also checked the automatic food bowl and noticed it was emptier than it was last night. At least it had eaten.

  There was another knock, and Daniel turned hurriedly opened his cardboard door. Outside stood a female figure of medium height, dressed in blue overalls and wearing a blue cap. The details were hard to make out, as the intense sunlight beaming from behind her back obscured her features.

  “Are you Daniel Thistlewitz?” She asked. “Jason Hobbes sent us here to fix your... door.”

  Daniel blinked.

  “Oh, right. Yes, that’s me.” He admitted.

  She sighed in relief.

  “We’ve been trying to call you for the last half hour, so we decided to just try the door. I’m glad we got it right.”

  “Sorry,” Daniel said, scratching his head. “I was sleeping.”

  “It’s 1PM.”

  He checked his phone. It was roughly 1:12.

  “Well, I didn’t really expect you guys to be working the weekend.”

  “Ah, yeah,” the figure said, coughing. “Jason called us in on a favour. Said that leaving a tenant without a door wasn’t really a good look, so he wanted us in as soon as possible.”

  “And that’s the door there, I guess?”

  Daniel was looking down the hall, where 2 men wearing overalls were dragging a grey painted door over.

  “Yup,” The female worker said, nodding. “Installation should take about 15 minutes, no costs.”

  “Oh, great. I’ll get out of your way, then.” He said, retreating back inside.

  He went to the kitchen to fix himself some coffee, and having nothing better to do, watched the repairmen at work. It wasn’t too interesting. They set the door right, screwed the hinges in, and that was that. The repairwoman inspected the job from the inside of the house before sighing in satisfaction.

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  “All done.” She said, dusting her hands off. “Say, you have a pet?”

  She was looking at the cat cave.

  “Hm? Yeah. Just got it a week or 2 ago.”

  “So... where is it?” She asked nonchalantly.

  “I don’t know, it went out somewhere. Why do you ask?”

  “I love pets, I want to see it.” She shrugged. “So, it’s a cat, then?”

  “...Yes.” Daniel said, after a beat.

  The repairwoman gave him a funny look, but then coughed into her hand.

  “Sorry, can I use your bathroom real quick?”

  “Sure, it’s just over there.”

  He pointed out the way and she walked further into the hallway. Unknown to Daniel, her eyes under her cap glowed yellow, harsh and sharp, scanning every nook and cranny of his apartment. He was unable to see it, as he was focused on finishing his coffee.

  The repairmen left soon after and he was left alone for an afternoon. Now that the wind wasn’t constantly blowing into the house, and there was no white noise from the TV, it felt much quieter. Daniel frowned. He should be used to this, but still felt somewhat uncomfortable. At least this time he knew why – as always, it was the creature. While he was content to let it roam about on its own, he still felt uncomfortable when he couldn’t see it. Although, that was only a part of it. Really, the thing that bothered him was a question.

  Now that he didn’t have the door excuse, what would he do with the creature?

  As if reading his mind, an ankle-height tap resounded on his door. It was here. Daniel got up to open the door, but stopped in front of it, thinking. He thought back to what Samantha said, and now was as good a time as any to set things right.

  There were many drawbacks to keeping the creature around – the need to buy food for it, the whole war situation, and the constant threat of government intervention to name a few. And to counter that, the advantages it gave were... it brought him things sometimes.

  Huh, was that really it?

  As Daniel stood in front of his door, thinking, as the knocks grew more insistent. He stood there for a while, and then a while longer. Just thinking. And then a tap came from his window instead.

  He walked over to find the creature staring at him, hovering in the air in front of the window. It looked rather worried, as much as something like it could. And for some reason, as soon as he saw it face-to-proboscis, the reasons to get rid of it slowly went away.

  Daniel reached out to open the window. Then, he had to press in and put some elbow grease into it. It had been a while since he’d opened it. After a minute of pulling, the window opened suddenly, slamming into the windowsill and shattering the pane into pieces.

  The creature fell back to the floor in surprise. They stood there for a minute, before Daniel exhaled slowly.

  “...It’s alright. Just come inside for now.” He said after a pause.

  Sizing up the obstacles, it prepared its hind legs to pounce and jumped like a spring, using its wings to hover through the broken window. It slowly hovered down in front of Daniel, settling down onto the floor before looking at the scattered fragments of glass. For his part, Daniel shrugged and went to get the broom.

  “Come on, come on, out of the way.” He said, shooing the creature. It retreated into its bed.

  As Daniel got to sweeping up the broken glass, he started reflecting on himself. There were a lot of reasons for him to get rid of the creature, but a few reasons to keep it. For one thing, he’d just bought it a bed and an automatic feeder.

  It would be a waste to not get some use out of them, he thought to himself. And he could always think about kicking it out later.