Chapter 12: The Office and the Oil
The floorboards were cool and unforgiving against his skin. Travis lay there until the tremors in his hands subsided, until the raw scrape of his breathing smoothed into something quiet and steady. The weight in the hollow of his neck was an anchor, pulling him back from the edge of a panic he hadn’t fully acknowledged.
He took a final, deep breath, the scent of parmesan and dust filling his lungs. “Okay,” he whispered, the word mostly for himself.
Slowly, he pushed himself up onto his elbows, then into a sitting position. Mavis adjusted his grip, claws pricking lightly, a silent question.
“I’m good,” Travis murmured. He got to his feet, his joints protesting. The room spun for a half-second before settling. He padded into the office, the chaos of his desk a welcome sight. It was a mess he controlled.
He sank into his chair, the leather releasing a familiar sigh. The monitor glowed to life, the aggressive doormat design still centered on the screen. It looked different now. Less like an angry outburst, more like a statement of fact. A boundary drawn in bold Helvetica.
A small shape dropped from his shoulder onto the desk, landing with a soft pat beside the tablet. Mavis sat, tail wrapped around his feet, and considered the screen. His fur was still slightly puffed, but his ears were perked forward, engaged.
“The kerning on ‘EXPECTED’ is off,” Mavis said, his voice back to its usual dry precision. “The E and the X are breathing on each other. It’s undignified.”
Travis huffed a laugh, the sound still ragged but genuine. He clicked into the text layer, zooming in. Mavis was right. He adjusted the spacing by a fraction. “Better?”
“Marginally. The phrase ‘I’M NOT HOME’ lacks a certain lyrical quality, but I suppose subtlety is not the goal.”
“The goal is ‘fuck off,’” Travis said, clicking to the online printer’s portal. “I think it translates.”
He selected a heavy, rubber-backed material, chose a matte finish so it wouldn’t glare in the sun. He hesitated at the checkout page. “Should I get two? One for the front, one for the back door?”
“The back door is for you and the raccoons,” Mavis said. “The raccoons are more polite. One will suffice.”
Travis completed the order. A confirmation email chimed softly in the quiet room. The action, so mundane, felt profoundly significant. He’d done something. He’d made the promise tangible.
He leaned back, the tension in his shoulders beginning to unknot. The late afternoon sun slanted through the blinds, laying hot stripes across his forearms. The silence between them now was comfortable, a joint exhale.
“By the way,” Travis said, swiveling slightly to look at the small figure on his desk. “Why the oil and the cheese? Specifically together. I’ve always been curious.”
Mavis’s tail tip flicked. He didn’t look up, instead tracing a tiny claw along a grain in the wood. “It’s a texture thing,” he said, after a moment. “The oil is smooth. Warm, if it’s fresh from the cupboard. It holds light. Like a tiny, ingestible pool of sunlight.” He glanced up, a flicker of his old mischief in his eyes. “The cheese is sharp. Granular. It has authority. Together… it’s balanced. It’s grounding. A reminder that small pleasures can be complete worlds. You don’t need a banquet. You just need the right combination.”
Travis watched him, a warmth spreading through his chest that had nothing to do with the sun. “That’s kind of beautiful.”
“It’s pragmatic,” Mavis deflected, but his ears twitched with pleasure. “Also, it sticks to my fingers less than honey.”
Travis grinned. “I’ll make sure we always have some on hand. A standing order.”
“See that you do.”
The following days developed a new rhythm, a conscious, fortified peace. The printed doormat arrived—a thick, satisfying slab of black rubber with crisp white lettering. Travis set it squarely on the front porch. He took a picture of it from the living room window, the stark message aimed out at the empty street. Mavis approved from the windowsill, a tiny silhouette against the glass.
Work resumed. The sour IPA label was finalized and approved. Dave the brewer sent a case of the finished product as a thank you, which now sat in a cool corner of the kitchen. Travis started mock-ups for a new client, a local cat sanctuary rebranding. He found himself talking through concepts aloud.
“Okay, so they want ‘friendly but not cutesy.’ ‘Professional but approachable.’ Which is basically the design brief for a therapist.”
“Or a particularly competent assassin,” Mavis offered from his new preferred perch: the top of Travis’s monitor, where he could watch the cursor move like a trained bird of prey. “Use the orange from the tabby. But desaturate it. Make it a memory of orange.”
Travis did. It worked.
Mavis was more present than ever, a constant, chatterbox collaborator. He offered unsolicited opinions on color theory, scoffed at stock photography (“That woman is not authentically happy about insurance”), and once, memorably, fell asleep in the warm well of the laptop keyboard, his tail draped across the spacebar and filling a document with miles of blank space.
It was during a video call with the cat sanctuary director, a earnest woman named Beatrice, that things took a turn.
Travis was sharing his screen, walking her through the revised logo concepts. Mavis was tucked in his hair, unusually still. Beatrice loved the muted orange.
“It’s perfect! It’s dignified! Mr. Whiskers would approve,” she said, beaming.
At the sound of the name ‘Mr. Whiskers,’ a tremor of pure, unadulterated disgust went through Mavis. Travis felt it, a full-body shiver against his scalp. He tried to ignore it.
“Great, so if we move to the typography options—” Travis began.
A tiny, deliberate voice, clear as a bell, spoke directly into his ear. It wasn’t loud, but in the quiet room, with his headset on, Travis knew it would pick up. “If you name a cat ‘Mr. Whiskers,’ you have forfeited your right to any opinion on branding, or indeed, on anything of consequence.”
Travis froze. On screen, Beatrice’s smile faltered. “I’m… sorry, did you say something, Travis?”
“Network echo!” Travis blurted, his face heating. “Weird delay on the line. You might have heard a… a snippet of my last call. Sorry. Let’s look at these fonts.” He frantically muted his microphone.
Mavis, the traitor, was shaking with silent laughter, his tiny claws gripping strands of hair for purchase.
After the call ended, Travis plucked him from his head, holding him up at eye level. “You did that on purpose.”
Mavis, dangling, grinned unrepentantly. “She needed to know. It was a public service. ‘Mr. Whiskers.’ Honestly.” He swung gently. “Besides, you said it was a network echo. Very convincing. You’re a good liar under pressure.”
“I’m going to put you in the drawer.”
“You’d miss me within the hour.”
It was true. The house was no longer just a place he lived and worked. It was a shared organism. Travis found himself leaving thicker books on the floor by the shelf, creating step-ups. He absentmindedly dripped a little olive oil into a bottle cap some evenings, grating a fresh pile of parmesan beside it, a nightly ritual. He caught himself talking to the walls even when he wasn’t sure Mavis was listening.
A week after the doormat was laid, Travis was working late, the desk lamp pooling light over a particularly stubborn layout. The rest of the house was dark and quiet. Mavis was a warm spot on his shoulder, having long since given up on commentary and drifted into a doze, his tail curled loosely around Travis’s collarbone.
Travis was wrestling with a gradient that refused to behave when he heard it. Not from the walls. From outside.
A car door shut, too close. The smooth, expensive sound of an engine idling. Then footsteps on the front path. Not the quick tread of a delivery person. Slow. Purposeful.
His blood went cold. Mavis stiffened, instantly awake.
The doorbell rang. A sharp, invasive chime that sliced through the nocturnal quiet.
Travis didn’t move. He held his breath. On the camera feed from the porch light, which he’d pulled up on his secondary monitor, he could see her. Cynthia Shaw. The leather folder. A different, sharper suit this time. She stood squarely on the new doormat, her eyes scanning the front door, then peering sidelong at the darkened windows.
She leaned over. He watched her read the words. Her body language shifted, a slight recoil of professional disdain. She hesitated, then raised her hand and knocked, three firm, confident raps that vibrated through the still house.
The knock seemed to hang in the air. Travis’s heart hammered against his ribs. Mavis’s claws dug in, not painfully, but with fierce possessiveness.
They waited. A full minute passed. Travis watched the screen, watched her check her phone, her expression turning from persuasive to impatient. She looked at the doormat again, her lip curling slightly. Then, with a final, dismissive glance at the house, she turned on her heel and walked back to her car. The headlights swept across the front window as she pulled away.
The silence she left behind was different. It was a silence they had won.
Travis let out a long, shaky breath. He felt light-headed.
“She was standing on it,” Mavis whispered, his voice tight. “She read it and she still knocked.”
“But she left,” Travis said, the words a revelation. “The sign worked. It didn’t stop her from coming, but it stopped her from staying.” He turned his head, his cheek brushing against soft fur. “We held the line.”
Mavis uncoiled, crawling down Travis’s arm to the desk. He walked over to the keyboard and sat, looking at the dark monitor, then up at Travis. In the lamplight, his eyes were huge and serious. “Yes,” he said simply. Then, the gravity broke. “Her suit was heinous. Did you see that shade of mauve? It’s the color of regret.”
The laugh that burst from Travis was pure relief, a sound that filled the quiet office and made it theirs again. He reached out, and Mavis stepped onto his palm. “Noted. We’ll add a clause about atrocious color choices to the official house bylaws.”
“See that you do,” Mavis said, settling into the familiar perch on his shoulder. He nuzzled against Travis’s neck, right where the stone pendant lay. “Now, fix that gradient. You’re overthinking it. It’s a background, not a declaration of war.”
Travis looked back at the screen, at the stubborn pool of color. He wiped the digital slate clean and started anew, the weight on his shoulder a constant, settling presence. Outside, the night was quiet. Inside, the walls hummed with a safe, defiant peace. The line was drawn. They were, unquestionably, home.
The gradient finally resolved into something quiet and effective, a soft dawn behind the shelter’s new wordmark. Travis saved the file, his vision blurring at the edges from staring at the luminous screen. The house around him was a cathedral of shadows, the only sound the low hum of the computer and the distant sigh of the refrigerator cycling on.
He rubbed his stiff neck, his fingers finding the cord of his necklace automatically. Mavis had been silent for a long while, a warm, dozing weight against his pulse point.
Another hour bled away. He tweaked spacing, aligned elements with a compulsive precision that usually came just before burnout. His lower back ached from slouching. His stomach gave a hollow twinge, ignored.
A tiny yawn reverberated against his skin. “You’re pixel-pushing,” Mavis mumbled, his voice thick with sleep. “The kerning is fine. It’s been fine for twenty minutes.”
“Almost done,” Travis murmured, clicking unconsciously into another document.
He didn’t feel the soft tug of his shirt collar, or the scuttle down his chest. The first he knew of it was a sudden, shocking dampness just below his sternumz, a quick, deft flicker of sensation beneath the fabric of his t-shirt.
Travis jolted, a full-body twitch that sent his office chair rolling back six inches. “What the—?”Mavis peered up from the now-loose collar of Travis’s shirt, his whiskers twitching in the desk lamp’s glow. “It’s 2:17 AM,” he stated, his tone utterly matter-of-fact. “Your body is running on fumes and poor decisions. My couch is currently your ribcage, and the vibrations are unpleasant.”
Travis blinked, his brain sluggishly processing the information. He glanced at the clock in the corner of his monitor. Mavis was right. The darkness outside the window was absolute, profound. “Shit.”
“Eloquent.” Mavis clambered out, leaping the vast expanse to the desk with a soft pat. He stood beside the mouse, looking impossibly awake. “You’ve taken exactly zero of the breaks I suggested. The water glass I nudged toward you three hours ago remains full and condemned.”
“I got lost in it,” Travis admitted, finally registering the dry ache in his eyes and the stiff set of his shoulders. The cat sanctuary’s homepage mock-up glowed back at him, complete and actually good. He’d been lost, and the work had been a haven. He shut the laptop, the room plunging into near-darkness relieved only by the small desk lamp.
The sudden silence was a physical presence. His stomach growled loudly.
“See?” Mavis said. “Even your internal organs are filing grievances.”
Travis managed a tired laugh. He pushed himself up, his spine giving a series of alarming pops. “Okay, okay. I’m clocking out.” He looked down at the small figure, haloed in lamplight. “The… interruption was inventive.”
“It was necessary. You were unresponsive to polite society. Desperate times.” Mavis’s tail gave a flick. “Now, food. Something that isn’t cold coffee.”
They moved to the kitchen under the guide of the dim under-cabinet lighting. Travis shuffled to the refrigerator, its interior light harsh in the dark room. He pulled out the block of parmesan and the bottle of oil almost on autopilot, the ritual a comforting script.
He grated a small pile into a dish, poured a glossy puddle beside it, and set it on the floor by the kitchen island leg. Mavis immediately set to work, his movements neat and focused.
Travis made himself a sloppy peanut butter sandwich, leaning against the counter and watching his friend eat. The simple, shared act in the silent house felt more sacred than any declaration. This was the bedrock. The oil, the cheese, the late-night quiet.
“It’s better,” Travis said softly, his voice rough from disuse.
Mavis looked up, a tiny strand of cheese clinging to his fur. “The sandwich? It looks catastrophic.”
“No. The… air. Since the sign.”
Mavis considered this, cleaning his fingers fastidiously. “The air has improved,” he conceded. “The perimeter is secure. The mauve invasion has been repelled.” He finished his meal and scampered up Travis’s sweatpants and t-shirt, resuming his position on his shoulder as Travis rinsed his plate.
They turned off the lights, walking through the dark living room. The faint outline of the front door was a solid, reassuring block. No chimes. No knocks.
In the bedroom, Travis shed his clothes, leaving them in a heap he’d regret in the morning. He fell into the cool sheets with a groan of genuine relief. The pillow smelled like laundry detergent and, faintly, like dust and warm fur.
Mavis settled into his own hollowed-out spot in the second pillow, his shape a familiar depression. “Your gradient was acceptable, by the way,” he murmured into the dark. “The dawn effect. Not subtle, but it communicates.”
“High praise,” Travis whispered, already halfway to sleep.
“It’s factual.” A pause. “Do not set an alarm. The world can wait until at least nine.”
Travis hummed in agreement, his consciousness already unspooling. The last thing he felt was the slight weight of a tiny hand patting the skin of his shoulder, once, twice, before everything dissolved into a deep and dreamless dark.