Havana Brown Mischief

Posted on Mon Feb 7th, 2022 @ 11:53pm by Captain Akeno Misaki & Lieutenant Rania Bhatti

Mission: Arista
Location: USS Wayfarer | Deck 01 | Captain’s Ready Room

A Federation Intrepid starship was an excellent place for socialization, scientific exploration, and from time to time even a little bit of mischief and chaos. They were relatively smaller vessels good for their purpose though and a lot more luxurious than being confined to the tactical sardine can of a Defiant class starship for sure. They left more room for exploration internally as well, and just the right number of nooks and crannies to curl up into a ball and take a nice relaxing cat nap for a few hours if necessary. The acoustics in some areas of the innards of the starship’s Jefferies tube system made for delightful harmonics and soothing echoing of soft gentle purring.

Three hundred and forty-four meters in length, one hundred and thirty-three in width, sixty-six in height, and fifteen total decks of a feline jungle gym. A holodeck would have been suitable to lull the average ‘house cat’ into a false sense of excitement and exercise, but not this one. No, this peaches and cream ball of fluff with goldenrod eyes would not settle for some holo-cination, a sweet escape of some Irish village or French pub nor the rolling greens of some world from someone’s distant memories.

She dug her claws into the metallic alloy plating that acted as a runner through the Jefferies tubes. These maintenance chutes caused her to sneeze. She squinted her eyes, shook her head, and a small series of sneezes made for the trifecta. Clearly someone had not been in this particular maintenance chute in some time. Nevertheless, the Havana Brown clittered and clattered like a sugar plum fairy in an elaborate stage production of The Nutcracker and the feline slunk through the Jefferies tubes with poise and grace, dignified and delicately navigating the various junction points with such prowess, but it was quite a bit of physical exercising scaling up those ladders.

Sure, with a human form it was nothing. The downside of being human was these Jefferies tubes were not meant for luxury. You did not crawl into them and set up a picnic or prepare high tea in them. They were what they were, tightly confined spaces used by Engineering and Operations personnel to access parts and places for maintenance purposes; however, they were also an excellent intricate system of getting from point A and to point B, and if you spent enough time moving up, down, side-stepping every now and then, you could make it points C-Z. The determination and agility of a feline knew very few limitations.

It had been quite an adventure as the feline emerged from a Jefferies tube on the USS Wayfarer's thirteenth deck and scurried across the empty corridor into a small room. She leaped up onto a console and with the pads of her paws, danced across the environmental controls and accessed the fire suppression systems, manually triggering hydro units to activate in the Mess Hall before launching herself from the environmental console into another maintenance hatch and back into the Jefferies tube network.

The cat only stopped momentarily to flop over onto its side within the Jefferies tube and groom itself for several minutes. A brief little respite was needed. A feline’s journey was never-ending, and fifteen decks were quite a way to travel when you were size – adorable. Several minutes later the cat encountered a small blockade. A hatch was shut, but one swat at a control panel and good stern *boop* with her head, and the hatchway opened into a small horizontal chute. At the end of the chute was another access point, or in her case an exit point which she sprinted towards and caused it to open.

Ever graceful the feline did not tumble so much as she somersaulted out of the chute and into the Captain’s Ready Room. Like an Olympic podium placing gymnast after a piss-poor landing with all eyes on them, the cat made the best of the situation and looked confident as ever, as though it meant to come tumbling over itself out of the chute.

There on the Captain’s desk was Captain Misaki's workstation, a computer, and several PaDDs and such. The feline felt the need for a stretch it was almost instinctual that after nearly making a fool of herself that she would scratch and stretch. In this case, the feline sought out one of the small sofas’s in the Captain’s Ready Room and sunk it’s their claws into the side and arched her back before launching herself upward and skittering across the back of the sofa and launching herself airborne one again, this time a more graceful landing onto the Captain’s desk, only causing a two PaDDs to go sliding over the edge and falling to the floor.

The doors of the ready room swished open and in walked Captain Akeno Misaki. She was looking down at yet another PADD as she entered the room, it made small beep noises as she reviewed the contents on its screen. Something however caught the young womans eye, something had just moved. She lowered the PADD from her vision to see a cat sat on her desk, looking back at her as if confused.

"Erm..." Akeno said outloud as she stared into its eyes. She turned on a heel and walked right back out of the door, which closed behind her as she stepped back onto the bridge. With a confused look she held up a hand as if to ask a question of the bridge officers. The ensign at the helm raised an eyebrow.

Shaking her head, she turned again and re-entered the ready room. 'Defintely not imagining it. There is an actual cat sitting on my desk...' she thought as she approached the feline slowly. She held out a hand for the cat to smell her scent. "Why hello there..." she spoke to the cat softly as she approached.

The warm chocolate brown coat on the feline body, shimmered a bit with the light hitting it. Her large golden eyes had looked up at the Captain. She was caught causing her mischief, but the human woman seemed to be perfectly welcoming. The feline moved cautiously towards the hand, gently pressing her nose to it and rubbing against it.

Letting out a series of soft deep purring, the cat came about and sat atop the woman's desk. The feline looked up at Akeno clearly looking to see how she would respond to the PaDDs that the cat had knocked off the desk.

'Seems like a perfectly normal kitty cat' Akeno thought as she gently stroked the feline between the ears. "How did you get in here then?" she asked. "Did you panic because you couldn't find your way back out?" she reached down whilst still stroking the soft brown fur and picked up the PADDS. Being made for Starships, they didn't break easily and were perfectly fine, plus they were only daily status reports that Akeno still had to read. She was actually a little disappointed that her feline visitor hadn't broken them, their contents were usually rather tedious and dry to read, the PADD's being broken would have been the perfect excuse not to review them.

The brown cat leapt off the Captain's desk with a bit of purring. She rubbed up against Akeno's leg, but headed on over the doorway. She must not haven been tall enough because she headed butted the closed doors. Sure, a child could get the doors to open, but the feline despite its intention, couldn't get them to open. She looked back at the Captain, flicking its tail.

Akeno watched, holiding in a slight giggle as the cat headbutted the door. "You can't go through there" she said simply. She wasn't going to allow the feline to get onto the bridge, not only would she be a distraction to her officers; but if she jumped up onto an important console she could cause an accident.

"Why not try this other door?" she asked indicating like the cat was a person to the side door of the ready room. It led to deck one corridor which ran along the back of the bridge, allowing access to the conference room, escape pods, ships head, bridge computer control systems and the aft airlock. There was also a turbolift that ran to this corridor, and jeffries tube access for emergency evacuation.

The cat made an almost defeated sound. She did, however, follow the Captain's recommendation. The cat darted across the room, in-between Akeno's legs and stood at the door, turning its head and looking at Akeno. This pathway would be suitable.

Akeno gave the cat a small wave. "Come and visit again soon. I'll replicate some tasty tune for you next time" she said with a smile. There was only one cat on board, belonging to the new chief counsellor. Luckily Akeno was a cat person so didn't mind, just as long as it didn't intefere with her crew's duties or get into important areas. After all, it was probably exploring the ship and getting to know its new home.

Off the feline went, down the corridor and finding its way around. It would likely end up finding its way back down the lower decks. Perhaps even back to the quarters of Counsellor Bhatti. She would be back, and fortunately Akeno was a cat person.

Posting by

Captain Akeno Misaki
Commanding Officer

Lieutenant Rania Bhatti
Chief Counsellor (writing the Havana Brown cat)