OOM: Christmas dinner with Pyrrha and Egil

[ostro_goth]

[[Ctd. from here.]]

Teja opens the door, laden as he is.

His usually comfortable, creatively untidy room is still that -- there is even Ferdinand the cat, sprawling all over Teja's bed, fast asleep. There are simply two new doors, one of them leading to a kitchen that provides all the modern comforts and appliances as well as a space to comfortably sit and eat, the other leading to Egil's room in Loki's apartment on the 12th floor.

One better should not think about how that works.

Comments

[scarred_grin]

"Puppy, you keep doing that, you're gonna get a hairball."

She sets aside some of the meat and fried plantains to be cut up for Egil, and the rest all goes in the pan and then into the oven.

"It's a weird situation but I'm doing the best I can with it."

[ostro_goth]

"It is all we may do," Teja says. "Shall I try and keep him from chewing on Ferdinand?"

[scarred_grin]

"Yeah, actually if you want to get his chair--it's in his room. Maybe he's hungry. His is all ready except for dessert, so he can eat while the rest of it's cooking and then we can eat."

He's trying to help with grooming, that's all. It just works better in fox shape than in baby shape.

[ostro_goth]

Teja gives the baby and the patient/lazy cat a fond look, then goes to fetch the chair.

[scarred_grin]

It's a sturdy chair, with the ability to strap Egil into it, since he's still fairly young. There are pirate monkeys painted on it, that probably weren't there originally.

"Puppy, you get plantains--are you excited? You like them."

[ostro_goth]

Teja brings the chair over, carrying it somewhat awkwardly in both hands.

"He understands the many words already?"

[scarred_grin]

"Not really," she admits, "but that's how he learns. When you give him something, tell him what it is--tell him a bunch of times. When you take him to meet somebody, tell him who they are. If he keeps hearing words, he'll associate them with what they mean, like he does with... you know, his favorite frozen dessert and activity. And you."

[ostro_goth]

Teja nods. "I shall keep speaking to him, trusting that he will understand more and more," he says.

[scarred_grin]

"Narrate for him," she says. "Tell him what you're doing, what you're planning to do next. After you do that, you can ask him questions--you'll probably have to answer them yourself too. It kinda feels like you're talking to yourself, but you get used to it. You never know what he's gonna pick up on."

[ostro_goth]

"I can do that," Teja says, nodding.

[scarred_grin]

"It's like how anybody learns a new language," she says. "You get the words you use most often first, and then you fill in all the connecting words later. He learns nouns because they're easier--you can hold something up for him, 'this is a ball,' or whatever. But he needs the other words too, so he gets a feel for how language works. Even if he doesn't understand it yet."

[ostro_goth]

Teja nods. "This is fascinating to watch, and not a thing I ever thought about before," he says.

[scarred_grin]

"I was reading about it," she says. "He's... you know, a little concerned that spending so much time in fox shape might affect Egil learning to talk. So I'm doing the best I can to make sure he learns. He's ahead of the game when it comes to moving, though. He's doing really well at that."

[ostro_goth]

"What he learns in fox-shape, he remembers as a human child?" Teja says. "That is truly handy. I think as a fox, the cats know to speak with him already."

[scarred_grin]

"Yeah, so he got the... the basics of 'hey, I have a body, I can move my limbs and move myself around if I try' faster than other babies do, I think. So he was fast at crawling, and having that understanding is helping him with learning to walk too. And he knows the different kinds of barks, and he tries them in human shape, but they don't work because hardly anybody can understand them."

Besides the gotta go bark. People learn that one pretty quickly.

[ostro_goth]

"As none of us is prone to fox-shape," Teja nods. "Do you think the cats understand him?"

Ferdinand is very, very patient with the baby, for one.

[scarred_grin]

"Do you think they know he's the same, in his different forms? Like, do they recognize him?"

Teja would know the cats a lot better than she would.

"I don't know if cats and foxes understand each oth--oh. Apparently it's a little more different than being another dialect of the same language, but in the same sort of language family. Like French and Italian."

Loki has spoken.

[ostro_goth]

"Oh," Teja says. "I see. Yes, they know him, as far as I can tell: - something about his smell, I think, the individual component underneath the generic human or fox smell."

[scarred_grin]

"A lot of their communication is body language, and they're not hugely different there," she says. "So it's mostly learning to understand the different tones. And foxes sound kinda awful when they get going--sorry, puppy. That wasn't me."

[ostro_goth]

"The cats do not seem to mind," Teja says.

[scarred_grin]

"Apparently the worst will be when he's a teenager," she says. "That's when they get the--really? He says they sound like a cat in a woodchipper. That's horrible."

[ostro_goth]

"Leopard stuck in a foundry is worse," Teja says. "But it is horrible, in any case."

[scarred_grin]

"Yeah. So we got a while before that, at least. C'mere, puppy--time to eat."

She heads over to pick Egil up, and bring him to his chair. He squirms happily; he knows the word eat.

[ostro_goth]

Ferdinand stretches very languidly, and then casually wanders over to the table as well. When humans eat, sometimes, things drop.

[scarred_grin]

And sometimes people succumb to that poor-starving-cat routine, and just feed them.

But Pyrrha has a present for the cats in her bag, too--she'd made some treats.

"Would you like to supervise dinner?" she asks, gesturing toward the plate of cut-up pieces of meat and plantain. "You give him the plate, he can feed himself, but... you know, make sure he doesn't shove things in his ears or something."