19. Theo

A booming crash pulled me from the most sexy dream I'd ever had. Carlton and I were on a cruise ship of all places, someplace I never saw myself being. And of course, the cats were with us, as was our baby. All five of them were sound asleep, and the two of us were sitting on the deck outside our room. Maybe it wasn't a deck, maybe it was a balcony—I didn't even know what they called them in my dream or in real life. That was how much I'd looked into going on cruises before the dream. After the dream, I was contemplating checking them out. It had been that good.

The two of us were sitting there, and I decided it was time for dessert. We looked around, and there were tons of people everywhere, of course; it was a cruise. But no one was looking directly at us. As I got down on my knees between his legs, not caring if every single person on that cruise saw what I was about to do, the crash pulled me from my slumber.

When I first woke up with a start, I hadn't realized that I was awake and that it was not still my dream. I feared that the balcony had collapsed, and I was somehow on the main part of the ship in a pile of rubble. Once I was out of bed and into the other room, I saw what had really happened. The cat condo was on the ground in many pieces. "Crap," I mumbled.

Carlton followed me out and was standing behind me. "Oh." He rested his hand on my shoulder. "Maybe next time we need to get a shorter one."

I wasn't sure if that was the solution to the problem, but this one had definitely seen its last day, and they used it all of the time.

"Yeah, maybe."

We spent about fifteen minutes picking up the chunks and piling them up for the trash. Nothing else in the living room was broken, so that was a plus and pretty shocking.

Things were a little crowded now that we'd moved in together. I'd been pretty minimalist before the move, so it worked for the most part. And what hadn't fit and that we didn't want to get rid of, we put in a storage unit to figure out later. We didn't want to make any rash decisions, but also, we didn't want to live with piles of items we had no immediate use for.

It was great finally living together—not that we hadn't been already, you know, been doing so. But now we officially lived in one place. One bonus was that doing so helped alleviate some of my mate's stress over having his income being cut with the job share. I had plenty of income for us both, now that we had one shared space. If we still had two places, that would be different. Double the electricity, taxes, and all of the other expenses that came with it would've sucked up my savings pretty quickly.

"I guess I know how we're spending our Saturday." I wrapped my arms around my mate and held him close. "What do you think about going cat condo shopping?"

"I think we might end up with more of the same," he said. I wasn't sure if he was right or not, but I couldn't remember seeing anything sturdier at the pet store, but to be fair, that day had been pretty overwhelming.

"All right, bed first, and then in the morning we decide." He grabbed my hand, and the two of us went and climbed into the bed that I lovingly called our "Three Bears" bed, even though there was only one actual bear. It was just right.

I snuggled in close, wrapping my arm around him, listening to him breathe until his breaths evened down and his soft snores began. It was only then I let myself follow along behind him.

We woke pretty early in the morning for a Saturday, especially for having interrupted sleep. But since we were up, we decided to go out and get breakfast before the store opened.

The place we decided to go to eat was famous for their waffles, and Carlton had been craving them all week. He wanted one that they called the Super Berry Deluxe. Apparently, there had been an advertisement for it on the radio, and he couldn't get it out of his mind.

And once I saw it arrive at the table, I could see why. If I hadn't known he was a bear before, then I certainly would have figured it out after seeing his food. It was topped with all different kinds of berries, nuts, and honey. It was like the trifecta of bear stereotypes.

"Is that as good as it looks?" I asked.

He mumbled around his food and then pushed the plate toward me, offering me a piece.

I said, "No, I think I'm going to stick with mine."

There was nothing about my plate of food that should be called breakfast. I had a chocolate waffle with strawberry sauce that was less fruit and more sugar, and all of that was topped with whipped cream. It was perfection, but also nowhere in the realm of nutritious.

I offered him a bite, and he took one look at it and started to turn green.

"Just kidding." I pulled it back toward myself.

His morning sickness was getting better, but it still wasn't perfect. We both held on to the fact that everyone said that it meant that the pregnancy was healthy and the baby was doing great. Didn't make me like him being sick any more, but it was reassuring that he wasn't coming down with some kind of stomach ailment, or worse… something was wrong with our baby.

"Ready, Freddie?" I signed the credit card slip for the bill and slid out of the booth.

"Ready." He joined my side, and we were on our way to the store a minute later.

We tried a different pet place this time, one that the computer said specialized in all things cat. Once inside we found out that was a very accurate description. There was one entire wall of just cat treats, and most of them were the same kind you would find in the grocery store, but some of them were freeze-dried different kinds of fish. And I wasn't sure what some of them were—possibly bugs.

I didn't look too carefully. We were gonna stick with the grocery store variety. I had a feeling once you started with the fancy fish ones, you were going to have some very picky cats. That and they warned of the smell on the back of the package. Didn't need to be adding any of that to our lives, especially now with my omega being pregnant.

"We should look at one of those fancy cat boxes," he said.

"Fancy?"

"The fancy ones that do all of the changing for you."

"Oh. It's fine. We don't have to." I half wondered if they even worked.

"I want to. I feel bad now that I'm pregnant and I'm not allowed to help with that. Not that I did before. My bear hates cat poop. Or any poop."

I hadn't felt bad in the least; it wasn't a task I particularly hated. I knew it was supposed to be the worst thing ever, but it made life for the cats better, and that made it no big deal in my book. Besides, I'd rather keep our babies safe than worry about some hypothetical rare whatever.

"We can look, but honestly, I don't mind doing it."

"I know, but it would make me feel better," he said.

And five minutes later, the sales associate talked us into some fancy fandangled contraption that had special lights that killed germs or something and odor catchers and was great for multiple cats, and the list went on and on. Hopefully, the thing didn't scare them.

"Let's go look at the condos."

And when we went to look, there were condos galore. But all of them had the same issues as the one that we had that crashed to the ground—a lack of stability. Each and every one of them looked as if they would go tumbling down.

"Are you looking for something particular?" a woman wearing the green smock with the store logo asked.

We told her the story, and she nodded understandingly.

"Have you thought about a cardboard palace?" I had not thought about it, nor had I known it existed in any real way until she led us over to it.

They didn't have any set up, but looking at the marketing material, they were impressive. And they for sure wouldn't be falling down. The base was too sturdy for that.

"They're modular, so you just can type away on the screen," she explained. "It'll tell you which pieces you need and print out the layout and personalized instructions for you."

That caught my attention.

Carlton enjoyed configuring the whole thing. We ended up paying a lot more for random cardboard than I thought I ever would, and I was surprisingly excited about it.

"Is it weird we just bought them a box when they came in a box?" he asked as we walked out with our new cat litter box and a cart full of cardboard.

I shrugged. "Nah, I think it's good."

We were soon to find out.