Kita'thalla Ch. 04

"So..." she said, still using that same playful tone. "What do each of the cards mean?"

He gulped before finding his voice. "Well, it depends on the game you're playing. As I said before, there are four suits...here." He pulled a few out of the deck to show here. "The four suits are spades, clubs, diamonds, and hearts. Within each suit, there are thirteen cards."

"What about these fancy ones?" she asked, tapping on the jack of clubs.

"I was getting to that. There are number cards and face cards. The number cards are the two through ten of the suit, indicated by the number of symbols on the card. The face cards are the Jack, Queen, and King, indicated both by the picture and the symbol in the corner." As he explained, he found the appropriate cards to show her.

"What's a Jack?"

"Uh...well in some games he's known as the knave...I think he's supposed to represent a high ranking member of the royal household, but he's not actually part of the royal family."

"That's strange" she said. "He looks a lot like the king"

"Well, you have to pay attention to the letter in the corner. A J stands for the Jack, a K stands for the King"

"Is that what those are? We never figured out how to read human writing..." she said, sounding a little giddy.

Despite the fact that she was acting so strangely, Eric was thinking clearly enough for a sudden thought to enter his mind. How did she know how to speak English? He was about to ask, but another question from her interrupted his thoughts

"So what about the one? You didn't say it was a number or a face card"

"The one...oh you mean the ace. Well, depending on the game being played, it's considered a number or a face, or sometimes both"

"That's confusing."

"Well, you only have to know what it does in the game being played."

"Oh, okay. So what are we playing?" she drawled, looking right into his eyes.

Eric was about to answer that he hadn't decided yet, when he noticed that her pupils were very dilated, and her breathing had changed. Something was up with her.

"Kita, actually..." he said, his mind racing as he tried to figure out what was going on. "I was about to go to sleep so...maybe we should save it for tomorrow?"

"That's no fun..." she whined, shifting her legs and leaning over towards him. "Well, if you're not going to play, let me then..." she said, reaching out for the cards.

Eric yelped as she inadvertently extended the claws on the reaching hand, lifting his arms out of the way and leaning back. The end result was Kita losing her balance and falling over so her head was right in his lap only inches away from...

"Not fair..." she mumbled, curling up but leaving her head where it was, using his thigh as a pillow.

Eric breathed a sigh of relief as the claws retracted. He tried to move but she made some unintelligible noise and actually hugged the leg with one arm, again unconsciously extending the claws. On second thought, might be best to leave her where she is. He sat for a moment, trying to figure out what had just happened. Looking around, he managed to reach his armor and medical kit without moving, taking one of the palm scanners and the helmet with displays on it.

Her system showed her heartbeat returning to normal from a high, at least compared to what she'd had when he first examined her leg, but other than that, there didn't seem to be anything wrong with her. He rubbed his eyes, trying to think. While she was a mammal just like humans, his unfamiliarity with her species meant that he couldn't make any educated guesses. In addition, the presence of her face just inches from his groin was very distracting, and even the smoke from the campfire seemed to be interfering with...

The smoke.

He looked at the pile of firewood he'd gathered, and with a little stretching he managed to retrieve a piece. He remembered finding a fallen tree when he was out earlier. With the wood already dead, it had been easy to break off easily carried pieces, so much of the wood in the pile came from the dead fall. Placing his palm on it, he activated the function normally used to scan food for contamination, or to determine if foraged food on alien worlds was safe to eat.

At the top of the readout was a list of significant compounds found in the wood. One of them caught his eye. Nepetalactone. The computer listed it as having a mild sedative effect on humans, and in high concentrations it was capable of inducing vomiting. But the name...he'd heard it before. He scrolled down the entry on the compound to gain more information. Organic compound derived from isoprene...name derived from the plant of it's original discovery, Nepeta cataria, common name...

Eric's jaw dropped open. Nepeta cataria. CATNIP?!

Eric stared at the completely stoned alien sleeping in his lap. Apparently her appearance wasn't the only thing feline about her. He set down his medical equipment and moved the long braid of hair so that the spiked bands were a little further away from him. His heart jumped into his throat as she unconsciously brushed her cheek against his hand and...was that snoring or purring? He looked at her in wonderment as she resettled her head and her tail twitched lazily in contentment. He was dealing with an oversized kitty in his lap!

Eric realized he'd started to reflexively stroke her hair. The sandy blond color was lighter than the short fur covering the rest of her body, aside from...certain locations, but it had the same silky soft consistency he'd felt on her cheek. He laughed softly as he realized how ridiculous the situation was. As he felt himself getting tired and drifting off to sleep, he wondered if she'd remember anything that had happened. Either way, he decided he'd try to avoid that particular species of tree when gathering firewood. If she somehow got angry while high, the end results might not be pretty. And he wondered how she'd react once she found out what had happened.

It was this question that thrust its way into Eric's mind when he suddenly woke up the next morning to some one trying to get one of his pistols out of its holster, and a furry hand clamped itself over his mouth.