Chapter Text
The bell on the door of Mr. Gold’s pawn shop jingled as it opened. Upon hearing the sound as he sat eating his lunch, he put down the chicken sandwich and got up to see who was calling on him now. It was Saturday, his busiest day, and he’d already had five customers that morning.
But when he entered the front of the shop, no one was there. Unusual. Mr. Gold walked over to the front door; it was slightly ajar. Someone had come in. He whirled around quickly.
“Who’s there?” he asked in as menacing a voice he could muster (which was quite menacing). “I’ll have you know I’m armed.”
“Mrow?” came a cry behind the counter. Then, a chirping sound, and a clinking sound of something metal being moved. Mr. Gold leaned over the counter to see what was causing the peace of his previously quiet store to be disturbed. Staring up at him was a small, fluffy black cat.
“A cat? How’d you get in here?” Mr. Gold wondered, but the answer was obvious; the cat had come in through the front door. He must not have shut it securely when he closed for lunch. “You can’t stay in here, cat.”
In response, the cat batted at a pair of nickels that must have been dropped from the register at some point.
“No, you have to go.” Mr. Gold walked around to that side of the counter to pick up the cat, but the cat sprang onto the countertop, then took off for the back room. When Mr. Gold caught up to the cat, it was already chewing on his chicken sandwich.
“That’s MINE,” Mr. Gold said, shooing the cat off the table. Looking down at his sandwich, he sighed at the loss until he realized he could use it. He picked up the sandwich and held it out above the cat’s head. “Yeah, you like the sandwich, kitty? You can have the rest of it, but you can’t have it in here. Come on,” he said, leading the cat out the front of the shop. He opened the front door, and tossed the chicken sandwich just in front of the shop. The cat, clearly hungry, darted out of the shop and towards the sandwich. Gold shut the door and locked it, pleased at having dispatched with the intruder, even if it did mean relinquishing his sandwich; he could afford another.
As he watched the cat make quick work of the sandwich, he began to feel sorry for it. It was clearly a clever cat if it could open a door, and now that he was paying attention, the cat’s fur was kind of scruffy looking. Clearly the cat was hungry, too. He almost wished he hadn’t shooed it away, but reminded himself that he had no business taking on a pet these days. Besides, surely the cat was just curious? Cats were supposed to be curious, after all. He turned from the window and went to the back to hunt down some crackers and a pot of tea to stand in for the lunch he’d given the cat.
Late the next morning, coffee in hand, Mr. Gold walked up to the front door of his shop. Sitting there, right in front of the door, was the black cat from the day prior.
“Back for more? You’re going to be sadly disappointed,” Mr. Gold said as he unlocked the door. “No sandwiches today. “ He opened the door and the cat darted inside before he could stop it. The cat jumped up onto the counter and began to paw at the unicorns and shiny metal and glass pieces dangling from the baby mobile that hung from the ceiling.
“No, you little magpie,” Mr. Gold scolded. “I can’t have you breaking that just because you like shiny things.” He picked up the cat and unceremoniously dumped it outside. It walked off, nonchalant as fuck. But when noon arrived, it had returned to the sidewalk in front of the pawn shop. Mr. Gold sighed at the sight of the cat through the window.
“Maybe it just wants food,” he thought aloud. But he didn’t have anything appropriate for a cat today; he’d only come in to do some bookkeeping he’d forgotten to deal with the day before, so he had no lunch. If only cats liked tea; he had plenty of that. Mr. Gold went to the mini fridge to see if he had anything else, but there was just a couple bottles of water and a carton of milk for his tea.
Wait. Milk. Of course.
He found a chipped teacup and filled it with milk, which he then carefully carried out front. The cat was waiting on him.
“This is for you,” he said, setting the teacup down. The cat walked over to the cup and sniffed it cautiously. But hunger overcame the cat and its caution, and it began to lap up the milk.
“Don’t get used to this,” Mr. Gold cautioned the little black cat. “I can’t be feeding you every day. This is just a one—er, two—time thing.”
It wasn’t.
The next day, Gold was careful to pack an extra couple slices of ham along with his ham sandwich. The day after that, he brought a larger-than-normal serving of beef stew, the extra portion going into the chipped teacup. The cat always managed to sneak inside once the door opened, and immediately started batting at whatever shiny object was within easy reach. After pulling the cat away from a shiny dagger he really shouldn’t have had sitting out on the counter in the first place, Mr. Gold began calling the cat Magpie. Not that he was naming the cat; he just didn’t want to keep calling it “the cat.” That was all.
Towards the end of the week, Mr. Gold stopped by the store on the way to work and picked up a quart of half & half and three tins of tuna. He took a spoon from a set of silverware he’d recently polished, and placed it in front of the till.
But when noon came around on this day, the cat didn’t.
“It’s for the best,” Gold told himself after waiting all afternoon for Magpie to show up. “I was getting tired of feeding that cat anyway.”
But when Magpie didn’t show up for lunch the next day, he began to worry. Had something happened to the cat? He called the animal shelter, but they hadn’t picked up any black cats that week. All day, he tried to push thoughts of the cat away, but when rain clouds started to gather around four o’clock, he couldn’t do it any longer. He closed the pawn shop early and began looking for Magpie.