Rude Litterbox Space

This month’s stories are by authors Mary Robinette Kowal, PH Lee, Molly Tanzer, and Zohar Jacobs. The first story of the month is free to read, but it’s our paying subscribers who allow us to keep publishing great stories week after week.

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For March’s first, free, story, we are absolutely delighted to share this epic and timeless tale of talking cats in space from Mary Robinette Kowal ~ Julian and Fran, February 4, 2024

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Rude Litterbox Space

by Mary Robinette Kowal

The chenille upholstery on the couch in Elsie’s stateroom gave her hind feet amazing traction. She dug them in, wiggling her tail as her valet wielded the yellow laser pointer across the curving wall of the spaceship. Her valet was particularly good at creating the anticipation that Elsie enjoyed during games of laser tag.

The laser dashed to the right and Elsie leapt, extending her claws for extra spring. She bounced off her front legs, flinging herself after the laser, and the spaceship’s floor seemed to skew. Elsie stopped.

That was wrong.

Something about the gravitational fields felt off. She flared her whiskers and opened her mouth to flehmen the air. With a sense that lived at the intersection of scent and taste, Elsie sampled her surroundings. The air taste-smelled of crackling ozone, the meaty remnants of kibble, and harsh lemon cleaner, but nothing she didn’t expect on a spaceship.

Hopping onto the couch, Elsie stood on her hind legs to look out the little porthole at the stars. At an angle ahead of them, she could just make out the jumpsite, and she should not be able to see it. Her tail twitched with agitation.

Behind Elsie, her valet clicked the laser pointer off and came to lean over the couch to look out the window. “What do you see?”

Elsie pushed off from the window and went to her communication board, which was laid out on the floor. It was a flexible mat with touch sensors mapped to different words and phrases. Yucky. How could she explain to her valet that the approach to the jumpsite was all wrong? She toggled the board to her science words and phrases, hoping the predictive text could follow this higher level of thought. She pressed: Velocity. Angle. No. Gravity. Strain. Ship. Litterbox.

The machine spat out, “The situation is distressing. Our approach angle and velocity for the jumpsite are incorrect and it will cause gravitational strain on the ship. This will be some bullshit.”

She’d been going for disastrous, but it was close enough.

“Yikes.” Her valet looked out the window again. “Are you sure?”

Human. Yes. Elsie thumped her tail in agitation. Let’s go. Bridge. Now. “Are you really questioning me on an issue of higher mathematics? We need to go to the bridge at once.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Her valet went visibly warm with embarrassment.

She turned to go to the door, trusting her valet to roll up her communication board and bring it. Then Elsie caught a glimpse of her calico fur in the mirror and stopped with a huff.

Within these walls and at the university where she taught, she was treated with the respect she deserved. But outside, she often encountered the simple problem that she was a cat. Humans forgot that she could do higher math and had an intuitive sense of space-time simply because of the way her brain was wired.

Language was hard. Bending space-time was not.

Her valet was beginning to roll the board, so Elsie trotted to the drawer where her clothing was kept. She pawed it open and nosed through it to find the delicate Regency-style ruff she had picked up in New Wales. It tasted of lavender and the delicate greenness of linen. Trotting back to her valet, she dropped the ruff and mrred.

Her valet set the board down and helped Elsie into the ruff. It framed the black mask her distinctive markings gave her and set off her white chin to advantage. It also should remind humans that she could think. Hopefully.

Stepping into the hall, Elsie trotted ahead of her valet. The gravity, which was generated by a Vikman device, seemed to burble as she went, making her tail puff with the wrongness of it. Humans wandered the halls, oblivious to the changes. At first it wasn’t enough to notice were it not for the fine hairs that covered her body and reacted to the subtle changes in the air currents. As they neared the bridge, her inner ears felt the direction of down change ever so slightly. The humans in view staggered as if they were drunk.

Why wasn’t the captain turning the ship and correcting course? Surely they had a ship’s cat who would let them know about the problems.

She forced her way forward. Behind Elsie, her valet said, “What is wrong with the gravity?”

A bad approach to the jumpsite was what.

With a groan, the ship seemed to drive over a pothole. For a moment, everything was in free fall and then slammed against the floor. Elsie spread her legs, bracing against the impact. Alarms sounded, sending ice picks through her ears.

She folded them flat, trying to block some of the splitting sound.

“Attention, passengers. In preparation for the jump, we are asking all passengers to go to the nearest safety zone. Crew members are standing by to assist you. Do not collect any personal items—”

Along the corridor, bulkhead doors started to slide closed. Humans in the corridors seemed to feel the need to fill the air with meaningless commentary about the announcement, adding to the unbearable cacophony.

The microphone hissed and crackled, then a different voice said, “Passengers, this is your captain speaking from the bridge. We’re experiencing some mild turbulence, but there’s nothing to be alarmed about. We’ll have you through that jumpsite in a jiffy.”

Digging her hind claws into the carpet, Elsie sprinted forward, sliding through the gap just as the bulkhead door shut. Her valet and her communication board were on the other side. Elsie looked up to the window in the massive door.

Her valet peered through and mouthed something. Then she grimaced, apparently realizing that Elsie could not read lips, and made a circling gesture.

Ah, very good. She’d try to go around. Meanwhile, Elsie would continue to the bridge and they would meet there.

Moving to a run, Elsie hurried down the curving corridor to the bridge of the ship. She sprang upward, twisting in the air against the fluctuating gravity to slap the door sensor. Landing awkwardly, she staggered to the left as the floor shifted under her.

The alarms were quieter on the bridge, but lights still flashed.

No one noticed her, crowded as they were around the navigation board. A human was hunched on the floor adding a miasma of vomit to the bright odor of panic flooding the bridge. The rubber of the floor was warm and smooth under her paws.

Looking at the screens, Elsie could see the problem immediately. And she had arrived without words to explain it. Scanning the gleaming chrome and plastic room, she spotted the captain by the gold bars on the collar of the human’s shirt. She had reasonable confidence that this was a male human because he had gray fur over the lower part of his face.

His voice had been the second on the loudspeaker and had the same stern calmness as he spoke to the crew member beside his chair. “If we don’t go through now, we lose our place in the jump line. I’ve never had a jump fail before, and I’ve been doing this for twenty years.”

“But, sir, the warnings are saying—”

The man—she’d been right—held up a hand to stop the junior officer. “They overbuild safety protocols because the insurance companies make them. Trust me. The autonav will take us through just fine without Johnson at the helm. This will be fine.”

This would not be fine.

Elsie was going to have to do the correction herself. She jumped up onto the nearest console, tapping the screen to toggle through the menu options.

The captain’s voice cut through the hubbub. “What’s that cat doing in here?”

“Oh! Sir, I was on another ship where—”

“Get it out of here.”

“But it has a ruff and— Yes, sir.” The crew member approached, hands out. “Hey, sorry, Miss Kitty. . . .”

Elsie ignored them and continued pawing the screen as she looked for the navigation system. The screen was touch capacitive, but the controls were sized for human fingers and she had to maneuver delicately to make her selections. Her nose was the right size. She wrinkled it, trying not to scent the screen, which reeked of someone’s mustard and onion lunch.

The crew member’s hands nearly touched her back, but Elsie slid away from them, reorienting on the screen so that they would have to reach all the way across it to grab her. There! She’d found the navigation screen.

“I’m really sorry, Miss Kitty.” The person lunged for her.

Elsie parkoured her way off the console, bouncing against the back of a seat, and as the person turned to try to catch her, she twisted to land on the console and get a good look at the course that was currently laid in.

Her brain mapped it in color and dimension against the fabric of the universe. It was blue and spiky, jagging where it needed to be yellow and smooth. She jumped off the console, drawing the crew member away. The bridge floor seemed to twist under her. The crew member staggered on their ridiculous two legs.

Sliding under another console, she waited until the crew member was on their knees, reaching awkwardly for her. Using their back and shoulders as a ramp, she launched herself into the air, which seemed to roil as the gravitational pulses from their approach rippled through the ship.

Lashing her tail to correct, she managed to land on the console. Her velocity was greater than it should have been and Elsie nearly slid off the far side of the smooth surface. She barely caught herself with her claws in a seam. Elsie grimaced at the bright pain in her paws as she stopped herself. She kept her ears tracking the crew member and focused the rest of her attention on the navigational screen.

It had a keyboard interface, but also a screen that was large enough for her to use her paws to draw the four-dimensional shape they needed to be using for the correct approach. As she stroked the surface of the screen, Elsie could feel the rightness of it.

“For God’s sake. Is it trying to use the litterbox in here?” The captain lumbered out of his chair. “Someone grab the blasted thing already.”

Elsie used her nose to boop the screen, confirming the course change.

With a gentle chime, the navigation system accepted it. The fur on her back prickled with the warning of approaching hands. Elsie whirled and hissed, showing all of her teeth to the human.

Their hands paused long enough for her to close the screen and leap away.

The ship slowly turned and the air thinned, smoothing to an easy consistency. The captain stomped after her, with the crew member trying halfheartedly to corner her. Elsie dodged them, slinking into a gap between wall and console.

“Damn it, someone—”

The alarms stopped. Blessed silence broke over the bridge like a sunbeam on a warm spot. Elsie unfolded her ears and flared her whiskers, sampling the gravity and the air.

“Jump imminent.” An automated voice like the one on her communication board spoke over the loudspeakers. “In five, four, three, two, one . . .”

The room rippled into rainbows of space-time. The jumpsite vibrated the ends of her whiskers with the hints of a warm and cozy tunnel that cuddled the ship close as it moved them vast distances in a smooth yellow path. She opened her mouth to flehmen the distinctive minty campfire marshmallow taste-smell of a properly executed jump. Elsie purred with the rightness of it.

And then they were back in normal space. The hum of fans and the vibrations of a ship under thrust tickled her feet and whiskers.

The captain harrumphed. “See. What did I tell you about the alarms?”

The door to the bridge hissed open. On the air currents, Elsie taste-smelled the salty warmth of her valet.

“The bridge is off-limits to passengers,” the crew member who had been chasing her said. “I can have someone help you find your cabin.”

“Thanks.” Her valet cleared her throat. “I’m looking for a cat who said she was coming here.”

Elsie wiggled out of the space she’d found for herself, catching her ruff on something sharp. It stopped her in her place.

“Your cat was a devil of a nuisance.” The captain’s boots clomped across to his chair. “Nearly got us all killed.”

Ha! Elsie hooked a claw in the ruff, pulling down on the elastic to make a gap for herself.

“Is she safe?” Her valet took another few steps into the room. “Elsie? I’m here now.”

Twisting, she was able to wriggle out of the ruff, rucking up her fur in the process. She extracted herself from the small space and shook to relieve the tension. “Mrow!”

“Oh, thank God.” Her valet rushed to her.

Elsie sat down to wash the dirt and stress off her fur. It was a little rude to ignore her valet, but also completely necessary and her valet understood. Still, there were things that needed to be said. Elsie spared a look and mrped.

“Got it.” Her valet unrolled the communication board and set it down on the floor in front of her. “Sir, Elsie would like to have a word with you.”

“For crying out loud . . . You’re one of them.” The captain’s voice dripped with condescension. “There’s nothing an animal can do better than a person.”

“With all due respect, sir.” Her valet’s voice was chilly with the script she’d had to deploy multiple times. “The Confederation of United Planets recognizes that personhood is not limited to humans. Elsie is a person.”

“It’s a cat.”

“She is a cat and a person. The two are not mutually exclusive.” Her valet toggled the power on the board.

Elsie set her paw down, flicking her tail with disdain, and stalked across the board. Rude. Loud. Dog. “Your bigotry displays itself, cur.”

“Oh, come on.”

She snarled soundlessly, ears flattened in outrage. She smacked the board to toggle back to science words. Before. Velocity. Angle. Wrong. Gravitational strain. Felicity Principle. Another smack back to her regular words. Dead. Litterbox. Thank you. Elsie. Kibble. “Before, you were using the wrong velocity and angle, causing gravitational strain. I deployed the Felicity Principle of cohesive attraction to do a course correction. Without that, we would have all died due to a catastrophic hull breach. You can thank me anytime. Kibble would be nice.”

He laughed. “All that cat did was scrabble over our consoles and lead my crew on a merry chase while—”

“Actually, sir.” The crew member who had been vomiting before now knelt by the console. “I’m looking at the change logs and . . . yeah. Without Miss Elsie’s course correction, we would have imploded.”

“Dr. Elsie.” Her valet wet her lips. “If we’re being formal. And yes, she came to the bridge because of concerns about the angle of approach.”

The captain’s face did that fascinating thing that happened to people without fur where it changed colors multiple times. “I’ve been doing this for twenty years and ships don’t implode.”

No. Ship. Love you. Cat. Math. Friend. “Not the ships with cats to do the higher math.”

The crew member who had been chasing her nodded. “I told you I’d worked on a ship with a cat before. Mr. McFloofypants did all of our jumpsite navigations.”

The captain snorted and pointed to the door. “I want you and your pet off my bridge now.”

Litterbox. Rude. “I take umbrage with your tone.” Let’s go. Word. Later. “For now I shall return to my cabin, but mark me—I will have words with you later.”

Her valet rolled up the communication board, and Elsie hopped onto the padded shoulder of her jacket. She settled, digging her claws into the fabric for purchase and wrapped her tail around her feet. She was most displeased.

The entire way back to the cabin, Elsie fumed silently to herself. Even if she’d had access to her words, there were none that could fully convey the mix of indignation and embarrassment of being consigned to the status of animal.

Not that there was anything wrong with being an animal. She had friends who did not have any desire to be granted full personhood rights and remained as wards rather than citizens.

But she taught navigational computation at a university level. She did higher mathematics in her sleep. Literally. She listened to audiobooks and was working on a novel. And she had just saved their litterboxed lives.

In the cabin, Elsie jumped down and went straight to her heated doughnut. Humans were exhausting. “Mrr. Mrrow. Meep.”

Her valet understood her, even without the communication board. As Elsie lay curled into her doughnut, her valet massaged her neck and the tension in the small muscles around her ears, smoothing the stress away.

Too soon, the chime of their cabin door sounded. Her valet went to answer it while Elsie wrapped a paw over her eyes, snuggling deeper into the doughnut. Humans. Ugh.

“Sorry.” The crew member who had chased her brought a scent of cloves and lingering fear. And also . . . there were smells of ocean and linen. “I noticed that she was missing this, so I dug around until I found it.”

Elsie lifted her head, blinking.

The crew member stood in the door with two other crew members. One held a small hanger on which her collar hung, freshly laundered. Another had a tray with a silver dome.

“And this is with compliments of the crew.” The person with the tray removed the lid to reveal kibble and finely minced tuna. “We know what she did and we’ll be filing a report with the home office. Please thank Dr. Elsie. For all of us.”

Elsie hopped up and trotted across the room. She twined around their legs, purring. One of the humans put a hand to their chest, eyes watering and filling the air with the salt of deep human emotion.

Her valet said, “She thanks you and is moved by your consideration.” She watched Elsie sit down and slow-blink at the crew members. “You may pet her.”

One of the crew members made a high squeak, almost like a kitten, and the three of them sank to their knees around her. Elsie let them pay her their respects, eyes closed in pleasure even if none of them really had good technique.

They were only human. But this group had turned out to be her people.

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Thank you for joining our journey this week.

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Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of The Spare Man, Ghost Talkers, the Glamourist Histories series, and the Lady Astronaut Universe. She is part of the award-winning podcast Writing Excuses and a four-time Hugo Award winner. Her short fiction appears in Uncanny, Tor.com, and Asimov’s. Mary Robinette, a professional puppeteer, lives in Nashville. Visit her at maryrobinettekowal.com.

“Rude Litterbox Space,” © Mary Robinette Kowal, 2024.

The Sunday Morning Transport: Selected Stories 2022 is now available at Weightless Books!