Rem
 

This is a story dedicated to a friend I made from Gaia. Please tell me what you think.



Prolog to Our Story


The Panthera House was a grand estate that belonged to the Nekos, having a fern hedge run around all corners as far as the eye could see with a gazebo in the lavished backyard that resembled a country club and a large swimming pool that took a minor half of the backyard. Considering what the owners of the manor were, a pool would come as something of a surprise. For you see, the Nekos are leopard cats. Now if you still think cats can’t swim, you better look into some books on wild cats before continuing, for a leopard cat will hunt in the water for fish and such. But let us not change the subject.
Mr. and Mrs. Neko were very well-known people and to the world presented respectable faces. That was all for show. In actuality, Mr. and Mrs. Neko were often shouting their throats out at each other. Kenneth Neko was pompous, pretentious and condescending of women, mostly his wife and two daughters. Niku was like a female counterpart of her husband, but also would alley cat behind her husband’s back when he wasn’t home. Neither of them thought too much of their daughters, and almost no one in the family could stand the very presence of the false-couple, knowing the truth.
It is perhaps, then, a blessing their children have turned out as well as they have.
Robert Neko was the oldest of siblings and had sheltered his sisters from the front of their parents’ arguments whenever he was capable and resented how both mother and father had double-identities; those that the world knew, and the ones that the family knew yet dared never reveal within earshot.
Tia Neko was older sister to Remi by one year, and they both often wanted nothing more than to avoid their father in one of his fuming mutters of “women!” or their mother, who would often get drunk and wander the halls will a bottle of catnip whiskey clutched in her hand complaining how her husband “wouldn’t know a real woman if one fell on his fat head”.
It was disgusting. Robert was so disgusted with the in-fighting of both parents that he left upon the year most people go to college, but promising to come back for his sisters one day.
So for eight years, Tia tried to shelter her younger sister as well as Robert had protected them, though inside felt she might crack under the pressure. She wanted to be strong the way Robert had been, but when they started school it seemed to be the only safe place from their parents; Tia felt time might be running out.
Their parents were fighting worse than ever and talking of divorce. And if that happened, they’d want either or both of their daughters. Not for any maternal or sentimental reason, but merely because it wouldn’t do for questions regarding custody to come up in any conversation anywhere. It was going to happen, there was no doubt of that, and the paranoid and reputation-obsessed pair couldn’t disguise it, not matter what reason they gave their friends and acquaintances. They simply did not get along and could no longer live in the same house, nor did either of them wish to have claim to the manor. But whom to leave the estate to? Neither parent believed their daughters were capable enough of maintaining the manor, so the choice was their son, and he certainly wouldn’t appear for sometime, having left the house years before after disgracing the Neko name. They both secretly hoped he had died and thus decided a way to start over in the most perfect of scenarios…
After two months of whispered rumors, the day came when a young lawyer recommended by a friend of Ken arrived, a handsome and manly-looking leopard cat in a crimson suit. With him he had brought a man from town hall to act as witness.
The lawyer, town hall official, and Nekos sat at the dining room table. Mr. and Mrs. Neko sat on opposite ends of the table close to the lawyer while the sisters sat as far away from their parents as they could, holding hands tightly under the tabletop.
The lawyer looked over the last bits of the divorce settlement with interest. “It says here,” he recited in a clear and audible voice, “that Panthera House, the finances to maintain it, and even the sisters Tia and Remi will go to the eldest son Robert should he appear”.
“That’s right,” sniffed Niku, wiping away imaginary tears. “Unfortunately, we’ve no word of him for twelve years now.”
“Really?” the lawyer quirked an eyebrow. “Because, from a legal standpoint, until your son is located and informed of these facts, the most likely outcome for your daughters will be to be placed in an orphanage, since it is unstated here if either of you will claim custody.”
“Custody? Of these brats??” Kenneth sneered. “The Devil take your issues of custody! Their mother can have them. Then she can finish training them to be tramps like she’s been doing when I’m not here.”
“Really, Kenneth!!” Niku barked at her soon-to-be ex-husband, hair bristling. “I’ll only have half the money we had united! It’ll be hard enough to find a new place and support myself, let alone these angels,” she cast an adoring eye at her daughters. She somehow missed the look of bitter resentment Tia was giving her.
The lawyer cleared his throat. “So, neither of you has too grand concern for these lovely young ladies?”
Kenneth narrowed his eyes. For someone who looked so hearty and such a hot-shot, he was speaking like those Nancy Boys down at the drag shows he made sure to steer clear of. “I was under the impression a lawyer’s profession was to carry out the legal system on no one’s benefit other than his client or clients. Why are you so interested in these two? What gives you the right to be? And who are you, now that I think of it. I never got your actual name, just told your initials were R. N.”
“Who am I?” the lawyer now had a slight aggressive edge to his voice. He glared at Kenneth with something like utter disgust. “Your son, Robert, who went to college to study law, so I’d know all the legal terms and practices so that I could one day come and prove what unfit parents you are!”
“BOBBY!!” Niku exclaimed scandalized and breathless at seeing her only son return. “How can you say such horrid things about your mommy-wommy and da-da??” she did her best to squeeze tears into her piggy eyes.
“I can say it because I spent eighteen years having to listen to both of you snipe about how imperfect everything was.” He did not yell or raise his voice, but his tone was a commanding and silencing one.
Kenneth was irritated and his hair bristled, glowering at his son. “How dare you criticize us, you ungrateful whelp. We didn’t need to send you to college, period! You’d have done just fine to take after me and make important connections!”
“Call me crazy, but sitting around in a pretentious lounge drinking wine so bitter mouthwash tastes sweet by comparison and gossiping about who I could ruin financially and dumping on ‘the poor’ never struck me as a means of career training,” Robert said snidely.
Remi and Tia smiled at this jab of their father’s lifestyle.
Now Niku was weeping into her overly puffy tail. “How did you become so disrespectful?”
“We didn’t use the rod on him enough, that’s how!” Kenneth hissed angrily. “I knew turning thirteen made no never mind that was knee-high to a bull pie mountain!” He reached for the document. “GET YOUR LOATHSOME PAWS OFF THE PAPER THAT MY MONEY PAID FOR, I’M RIPPING UP THAT SETTLEMENT THIS INSTANT!”
“You forget!” Robert barked so loudly that it even made his enraged father freeze in the middle of getting up to challenge him, “this town hall official has heard me read the final terms aloud. And also that the only reasoning for the wanted destruction of this settlement is ego-induced anger and little wit. You also forget that I’m a lawyer with high quality training, whereas you have never even set foot in a legal worker’s office since your prenuptial agreement. No judge would take your case against me seriously for any reason you’d give.” He glared into his father’s eyes. They were clear and challenging and showing that he could not be intimidated by shouting or empty threats.
The anger surged through Kenneth, but the very presence of a town hall official to report back of a father’s assault on a son whom he had supposedly been missing did not bode well for his reputation. Fuming and growling, the fat cat resumed his seating, ears pinned back.
Niku had a hand over her mouth and her eyes were wide in not only the shock of what she had seen or heard, but because her simpering had not swayed her estranged son in years.
When Robert next spoke, one never would have guessed there was any hostility in the air. “If your spouse is quite done, Mrs. Neko” he ignored his mother’s pleading light sob to see reason, “sign the document,” he slid it towards her. Robert watched her sign with a shaking hand before receiving it again. “I warn you, Mr. Neko,” he addressed his father, “sign under a false or pen name as a means to avoid the commitment out of spite, and you will be getting messages from the legal department.”
Kenneth glowered at Robert. “Fine,” he growled in a low manner. Then barked “FINE!” as he took the document and signed his name in a rage, and threw the feather quill he was always so fond of on the floor, losing total control of the situation. He stood up so quickly and his chair clattered to the floor breaking the quill. “You’ve disgraced me for the last time,” he told Robert. “Neko men are always right and proper and moral in all their actions and assumptions. You dare to tell me I am unfit? Never! I wash my hands of this joke of a union!” and without another word, he stormed out of the room.
Niku had fainted from her ex-husband’s fury.
The official finally spoke, obviously shaken from the scene that had taken place before him. “Well…well…if all that is in order,” he turned to Robert, Tia and Remi, “Panthera House now belongs to you. I hope you three many long and happy years together.”