Rattle & Plush (Patreon)

Rattle & Plush

By Horatio Husky

Commissioned by MagerBlutooth

Act I

Prologue

In the house with bricks as red as fire trucks lived two cats, Rattle and Plush. These two felines differed greatly in personality, but coalesced in humble cohabitation under one significant pretense. In exchange for their lives and whatever crumbs they can scrounge from the pantry, three mice serve them on foot and paw to keep their pact fulfilled. Such arrangements turn out to be quite demanding however, as the three put their tiny heads together on how to trick these frisky kitties into a more manageable state of being. 

Chapter I

The dust bunnies colonies which took refuge underneath the wide ceiling of the living room couch made for good company as Wubby waited for his friends to join him on their evening meeting. The little mouse found that he could entertain himself by rearranging them into different shapes, sometimes a dog, other times a pillow, and when he was not paying attention they would inevitably resemble the visage of a cat. The dogs often appeared more feline than canine regardless. The little mouse, smallest of the three, allowed himself a sigh of boredom as he waited for the other two to finish their duties. 

Baba and Bobo, one a girl the other a boy, usually spent the ends of their evenings tending to their respective feline favorites. Baba would tend to Rattle, while Bobo would serve Plush on foot and paw to ensure that she received exactly what she wanted. Such was the agreement between the three mice and two cats; as long as the mice did what they were told, they could remain safe and sound underneath their couch or in the small crack in the wall. Most of the time. 

“Wubs!”

Baba chirped, as she scurried underneath the couch to join her friend. Wubby beamed up appreciatively in greeting, his attention pulled away from the tower of dust bunnies he had currently been constructing with his small, nimble paws. Baba took a moment to adjust the bow tied around her right ear, tending to herself before hopping forward and bumping her nose gently against Wubby’s cheek. 

“Did you finish cleaning up the litter box?”

Baba inquired, doing a poor job to hide a look of disgust on her muzzle as she posed the question. Wubby nodded, a queasy feeling rising up in his stomach as he tried his best to not think of the daily ordeal. Rattle had a habit of poorly covering his daily deposits, and Wubby was sure that Plush intentionally hid hers as deeply as possible only to make the task that much more strenuous. 

“Yeah, all clean.”

His voice trailed off, looking down for a moment before he perked up once more, trying to remain chipper. 

“Where’s Bobo?”

Baba rolled her eyes, settling herself down on a small nest of dust bunnies as she stretched out her forepaws and let out a large, buck-toothed yawn before replying. 

“Where do you think? Currently doing his best to worship the very floorboard that Plush walks on.”

Wubby giggled, portraying the imagery that Baba had just spoken in his mind’s eyes, deciding that that would be very on par with Bobo’s infatuation with the female fat cat. Baba added, flicking some dust off of the base of her tail as she spoke. 

“He’ll be around soon, Plush was yawning a lot last I saw her.”

Wubby nodded, and almost as if on cue Bobo’s approaching footpaws could be heard scurrying across the floorboards towards them. The two looked up, greeting the mouse with small waves as Bobo ground to a halt between them. 

“Hey, sorry I’m late. Plush ‘Her highness’ was uh… A little unhappy tonight.”

Baba and Wubby rolled their eyes at this, unsurprised that the tallest of the three mice was defending his favorite cat’s honor. Baba smirked on her dust bunny throne, rolling her tongue at him as she spoke with intentionally exaggerated inflection. 

“Oh yes, her royal highness needed another four pillows for her voluptuous behind.”

Bobo gave her a stern look, shaking his head at her rudeness and replying quickly in kind. 

“Oh please, like Rattle isn’t two catnip trips away from losing the only marble that rattles insides of her empty head.”

“Hey!”

Baba chirped back, appearing surprised and hurt at the vindication in her friend’s voice. 

“He just gets a little excited sometimes, that’s all!”

“Yeah, and I end up getting almost eaten half the time…”

Wubby grumbled, and Baba turned her attention to her with the same, hurt expression as she responded. 

“He always spits you out, always! They keep their end of the bargain and so do we!”

“Yeah… Well… Maybe it’s about time that things change…”

Bobo grumbled half to himself, causing the other two to tilt their heads at him inquisitively as he continued to brood to himself. Baba spoke up, her voice sounding both curious and a little frightened at the rebelliousness her companion was displaying. Bobo was adjusting the blue velvet scarf he wore around his neck as she spoke. 

“Bobo? What does that mean?”

He looked back at her, momentarily exasperated as the strap of cloth was not cooperating with him as he appeared to not only fail to loosen it but in fact tightened it further around his neck. His voice tight and strained, visibly agitated, he replied back in a strained voice. 

“I mean that… Ehrm… I mean that they think they’re so smart and… And bigger than us… Rattle treats Wubby like a chew toy, Plush clearly doesn’t like you very much Baba and… Well… I’m getting pretty tired of working out the knots in Rattle’s fur.”

Baba and Wubby both noted that the majority of the critiques were directed towards Rattle despite Plush being a mouthier brat, but decided to stay quiet about it this time. It was true, the cats did have them running around all day to take care of their wants and whims. Baba’s cleverness and deft paws were even able to open cans and create meals for the cats, despite several close calls with the human inhabitants of the household. The three had proven their worth to keep around, never having even a single day off from their duties. If anything, the more they strained themselves to fulfill the cat’s desires, the more stringent and annoying the cats got. 

Rattle, whose gifts lay not in the contents of his mind but more in the hyperactiveness of his body, would regularly terrorize the two smaller mice with impromptu games of chase, cat, and occasionally nibble on. Plush’s intellect more than made up for Rattle’s dim-witted demeanor, but what she lacked in physical prowess she more than made up for in voluptuous fur, personality, and a little more than just residual baby fat as she tried to maintain. The two cats allowed them to free roam, eat what they liked, and kept them alive, sure, but the three mice were beginning to get quite tired about the way they were treated. 

“What are you saying? You want to run away? Find some other house that doesn’t have cats in it?”

Wubby prompted, but the other two exchanged looks and shook their heads sadly. Baba explained, her voice soft and tender as she spoke to the little mouse. 

“No Wubby, it’s too cold for us outside now. This is the only place where we can keep warm and find food, besides…”

Her voice trailed off, a shudder running up her spine causing her fur to stand on end as she continued. 

“There are wild cats out there… And they don’t ‘do’ bargains…”

Wubby nodded, understanding the implied meaning behind Baba’s words. Bobo, clearly irked, smacked a closed fist into his other open paw, as if he had just figured out the solution to their problems.”

“I know!”

His voice animated, nodding to himself as he looked between Wubby and Baba. Before he could continue, Baba hissed at him and motioned with her open paws downwards as if to pat down a pile of fraying cloth. 

“Pipe down! You know Plush has ears like a hawk.”

Bobo nodded, lowering his tone as he continued to speak in an excited whisper.

“We trick them!”

The two looked at him blankly. Wubby spoke up before Baba had a chance to utter a sarcastic retort. 

“And how do we do that, Bobo?”

Bobo thought for a moment, his eyebrows knitted furrowing his brow. Baba continued to look at him unimpressed as he continued to fail to come up with an explanation. Bobo chittered irritatedly, splaying his arms out to the side in an exasperated expression as he implored them. 

“Come on! We can figure something out. Plush isn’t talking to Rattle for the time being ever since he chewed up her favorite stuffed mouse toy that looks like…”

Bobo failed to meet Baba’s eyes as he trailed off, the three silently thinking about the bow in the toy mouse’s ear that had appeared starkly similar to the one that Baba wore on her ear. It was true, however, that the two cats were not currently on speaking terms. Given the fact that they had no other company, Bobo had even admitted to the other two that the cat had started to confide in him on her feelings when he was brushing her fur. 

Baba appeared lost in thought for a moment, as Wubby glanced at his two friends who were both deep in thought. Wubby giggled, the seriousness of the situation prompting him to bring some levity into the atmosphere. 

“What if we just convinced them they were helpless little kittens that need to be taken care of?”

Wubby had adopted a lisp towards the end of his statement, exaggerating the point by speaking as if he were talking like a little mouse kitten himself. Bobo and Baba exchanged looks, silently expressing to one another that their littlest friend was not taking things seriously. Then a spark lit up in Bobo’s eyes, a spark that his two friends knew all too well. It was the same spark that had lit up on his face when he had pleaded with Plush to let them be their servants in exchange for Wubby’s life. Only Wubby’s tail had been protruding from Rattle’s muzzle, and he had been sure that that would be the end of the small, blue neck bandana wearing mouse. 

He had been shocked to see the disappointed expression on Rattle’s face after he had been spit out, and only later did the other two mice explain the bargain they had struck with the cats that allowed them to escape with their lives. Bobo’s left ear twitched, before it swiveled towards the direction of the sleeping cats, assuring himself that they were still sound asleep. Turning, he addressed Baba who was appearing the most skeptical at Wubby’s comment. 

“That’s actually not a bad idea…”

“Are you in on this joke too, Bobo?”

She replied, crossing her arms in front of her as she gave him an appraising look. Bobo shook his head excited, smacking his fist once more into his palm as he continued. 

“Look, we already spoil them rotten right? I can’t remember the last time Plush licked herself or Rattle managed to entertain himself without looping one of us into his games.”

Baba remained silent, realizing a second later that Bobo had actually stated a criticism of his favorite feline. Taking the silence as his cue to continue, Bobo continued to rapidly chitter out his idea.

“It’ll take some time, sure, but we’ve got the cats split at the moment. If we can convince even one of them that this is a good idea, the other might catch on and then we’ll have our chance to switch things up!”

“But… Even if we do convince them… What do we do then? Babies are a lot of work so… Won’t this make things worse?”

Baba asked, her voice unsure as she offered up her train of thought. Bobo thought for a moment, and then grinned cheekily, his whiskers quivering as he continued. 

“The humans, they’re expecting a baby soon. I was checking out the other rooms in the house when Plush was taking her nap the other day and there’s a nursery down the hallway. It’s got everything we need! Bottles, bibs, onesies, mittens, even diapers!”

“Yech!”

Wubby interjected, sticking his tongue out in disgust at the mention of such infantile undergarments as he expressed his disgust further. 

“I already have to clean out their litter boxes, you expect me to have to change their stinky diapers now?”

“Think about it…”

Bobo explained patiently, his animated demeanor unwavering as the plan was compiling together in his head word by word. 

“Instead of the litter box, they’re going to have to beg us to change their diapers! They’ll have binkies and mittens on, so no more claws or getting ‘pretend’ eaten by Rattle! Plus…”

He leaned in, as the other two followed suit, enraptured by his intensity and charm in the moment. 

“If they ever step out of line too much, we’ll just remind them that they’re helpless babies and we’re there to take care of them. Plush won’t be able to complain because we can just pop a pacifier in her fussy mouth, and Rattle won’t be able to chase after us if he’s weighed down by a big diaper on his butt and clumsy mittens and booties on his paws!”

Baba raised a paw, stopping his stream as she posed yet another question, this time with some begrudging respect in her voice. 

“Okay, say that this actually plays out like you’re telling us, right? How do we convince them that this is what they want in the first place? Won’t they see right through our ruse?”

Bobo nodded graciously, giving credence to the value of her criticism as his voice softened a measure. 

“You’re right, and I don’t really have that part figured out yet to be honest… I think… Like… Just kind of easing them into it? Maybe some light baby talk? Or talking about it indirectly and… Well, we could frame it as, like, the height of luxury.”

His energy returned once more, his tail whipping wildly behind him as he continued. 

“Like, who gets spoiled the most? Babies! Who gets the most attention and love? Babies do! Who needs all of their needs taken care of because they can’t do it for themselves? Little itty bitty baby kittens!”

Wubby and Baba considered him for a minute, mumbling under their breath as they thought about it. Wubby broke the silence, his hand paw snapping as he got an idea of his own. 

“I know how we can get Plush in on this.”

The two looked at him, their eyes searching his face intently as they waited for him to continue. The little mouse grinned, petting himself cheekily on his neck bandana as he stated. 

“We get Plush jealous of just how much attention baby Rattle is getting!”