The people had gone out to look at "lights" - Hiro guessed it was the same sort of lights that were around the house - and he and his friend Eugène the cat had to stay home. Hiro would have liked to come along, but Eugène didn't like riding in the car, and Hiro didn't want his friend to be all by himself.
Hiro liked Eugène a lot. They played and cuddled together. Sometimes they talked to each other. Hiro thought it was good that friends have values in common, like being protective of their family, and an appreciation of hard food.
Hiro's mind was on food now as he watched Eugène walk slowly over to their food bowls, sniff, and walk back. The people had fed them before they left, but that felt like hours ago, or even days. And it was the wet food. Sometimes you just had to have hard food.
"I can see the bottom of my dish," Eugène said in his French accent. "Mon Dieu, this is no way to live."
"I hope they're coming back." Hiro began to pace, feeling keyed up. A lot of strange things had been happening. There were bad things out there, like the bad man with the flaming eye. Hiro didn't like him. "I hope nothing happened..."
"I'm so hungry! And I want Maman!" Eugène went to the window, joined by Hiro, but there was no sign of them.
Eugène went back to his bowl, and Hiro saw him looking around the kitchen. "The last time I moved the food, Maman hid it in a new place," Eugène explained. "I can't see it."
"Neither can I, and I'm good at tracking things." Hiro gave a little whine.
Eugène came back to the window and they sat vigil. Then Eugène couldn't take it anymore. "Maybe if I cry, Maman will hear me and come back," Eugène said. "I have to sound like a normal cat, to make it really sad." With that, Eugène began to meow at the top of his lungs. Hiro had never heard a cat scream like that. A long time ago, Ryu had neighbors with a baby and the baby's cry was almost like that, but Eugène's was louder. Hiro wondered if the neighbors would hear Eugène, as far away as they were, and he wondered if the neighbors would call the people in the blue uniforms who ate donuts, which he thought were called "cops" but Sören and Anthony called them "pigs". Hiro didn't know why.
Eugène screamed and hollered until he exhausted himself, then he lay flat on the floor, looking despondent. Hiro nuzzled him.
"I'm hungry," Eugène said.
"There is still food in our dishes," Hiro pointed out.
"Yes, but it's not the hard food! And it's almost gone!" The bowls were over half full. "I have to make it last if the people won't come back for awhile!" Eugène huffed. "Why did they need to go out, anyway? Can't they see lights here?"
"I guess it's special lights. Different lights. Like we want different food."
"It's not the same thing," Eugène said. "I'm starving. They will not die if they look at the same lights." Eugène dramatically rolled onto his back and then he started up again, screaming.
Hiro decided this was an emergency and he nosed around the kitchen to see if he could find the food, but the people had done a really good job of hiding it. When Hiro came back, Eugène had stopped crying but he sat at the window, looking heartbroken. "I'm so hungry... and now I'm angry," Eugène said. "I should pee on Maman's bed."
"They told us to be good," Hiro said. "Maybe if you don't pee on her bed, she'll give you treats when she comes back."
"If she comes back." Eugène huffed and walked towards his scratching post to scratch aggressively, like he was blowing off steam. Then he stopped mid-scratch, like he was looking at something, and said, "Ah ha!" He stopped scratching and ran towards Yeyette's laptop, which was open on the coffee table and had not gone to sleep yet.
"What are you doing?" Hiro asked.
"I sit next to Maman when she does things online. She gets my food delivered from a place called Amazon because she says it's cheaper to buy a lot at once and easier to have that brought here by strange people." Eugène tried to type on the keyboard, but keyboards were of course not designed for typing with cat paws and Hiro watched as a lot of gibberish appeared in the address bar.
77e444444444444444444444444444444444444444444rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeee
"I don't think that says Amazon," Hiro said.
Eugène frowned and his tail thumped the floor; he was thinking hard. Hiro thought too. "Maybe if we had something to press the keys with," Hiro suggested.
"A pencil!" Eugène and Hiro looked around the room and then Hiro went into the office room. There was one sitting on the desk. Hiro closed his eyes and pushed with his mind and the pencil came floating off the desk. Hiro ran back into the room with a yip of victory, the pencil floating in front of him, over to Eugène.
Eugène reached out his paw and the pencil floated over to the keyboard. Eugène used the butt of the pencil to type the keys - A M A Z O N . C O M . and then the Enter key. Once Amazon was on the screen, Eugène used the floating pencil to type dry cat food. He used the pencil on the arrow keys to scroll down until he saw the kind Yeyette bought, and selected the largest quantity available. Then he did the same for Hiro's dog food.
Once it was in the cart, Eugène was about to order and then he saw shipping time. "What? It takes three days? Merde, that's too long. We need food now."
Eugène went back to the window to scream for his mother. It was painful. Hiro cried a little too, wishing there was something he could do. He thought hard. He thought of the times when Ryu didn't feel like cooking, and got food delivered. Unlike food Yeyette bought for the cat and dog, it got there right away, it didn't take three days.
"Let's order pizza," Hiro said.
"Oui!"
This time Hiro used the pencil, when he remembered where Ryu ordered pizza from. He typed dominos into the search engine and went to the website.
The only thing worse than being hungry and seeing the bottom of one's dish was being hungry, seeing the bottom of one's dish and looking at all the endless possibilities for pizza online. Hiro started drooling; he moved away from the laptop so he wouldn't get drool on the keyboard.
"Maman doesn't let me eat pizza," Eugène said, "but I've taken toppings before." Eugène looked off to the side. "Anyway, even just a piece of chicken or two would help me be less hungry."
Hiro used the pencil to build a custom pizza online. He built one that was half chicken and half beef for Eugène and himself, and then he selected an extra-large pizza with everything on it for the people. He decided to order two in case they were also starving, so maybe the people would think they were extra good and give them treats and hard food. A dog could dream.
They needed to put in payment information. "I know where Maman keeps paper money, in case of an emergency," Eugène said. "This is an emergency, we're starving." Hiro nodded. Eugène trotted out to the kitchen and Hiro saw him open the large drawer at the kitchen counter without touching it. He heard what sounded like a box opening, and then he watched paper money fly up and away. Eugène chased after it for a moment, then pounced on it like it was prey, and carried the paper money in his mouth to the coffee table. He dropped the now-wet paper money next to the laptop, looking pleased with himself.
Just before Hiro could hit the button to place the order, they both heard the sound of cars pulling up. "Maman!" Eugène cried. They ran to the window and watched the people getting out of the vehicles. Eugène started to scream again.
"Oh god, is that Eugène?" Sören asked.
"Holy shit, he sounds like a toddler having a tantrum," Anthony said.
"He's very spoiled," Yeyette said. "I'd better hurry..."
Yeyette got in first and a moment later the people came in - with bags of what smelled like Chinese takeout food. Hiro began to bark excitedly and Eugène rubbed up against Yeyette with a happy chirp.
Before the people could get too settled in with their food, Yeyette gave them treats and hard food for being good boys... "And maybe they won't beg us for our food," Yeyette said.
"Or try to steal it," DeKalb said.
Eugène gave them an offended look as if to say I would never even though he'd just admitted to it not that long ago.
When Yeyette and Victor sat on the couch together Victor blinked with surprise, put a hand on Yeyette's knee and said, "Your laptop is on."
"Oh, the cat must have walked on it again..." Then Yeyette saw what was on the screen, and the money next to the laptop. "Or... not. Eugène." She pointed at the cat and glared.
Eugène hid behind Hiro.
"Whaaaaaat?" Sören came over to get a better look and then he had to sit down on the arm of the couch, laughing too hard, turning red and tearing up. "What in the HELL?"
"What happened?" Nicholas asked, his eyebrows raised.
"The order screen for Domino's Pizza is on my computer." Yeyette looked at the cat, who was now walking into the kitchen to eat his food, pretending to be innocent.
"How did that happen?" Nicholas looked incredulous.
"As you know," Yeyette said, making Sören and Anthony smirk and snicker, "the animals are Forceful. You've seen that they're toilet-trained, and Eugène is smart enough to find his food and dispense it in too-large quantities if I don't hide it very well."
"Yes but..." Nicholas blinked. "They can read, too? Well enough to attempt to order pizza?"
Yeyette nodded solemnly. "Eugène can, anyway. I found out Eugène can read when Victor and I were playing Scrabble one night and Eugène started moving tiles around to spell words."
Hiro decided not to tell them just yet he could read AND talk, as well. He went over to his bowl and crunched his treats happily before digging into his kibble. Pizza would have been nice, but it was better that everyone was back home where they belonged. Treats were better than pizza, and pets and cuddles best of all.