"Honestly Melanie, I think I prefer the sink." You tell her. The idea of having Melanie "clean you up" creeps you out. You and she have hit it off famously so far, especially given the difference in size and evolutionary ancestry, but still… you shudder. Looking up at her, you notice a little flash of something. Disappointment? Unfulfilled anticipation? You wonder. Whatever it is, it disappears and she nods:
“Okay.” You’re glad she didn’t argue. Reaching forward a story above your head, she turns a knob inset high up on the tiled wall. You hear the pipes in the wall give a tortured gasp and a shrill, high-pitched blast of air emerges from the sewer-outlet sized faucet on your right, but no water emerges. Frowning, she turns it left and right, her extended claws delicately slotted into the slots running all around the knob. Nothing but air emerges, so after a few moments she stops. She walks away from you, opening the door and yelling out:
“DAD! THE PIPES ARE SUCKING AIR AGAIN.” Her voice is enormous, and the acoustics of the bathroom make it physically painful to your relatively tiny ears. You miss his reply, but clearly he can’t do anything about it at this time of the evening. She comes back over, and you watch her apprehensively. Even for those few steps you see her walk is more... predatory, more aggressive. You swallow as, looking up past her expanse of striped fur and clothing towards her grinning face. She beams down at you:
"Well, it seems you get to try a new cultural experience, and I get to see what a human tastes like." Your heart flops in your chest and you take an involuntary step backwards. No way repeats over and over again in your head, but you force yourself to stay calm and reply:
”I don’t think so.” You try to sound firm and decisive, but your voice quavers. Noticing this she settles down onto her haunches, bringing her head down to your level. It’s meant to be reassuring, but it fails miserably as you are confronted with her wall-sized face, her mouth showing rows of very sharp teeth, which you saw tear through a chunk of meat five times your size at dinner. You watch, unmoving, as her nostrils flair and she takes in a theatrical sniff. Finally (even in your apprehension you manage to think Keep me waiting why don’t ya?) she speaks:
“John, you know that smelling fear thing? I wasn’t kidding, and it’s quite palpable around you. Wait,” she says, holding up a paw, “Now, kidding aside, we’re not animals, despite somewhat biased viewpoints on both sides.” She grins wryly, and you give her a wan smile, “Since we’re not animals, you’re not going to let your fear control you like your tiny prehistoric ape ancestors would, and I’m not going to eat you like my normal-sized cat ancestors would.” Finished, she looks down for a moment, probably embarrassed at giving a speech. Somewhat rattled yourself, you are still determined to break the tension:
“’Tiny apes’ and ‘normal-sized’ cats, eh? What was it you said about ‘biased viewpoints?’” You ask, smiling. Tension dropping, she stands back up:
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She says mock-huffily, producing a laugh from you. Then, more seriously: “You ready?”
“Be patient Melanie,” You chide her, “Good things come to those who wait.”
“Why put off to tomorrow what you can do today?” She replies. She brings a paw down and nudges that back of your legs insistently. You sigh, and acquiesce, sitting down carefully with your legs dangling over the sides of her paw. She carefully lifts you into the air, bringing you with her a few steps (to her) across the bathroom to the second counter you noticed earlier. As the coming ordeal draws nearer and your heart rate starts to speed up once more, you distract yourself by complaining:
“You always seem to get your way.” You manage to keep a whining tone from your voice, so Melanie simply lets you hop off her paw onto the counter (somewhat slipperier than the other) before turning around, placing her paws on the counter behind her for balance and hopping up on her butt onto the counter:
“Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I’m ten times your size?” She suggests lightly, looking down sideways at you.
“Perhaps,” You concede taking in the enormity of her form, so quickly, dexterously and casually tossed about, “Although an argument could be made for those teeth.” you give a shudder which is only half faked. She grins down at you, displaying her full, extremely sharp set:
”I can see how someone the size of a large rat might see it that way.” She says, straight faced. You can’t let that go unchallenged:
“Hey, watch who you’re calling a rat, you big fur ball.” You both laugh and she gives you a comradely flick on the arm with a claw. She reaches over to a ledge above your head, grabbing a small paper cup filled with some kind of liquid. Noting your curious gaze, she lowers it down to you. Peering inside, you see a small pool of translucent, pale green liquid, which gives off a very subtle scent, a cross between antiseptic and mint. Comprehension dawns:
“Is this mouthwash?” You ask her. She shakes her head:
“More like tongue wash. Neither you nor I want to end up smelling like meat after this, so I’ll swirl this around my tongue to remove any lingering traces.” With that, she tosses the liquid into her mouth and commences swishing. Sounds like mouthwash to me, you think to yourself. She thoroughly swished the liquid around in her mouth, then spat it out into the kiddy-pool sized cup. Setting this aside, she swiftly and unceremoniously grabs you. With a small yelp you are brought before her face, her foreclaw hooked into the back of your shirt and you nearly vertical before her. You do your best to remain calm and not hyperventilate, despite your racing heartbeat. Grasping at anything to delay the upcoming ordeal, you blurt out:
"W-Wait, don't I need to take off my clothes?" You regret the words the instant they leave your mouth. Melanie pauses, then roles her eyes:
"Do you really want to get undressed?" She asks you pointedly
"Uh, no, not really."
"I wouldn’t like that either. Do remove your shoes, however" She says firmly. You obediently shuck them, and they fall through the air down to her waiting paw. Looking up, you see her face start to go through strange contortions: "I'll just have too," She murmurs thickly and slowly, "Use more spit than I usually do to get... through the cloth."
"Wait, more spit ..." Is all you can get out in a high-pitched voice before, seemingly satisfied with the volume of saliva in her mouth, she stops grimacing, leans forward, opens her mouth and smothers you with her tongue All you get is a brief impression of her yawning closet of a mouth and her flexible pink carpet of a tongue before it covers you like a very wet blanket. Her feline tongue, you know, is far larger proportionally than a human tongue, and it is just large enough to cover your entire body. You are instantly soaked in her slightly sticky spit, and she starts moving her tongue slimily up and down your body. Your involuntary struggles are, of course, meaningless to her, and she simply pins them with her tongue when she needs access. It seems to go on forever, the thick slab of muscle roving over your body for an eternity. You can't see anything and you can barely breathe, your mouth almost covered with saliva. At last, however, with a few more desultory licks, she lifts her tongue.
You look blearily out at her through your saliva-covered eyes. She merely grins at you, however, and deftly flips you over in her paw. This time, your face is not covered by the tongue, and she had mercifully positioned your head so that it was in the gap between two of her claws, along you to breathe, and to see a hazy-white light. She is just as thorough as before, and your body is repeatedly slammed into her palm, although thankfully not very hard. This time, once she is finished with her genera cleaning she goes after specific areas. The bottom of your feet- you half to laugh, even something as big as her tongue tickles there. The top of your head- your chin is slammed into the webbing between her claws. She then withdraws for a second, before delicately, with a hint of a chuckle coming from behind you, using the tip of her tongue to deliver an unreasonable (it seems to you) amount of her natural cleaning solution to areas she clearly thinks are most dirty. She starts with your hands, but then, to your chagrin, she gets behind your ears and at the back of your neck. Finally she finishes and lets you face her once more. You hang from her claw, limp.
"Squeaky clean now, and totally soaked," she says, trying and failing to hide a smirk. "Now we need to get you dry." She smothers you again, but this time is different. Her tongue, which before had been thoroughly lubricated, is now bone dry. You can feel the individual bumps of her taste buds, and on the few areas of exposed skin you have your skin feels almost abraded. She does one slow lick for your front, one for your back and one for your head. That hurt. Your hair feels like its getting pulled out of your scalp, and you yell in pain. She pauses for a second, then gently licks your hair back down onto your scalp. With that, she pulls back once more and examines you:
"Sorry about the hair." She says contritely. She leans over to her side and picks something up, out of your view. "For my ancestors, that would've been it, but thanks to the wonders of modern technology we can ensure..." She trails off as you cough something out, sputtering on her saliva. She turns her head so an ear faced you:
"What was that."
"I said," You say, coughing, "What's with this 'we'. This seems like a very one-sided process to me." That's all you have the energy for. She blinks once, slowly, than smiles appreciatively:
"Okay then, thanks to the wonders of technology I can ensure that you are totally dry." With that, she brings an enormous hairdryer into your view. You look at it in dread, its mouth alone could swallow you (widthwise) whole. She adjusts her drip so you are truly dangling in mid air, suspended by a claw (if you weren't so exhausted you would be terrified of a fall, surely your shirt can't take this type of punishment). She points the hairdryer at you and turns it on, full power. You are buffeted by hurricane force winds of a truly extreme heat, like in the middle of the desert. You are blown around on her claw, forced back and up like a pendulum. She rotates her paw so that you are entirely exposed, the heat just barely low enough so that you don't get burned. She finishes and shuts it off. She eyes you critically for a moment, before gently setting you on your feet next to her. You take a few wobbly steps before falling heavily over, only barely caught by her paw. She frowns at you for a moment, before lithely getting off the counter and opening the bathroom door. Stepping into the hallway, she sets you down on an end table across the hall from the bathroom door, arranging you so that your back is up against a table lamp. You sit there, with barely the energy to slowly move your head and look at her.
Melanie looks down at you with a grin, only slightly abashed by your bedraggled condition.
"The rat analogy continues, now you're like a drowned one." She grins at her own pun. You appreciate the humor, and grin slightly yourself. Encouraged, she continues: "Anyway, it turns out that you don't taste so bad, different from what I usually eat though, exotic."
"I'm glad I gave you the opportunity to expand your cuisine." You tell her hoarsely. She takes both the sarcasm and the truth in your comment, absorbing it. Then, quietly:
"Thanks John." You give her a weak thumbs-up sign. She steps back:
"I'm going to clean myself now, so don't you go anywhere." She calls back over her shoulder. There’s no real chance of that. You're not in pain, but you are entirely exhausted by the ordeal. You simply sit there, in a kind of haze, leaning up against the lamp which is almost blinding in intensity, you being directly under the shade. You can't sleep, so you just sit unmoving until...
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