Hey, I finally finished something! My latest Scream of the Shalka / S10 Doctor Who fanfic, Catster’s Tail, is up at AO3.
In this humorous short, Shalka Master is literally a cat. Alison Cheney, Bill Potts, and the Shalka Doctor try to figure out what he’s complaining about.
In this Chapter 1 excerpt, Catster proves that he always brings the melodrama.
Alison steps out in a hall right by the door to the Doctor’s library. The door, shaped like a closed book and embossed Wonders Within on its leather binding, barely silences the Magister’s yowl. He sounds like someone just separated him from his owner, threw him out into the rain, and stepped on his tail. Alison cringes.
The Magister and the Doctor have a kinky game wherein the Doctor throws the cat-o-matic switch on the remote control of their robotic inevitable spouse. The Magister then goes through a mental transformation, if not a physical one. The cat-o-matic reactivates a dormant virus that the Magister has in his system, one that almost turned him into a bipedal cat person. He becomes a very large, very fast, very smart, and very demanding domestic cat.
He’s also a very loud cat. The game of cattitude provides her robot with a convenient excuse to tell everyone, constantly and in copious detail, about his feelings. She’s all for discussing your emotions, but for fuck’s sake! Does he have to do it at such high volume?
Alison plugs her ears, but the howls still penetrate. Just as Alison can understand exactly what the Magister’s cat Imp says in her meows, so she also knows exactly what he’s complaining about: “[Alas, alas! Woe is cat. I am broken and bereft, injured and ignominious, destitute and deprived.]”