Paws and Order

Posted on 06 Aug 2026 @ 10:47pm by Captain Sabrina Corbin

1,671 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: The Doldrums
Location: Deck 3

Sabrina Corbin’s quarters had long since become as much Ptolemy’s territory as her own.

She had made certain of that.

The room still carried her preferences in every deliberate choice, the warm neutrals, the orderly surfaces, the books and small personal pieces that made the space feel lived in without ever becoming cluttered, but Ptolemy had his own architecture now. A series of shelves ran high along two walls, staggered into an elevated path that allowed him to move from the bookcase toward the viewport without touching the floor. A broader platform near the corner had become one of his preferred observation posts, and from there he could survey the room with the solemn authority of a creature who believed he had been placed in charge of it.

At more than a year old, he had grown into a substantial cat. Thick fur softened the size of him, rich dark red tabby markings running through the orange of his coat and breaking sharply against white legs, a white underbelly, and the bright white beneath his chin. His tail was perhaps his most theatrical feature, spreading behind him in a broad fan whenever curiosity or excitement demanded expression.

At the moment, that tail hung over the edge of one of his shelves as he watched Sabrina retrieve his harness.

His head lifted immediately.

“There you are,” she said.

Ptolemy rose, stretched with considerable ceremony, and began making his way down the wall route toward her, jumping from shelf to shelf before landing neatly on the back of the couch and then the floor.

The harness had become part of their routine over the past several weeks. Their first sessions had been short, extending only beyond the quarters and into the corridor outside. From there they had gradually gone farther, allowing Ptolemy to learn the rhythm of a busier environment while keeping Sabrina as the familiar point he returned to whenever something new demanded too much of his attention.

He approached her willingly now.

Sabrina crouched and fitted the harness into place, smoothing the thick fur where it caught beneath the straps.

Ptolemy turned his head to inspect her work.

“Yes, thank you,” she murmured. “I’m glad someone is supervising.”

His expression suggested that someone plainly needed to.

She reached for the small container of treats and tucked it within easy reach. The faint rattle earned another glance from him.

“Subtle.”

Sabrina crossed to the door, and Ptolemy followed. That alone would have counted as progress a few weeks earlier.

The doors opened onto the corridor, and Ptolemy paused at the threshold long enough to take stock. He was not afraid of what lay beyond. The corridor had become part of his world now, familiar enough that the ordinary movements of the ship no longer demanded his complete attention, though he still considered almost everything worth noticing.

A pair of crew members passed at the far end of the corridor, their conversation fading as they turned the corner.

Ptolemy watched them go.

Sabrina stepped out and waited.

After a moment, he joined her.

“Good.”

She waited until his attention returned to her before offering the treat.

The corridor was quiet enough that afternoon, though never truly still. Doors whispered open and closed. Footsteps came and went. Somewhere behind the bulkheads, the ship maintained the constant low vibration Sabrina had long since stopped consciously hearing.

Ptolemy had not.

His ears shifted toward every new sound, but he remained near Sabrina as they walked.

She kept her pace deliberately easy.

There was no appointment waiting for her, no report to read at the other end of the deck, no senior officer expecting her presence. For perhaps once in her day, reaching the destination was not the point.

The turbolift was the actual goal. They had passed it several times during previous outings. Ptolemy knew the doors, knew the soft sound they made when they opened, and had once ventured close enough to inspect the threshold before deciding that was sufficient advancement for one afternoon.

Today, Sabrina touched the call panel.

The doors opened.

Ptolemy stopped.

His dramatic tail lowered slightly as he studied the smaller space beyond.

The corridor made sense to him now. It was open, predictable, a place he could move through on his own feet. The turbolift was different. Enclosed. Smaller. A room that would carry him somewhere without any effort from him at all.

Sabrina stepped inside first.

She looked back at him but did not call.

Ptolemy leaned forward, whiskers angled toward the opening.

Then he looked at Sabrina.

She reached into the treat container.

“Come along.”

After another second of consideration, he stepped across the threshold.

The doors closed behind them.

Ptolemy turned toward the sound and then back again as Sabrina gave the destination.

“Deck Ten.”

The turbolift began to move.

His body stiffened slightly at the change beneath his paws, enough that Sabrina noticed but not enough to suggest distress. His ears turned toward the quiet hum surrounding them, and his gaze moved briefly toward the walls before settling back on her.

Sabrina waited for that.

“There you are.”

She offered him a treat.

He accepted it readily.

By the time the lift slowed again, his stance had relaxed.

The doors opened onto Deck Ten.

And the Security drill was apparently in full swing.

An alert tone sounded almost immediately, followed by the clipped voice of an officer somewhere farther down the corridor.

“Team two, move to secondary checkpoint. Team four, hold position.”

Several Security officers crossed the junction ahead at a purposeful jog, training phasers secured at their sides. Another pair emerged from a side room and moved quickly in the opposite direction.

Ptolemy’s tail expanded magnificently.

Sabrina nearly laughed.

He was transfixed.

His head moved from one team to another, ears rotating as voices and footsteps overlapped. The quiet, orderly corridor he had learned upstairs had become something entirely different, full of motion and purpose and people moving quickly enough to demand attention.

Ptolemy took two eager steps toward the activity.

Sabrina moved with him, placing herself back within his immediate field of attention.

“Ptolemy.”

He looked past her.

Another team crossed the intersection.

“Ptolemy.”

His eyes came back to hers.

She held out a treat.

“Good.”

He accepted it, though his attention flicked toward the corridor again almost immediately.

Sabrina remained where she was, letting him process rather than trying to force stillness upon him. Curiosity was not something she wanted to extinguish. She simply needed him to remember that curiosity did not require participation in every interesting thing aboard the ship.

The drill continued for another minute, then an announcement sounded overhead.

“Exercise complete. All Security teams stand down and return to normal duty.”

The change was almost immediate.

The sharp pace of movement eased. Training phasers disappeared back into lockers. Voices dropped into ordinary conversation, and the corridor began settling into its usual rhythm.

Ptolemy watched the transformation with enormous interest.

Sabrina straightened.

“Well. You survived your first Security emergency.”

The words had barely left her mouth when two familiar officers rounded the corner.

Lieutenant Commander Grayson McKinney was walking beside Lieutenant Commander Aev Flammia, the two apparently finishing whatever post-drill discussion had occupied them. Sabrina knew both men well enough to recognize the brief disruption in their professional composure.

McKinney noticed her first.

His eyes went to Sabrina.

Then down to Ptolemy.

One brow lifted, not quite disbelief so much as the sympathetic recognition of a man who had presumably negotiated with a cat over a harness before.

Flammia’s reaction was subtler. His gaze lingered on the harness for a beat, then moved to Ptolemy’s broad tail before returning politely to Sabrina’s face. The faint twitch at the corner of his mouth suggested he understood perfectly well how much work had probably preceded this particular walk.

For one brief second, neither officer seemed entirely certain whether the correct response to finding their Captain conducting feline training in the middle of the Security deck was regulation acknowledgment or amusement.

Sabrina felt the corner of her mouth turn upward.

Ptolemy, meanwhile, regarded both men with calm interest, his tail still carrying the lingering grandeur of the drill.

“Commanders.”

“Captain,” McKinney answered.

Flammia inclined his head.

Sabrina’s smirk deepened.

“Carry on.”

There was just enough amusement in the words to acknowledge that she knew precisely how unusual the scene looked.

Both men did.

They continued past her.

Sabrina waited until they were several paces away before glancing down at Ptolemy.

“You’ve confused Tactical and Security. I think we can call the afternoon productive.”

Ptolemy looked after the two officers, apparently unconcerned with his effect on the command structure.

She started walking again.

“Come along.”

He followed.

That pleased her more than anything else had.

The alert, the movement, the sudden activity of the drill had pulled at every curious instinct he possessed, and for a moment Sabrina had seen how easily that confidence could turn into overexcitement. But he had come back to her when asked. He had taken the treat. He had remained with her while the corridor changed around him.

The lesson was working.

They walked a little farther along Deck Ten before Sabrina decided not to press their luck. There would be other outings, other decks, and no shortage of strange noises or interesting people aboard the Arawyn.

The bridge would come later.

For now, this was enough.

When they returned to the turbolift, Ptolemy paused only briefly before stepping inside after her.

Sabrina followed, waiting until the doors closed before giving the command.

“Deck Three.”

The lift began to move.

Ptolemy looked up at her, then settled beside her legs with considerably less concern for the moving floor than he had shown on the way down.

Sabrina smiled.

She reached down, running her fingers through the thick fur between his ears.

“Not bad, Mr Ptolemy.”

His fan of a tail lifted once behind him.

Sabrina chose to interpret that as agreement.

 

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