When I was writing this, I did intend to finish the entire story in time for the challenge. But I found myself desperately writing on the last evening, turning down perfectly reasonable suggestions from my beta-reader because I didn't have time to edit, I had to finish! And I realized that that was ridiculous. I didn't have time to make all the suggestions she gave, but leaving it unfinished gave me time to go back and flesh out a few scenes that were otherwise very truncated. I do have an idea for the ending in mind, although I haven't written it yet (it'll only be a few additional pages). However, I would appreciate any comments on the story itself and its structure, and any suggestions for the ending, things I should resolve in the ending, etc. Criticism is fine, as long as it's reasonably constructive. 
Lois and That Cat
The investigation was going nowhere. In fact, Lois thought it might even be traveling backwards, it was unraveling at such a pace.
Their original witness had recanted what she’d seen. Their sources, who had originally given them solid information and additional leads, now said there was nothing to tell. The leads had dried up… was this what it was like to be a normal, non-award-winning reporter? Lois Lane did not like it at all.
To add insult to injury, there was currently a cat in Lois’s apartment. Not just any cat, but a cat who was currently making the horrible, high-pitched horror-movie wailing sound that meant she was about to have a hairball on Lois’s beautiful carpet at any moment.
Lois refused to turn to look at the cat. If she scared the stupid thing, it tended to run off and have its hairballs under Lois’s bed. Or, once, in Lois’s closet, in one of Lois’s shoes. And the stupid thing scared easily.
After only two days with the creature Lois was beginning to think of as “the cat,” she’d invested in a really good carpet cleaner. Plus this stuff you were supposed to feed to the cat to make it stop having hairballs.
Unfortunately, the stuff required that you feed it to the cat, which was most definitely not happening. The miserable beast would eat the food she set out for it in bowls, but it didn’t seem at all interested in trying the gel-like stuff from the bottle of hairball remedy despite its theoretical “malt-flavored” appeal.
She sighed. This really had started out looking like another Kerth Award. A politician passing on government contracts to his brother, who ran one of the largest businesses in Metropolis … She’d even discovered that the businessman brother had served some jail time and made some contacts there that he was still keeping in touch with.
Screetch… scritch scritch scritch.
Lois jumped off the couch and glared at the cat, which was oh-so-innocently scratching its claws on Lois’s beautiful couch.
“You… nasty thing, you! Get off my couch!” Lois tried to swat the cat with a handful of the papers she’d been going through.
The cat gave her a much-maligned look and stalked off, probably to go eat some of Lois’s shoes.
She sighed.
Just as she was about to get back into her research, the phone rang at the same time there was a suspicious crash from the bedroom.
Lois chose the phone as being less likely to cause her to have a heart attack at age twenty-eight.
It was Clark.
Lois tried to ignore the way her heart fluttered when she realized it was him. She’d realized only a few months ago, back when she’d almost made the mistake of marrying Lex Luthor, that it was Clark she was… well, she wasn’t sure she’d go quite so far as to say “in love with,” but “in like with” had definite possibilities.
Ever since then, she’d been unable to keep herself from reacting with a little thrill to the way he said her name or touched her arm when they walked.
“Lois?” Clark asked, sounding concerned. “Did you hear me?”
“We’re meeting a witness,” she managed. “At... 7am?” Startled, she looked at the clock. “That’s in ten minutes.”
“Then we’d better hurry,” he told her.
Two minutes later, Lois had locked the horrible beast pretending to be a cat in her apartment and was on the street trying to catch a cab.
Clark looked gorgeous at 7am. Well, he always looked gorgeous, of course. But he smelled faintly of aftershave and his hair was still wet. When he placed his hand on the small of her back as they stepped onto the parking garage elevator, she felt a tingle go all the way up her spine.
Maybe she’d invite him over tonight, after they finished at the paper. They could watch a movie, share popcorn. It seemed that lately they only spent time together when they were on a case or when Lois needed protection. Which was almost weekly, unfortunately. At least with Clark around, meeting witnesses on the bottom floor of the parking garage wasn’t nearly as dangerous as it had been when she worked alone.
Their witness was a red-haired bank teller who was also a born gossip. She gestured wildly with her hands as she talked, showing off her bright nail polish and long, rather frightening nails.
“Well, so, the city councilman guy, Mr. Cronix, he was in the bank last Monday. With his girlfriend. The one the wife doesn’t know about. I don’t know what he sees in her, honestly. She’s all bad hair and bad makeup. If I couldn’t make him a much better girlfriend, I don’t know.”
“What did he do at the bank, Sheila?” Lois asked desperately.
Sheila giggled. “He cashed a huge check. Well, huge to me, pretty miniscule to him, I’m sure. Something like $9,000. And he sure knows how to spend it, at least, if he was the one who bought that dishwater blonde her earrings. I swear, those things were real, and they were spectacular!”
“Who was the check from?” Clark asked at a look from Lois.
“Why, his brother, of course,” Sheila said as if anybody would have known. “Now, I’m not gonna say that I have the biggest crush on Mr. Cronix, but... well, maybe just a teensy bit, and that made me curious to see how much money he had. You know, to see if he was as good a catch as they always say he is. And he is!”
“He inherited a lot, didn’t he?” Lois pointed out.
“Most of the money in his account was from his brother, though, one way or the other. He’d gotten a heck of a lot of checks the past few weeks, all under $10,000.”
“Those are pretty small,” Clark said.
She nodded. “Well, we see a lot of people get checks for $9,999 or something. It’s because if you write a check for $10,000 or over, it gets automatically reviewed to make sure everything’s on the up-and-up. And, ya know, nobody likes that delay, and sometimes they’ve got stuff to hide. The thing is, he’s gotten more than a few of those, and not just in the past week. They’re all from his brother and labeled “gift.” But if you add up everything over the past few months, it’s several hundred thousand dollars! That’s more money than I’ll prolly ever see in a lifetime,” she said, looking a bit bitter. “I think the guy’s cute, but that much money as a gift... well, it reeks. And when I heard you were sniffing around the pair of them brothers, I thought I’d best come tell you something. But, like I said, I don’t want my name anywhere, or I’d lose my job.”
Lois and Clark both promised, but Sheila looked somewhat doubtful. “I never reveal my sources,” Lois told her.
They were heading back to the Planet when Clark got his typical slightly-constipated look that Lois knew meant he had a sudden urge to go get a manicure or maybe pay a parking fine.
“Uh, Lois,” Clark said, looking around frantically, “I, uh...”
“Just go,” she said, rolling her eyes. The cab driver was beginning to look anxious, so Lois took pity on him and climbed in. “That better not have been on the clock,” she told him sternly, leaning forward to double-check.
It wasn’t so much what happened *in* the cab (although Lois was astounded to find that the cabbie not only spoke English but also knew where the Daily Planet building was located and only got lost once), but what happened when she got out of it. For, when she stepped out of the taxi, the first thing she saw was the cat.
“Oh, no. Not you again,” she said to the cat. “You were locked in my apartment!”
The cat turned and pretended it was ignoring her, as if it was just coincidence that it had escaped a locked apartment and found itself in front of the Daily Planet.
“Well, fine, then,” Lois said, stepping over the thing and walking brusquely towards the building. Thank goodness for revolving doors. The cat followed her at a subtle distance, but stopped, confused, when it reached those doors.
Lois hurried up the elevator and into the Planet.
Perry just *had* to give them another 48 hours to get something on this story. He’d been impatient at the meeting last night, unwilling to let Lois and Clark keep investigating when their sources had run dry, but he’d reluctantly granted them 24 hours. Now that they had new information, surely he’d give them even more!
She’d barely had the chance to sit down at her desk and turn the computer on, however, when she heard her voice called from across the room. To her surprise, the doorman was hurrying towards her, holding a large bundle of unhappy fur.
“Oh, no,” Lois muttered. Words that seemed to becoming part of her daily vocabulary ever since the cat.
“Miss Lane,” the doorman said, out of breath, “I think you left your cat outside. He’s been sitting outside the door crying, and I really don’t think you should take a cat to work.”
He dropped the cat onto her desk, nodded, and then headed back towards the elevator.
Lois shoved the cat off her desk so that it landed, feet down, of course, on the floor. Most of the papers on her desk went with it.
She sighed.
“What’s wrong, Lois?” Clark asked, appearing from the direction of the stairs and sitting on the newly-cleared edge of her desk. Lois’s breath momentarily caught in her throat before she managed to regain control.
“Clark!” she said delightedly. “Would you like a cat?”
“A cat?”
Lois scooped the creature off the floor, where it had been alternating between staring balefully at her and preening itself. She dropped the walking hairball into Clark’s perfectly-groomed lap. “This one,” she clarified. “It’s free, it’s had all its shots, it can be easily entertained with a simple shoelace…”
He lifted his eyebrows. “It? Is it a male or a female?”
“No clue,” Lois admitted. “I wasn’t about to lift its tail to check. It would probably bite me if I tried, anyway.”
“Where did it come from?”
“The depths of hell, I think.” At his look, she relented. “It’s Lucy’s cat. She asked me to take care of it for a week while she’s in Hawaii with her latest boyfriend.”
“And she didn’t tell you which it was? Or what its name is?”
“Smokey. Fluffy. Socks. Something like that. Nothing that gives away the gender.”
The darned thing was actually purring away in Clark’s lap. She hadn’t even thought the cat knew how to purr amidst breaking things and hacking up hairballs. Of course, she couldn’t blame it. If *she’d* been the one in Clark’s lap…
Well, she’d certainly be shedding less.
“Lois! Clark! In my office, *now*!”
Lois sighed. The inevitable meeting with Perry. At least they had some progress to show him, little as it might be. Hopefully it was enough to keep them on the case for another two days, at least.
Clark gently placed the cat back on Lois’s desk, where it immediately pretended to fall asleep. Lois wasn’t falling for that trick again, though. Last time it acted that innocent, it was only waiting until she turned away before it went on a curtain-climbing adventure.
Perry was not impressed by their witness. In fact, you could almost hear the air quotes he put around “witness” every time he mentioned her. However, he grudgingly allowed them two more days after much groveling by Clark.
“I wasn’t groveling, Lois!” Clark insisted after she’d called him on it as they left the office.
“You were embarrassing me. You were *so* groveling.”
“I was explaining. Pleading. But definitely not groveling.”
Lois rolled her eyes, only to stop dead at the sight of her cat. Sitting on her desk. Looking down proudly at the large dead cockroach it had deposited in the middle of her paperwork for the case.
Without saying a word, Lois picked the furry thing up by the scruff of its neck and carried it over to Jimmy’s desk. His worried expression told her just how annoyed she must look, but she didn’t care.
“Here,” she said, dumping the cat in front of him. “You still have those keys to my apartment?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, obviously realizing that this was a Lois it was best to suck up to.
“Take this cat over to my apartment and lock it in a room with no windows. Preferably inside its carrying case.”
“Got it,” Jimmy said, jumping up and scooping up the ugly thing as he hurried towards the door. He looked relieved to be escaping so easily.
Lois turned back to her desk, her anger subsiding somewhat. There were only three more days of the cat, and then she’d never have to see it again, anyway.
* * * * * *
This had not been her most brilliant move, Lois admitted to herself. In fact, it might even be one of the stupider ones... and considering all of the risky, foolhardy chances she'd taken during her career, that was saying a lot.
Still, it had been an opportunity she couldn't pass up. The businessman brother had been an easy surveillance victim. He didn't watch the cars behind him as he drove to work, apparently allowed his receptionist to take bathroom breaks, and didn't lock the supply
closet next to his office. What was Lois supposed to wait for, an engraved invitation? Once she'd overheard that phone call with his brother, she knew something was going to happen tonight. And then he'd headed down to the warehouse district... again, without watching the cars behind him.
And it wasn't like Lois hadn't *tried* to call for backup. But she'd forgotten to recharge her stupid car phone, again. So, here she was, hiding behind a stack of barrels just inside a warehouse she remembered was owned by the businessman, attempting to scoot closer so she could catch some of the conversation between the brothers. Without attracting the attention of the guards. She'd always liked a challenge.
However, she had *not* always liked cats. Still didn't, in fact. So when she recognized a familiar brown-and-white form picking its way carefully across the dirty warehouse floor, Lois considered murder. Did it count as murder if the victim wasn't human? Definitely not. Even if the victim *had* been human, it would be justifiable homicide by this point.
"Cat!" Lois hissed. "Stupid smelly beast! Get over here!"
The cat fluffed up its tail and continued to walk towards the guards. It was too far from Lois for her to reach out and grab it. Maybe if she could switch to that piling over there without attracting attention...
Too late.
"Hey," one of the guards said, taking a few steps towards the cat. "What's he doing here?"
"Probably here for the rats," the other said. "Let's hope he's big enough to take them. We've got enough for a few cats like him."
The first guard nodded, but he had a thoughtful look on his face. "Doesn't he look kinda like that cat that the reporter had, back at the Planet? We followed her back after she was asking all those questions at the laboratory. Same color, and the markings on the face... I haven't seen many cats that looked like that."
The second guard didn't look so sure, but he walked over to the cat. "Here, pussy. C'mere."
The cat, traitor that he was, strolled languidly over to the guards and submitted to being petted.
"Yeah, this is definitely her cat," the first guard said. "Lock the doors and start checking the room. You take clockwise, I'll take counterclockwise."
Stupider guards, Lois had often fooled. But these ones were obviously a touch above the average Larry-, Moe-, and Curly-types that bad guys often hired.
“The reporter!” the second guard called to his buddy while holding on to Lois by the scruff of the neck (a most appropriate way to carry cats, but not reporters). Within 5 minutes, Lois was trussed like a chicken and lying in a dank room somewhere beneath the ground floor of the warehouse. The cat, not trussed up at all, was shut in the room as well.
"Some help you are," Lois informed it. "You got me caught, you stupid thing. Why won't you stop following me? I locked you into the apartment! If you were a human I'd think you were twins."
The cat disappeared into the shadows without so much as a meow of apology.
"Oh, Clark," Lois whispered. "I really wish I'd told you where I was going."
Of course, then he'd be here with her, also tied up and in a locked room. Now, if it were Superman she'd told, he could be rescuing her right now.
But somehow, she'd rather Clark. Even if they were both caught, at least she'd have company. Somebody to bounce ideas off. Somebody to assure her that the guards were exaggerating about the rat problem. Somebody to kiss her and tell her that they'd be okay.
The cat meowed somewhere from the darkness in the corner of the room.
Lois sighed. It had taken her a long time to realize that she was in love with Clark. A year of knowing him, working with him every moment, spending her free time with him, thinking about him when she was alone. And now she'd never get to act on those feelings.
The cat reappeared in front of Lois, holding something dark in its mouth.
"What've you got?" Lois asked, attempting to lean closer without making the ropes cut into her wrists any more than they already did.
The cat dropped its prize. A rat. A huge one, in fact.
Lois tried very hard not to scream. Or throttle the cat using the extra rope around her wrists. But it was hard.
"You have not," she told the cat, "reassured me about the lack of rats in the room."
She sighed. “I hate rats. And cats. Clark, where are you?”
tbc
