When I transferred to the School of Friendship, I didn’t think it’d be too exciting. Sure, Princess Twilight Sparkle would be our headmare, and the Element Bearers would be our teachers, but it’d still be a school. Maybe they’d tell us about their friendship adventures, and maybe I’d get to meet some students from other kingdoms, but I figured it’d still be a lot like Ms. Cheerilee’s classroom.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
On the first day, before classes even began, I met a dragon, a changeling, a yak, a hippogriff, and a griffon. We all played hooky around lunch time, ran off to the Castle of the Two Sisters, got attacked by puckwudgies, and started an international incident that could have plunged our six kingdoms into a world war. And the next week was just as wild: I got the lead role in a play!
As Ponyville’s weather team wound down summer, it felt like all the craziness in my life would wind down too. I was looking forward to a peaceful autumn of studying and hanging out with my new friends.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. Again.
The Cozy Kitty Café had opened in Ponyville earlier in the summer. It was like Sugar Cube Corner, a place to unwind with cool drinks and fresh-baked pastries, but you could also play with cats. I had been to Sugar Cube Corner more times than I could count, so I decided to give it a shot.
I expected the new place to be a feline paradise, and that was exactly what I found inside. Shelves and little stairways lined the walls, while cardboard scratching strips hung from the moulding. Carpet-covered towers rose up across the floor. Small dens hid in secluded corners with cat toys scattered around their mouths.
What I didn’t expect was to find a griffon, in a cat costume, on the floor, playing with the cats.
And I definitely didn’t expect that griffon to be Gallus.
But there he was, lying on his back, with a brown vest over his body, puffy fake cat paws at the end of each leg, and a pair of matching brown ears hanging from his head. He swished his tail, delighting kittens at his hindquarters, while older cats nestled in his wings and on his belly. One shy cat watched him from a den, but Gallus dangled a treat and whispered to her in a squeaky voice.
I’d only known Gallus for a few weeks by then. Even though he was my friend, any time I thought about him I also remembered the stories my dad used to tell me about griffons.
Grover emerged from the polarosto’s den, fresh gore upon his beak, the Idol of Boreas clutched in his claws, and his claim to the crown of Griffonstone assured, he’d say one night. Another night it was, Then Grisel seized Prince Cheval and soared high over the colt-prince’s earth pony soldiers. She taunted them, saying that if any of them dared to raise a spear at her, she’d let go, and Prince Cheval would rejoin his troops on the ground with terrible speed.
Those stories were what got me to act so calmly when I first bumped into Gallus. Griffons were fierce, so if I wanted to get along with one of them, I had to be cool and confident.
At the cat café, though, Gallus wasn’t fierce. He was playful, sweet, gentle…
Cute.
This daydream came to me, fully formed. Instead of saying hi like I planned to, I would lie down beside him and rub my muzzle against his soft neck. He would scoop me up with his powerful arms, running his claws through my mane, and snuggle me into his warm wings. Then he’d sing to me with the same sweet voice he was using with the shy cat.
“Cat’s in the cradle and the moon is blue,” he sang, “little cubs fly without any clues. When you coming home—“
“Gallus! We’ve got a customer,” said a new voice. A mare with a bag of kibble balanced on her back trotted past us. “You can’t keep hogging all of the kitties.”
His voice snapped back to normal. “Funny, I thought you were paying me to…“
He tilted his head around, I guess to look at her, but he saw me first. His eyes went wide.
I gave him a meek wave.
Gallus nudged the two cats napping on his belly onto the floor and rolled onto his four legs. He walked up to me, his tail slashing through the air, until we were muzzle-to-beak. It would have intimidated me if two kittens hadn’t been behind him trying to pounce on his flicking tail.
“Sandbar, if you even think about telling anyone…” he growled. One of his paw-covered claws jabbed my chest.
That was the Gallus I’d gotten to know, and the one I knew how to handle.
“Whoa, easy! I’m only here to grab a drink. I won’t tell a soul if you don’t want me to.” I brushed away his claw. “So you’re working here?”
Gallus rolled his eyes. “No, I just dress up in this costume and wander around shops for fun.”
I chuckled. “How do you like the job?”
“It pays.”
“Is it fun, though?”
“Like I said, it pays. That’s what counts.”
His answer puzzled me. Did he need money? I didn’t know much about Gallus’s homelife except that his grandpa ran Griffonstone, so I figured he could ask his family for help if he needed it. Maybe griffon culture didn’t work that way, though.
Gallus gave me a suspicious look. “Are you thinking of getting a job here?”
“Oh, no, I can’t. My mom’s seriously allergic to cats. After I get home, I’ll have to take a long shower to wash off the cat dander. I’d probably have to move out if I worked here.”
“Bummer about her allergies,” he said. “Anyway, my shift is almost over. While I’m still on the clock…”
Gallus reached down and plucked a tiny black kitten from the floor. Her bulbous yellow eyes glistened as he held her up to me. “Welcome to Cozy Kitty Café,” he said in a monotone. “Here, have a kitty. Her name is Slayer.”
I took Slayer with one foreleg. A tag on her collar read, “Cuddles.”
“And I’m out. See ya!” Gallus turned, swatting my muzzle with his bushy tail, and started to walk away. His tail hair tickled my nostrils, and I had to hold back a sneeze.
“Wait a sec,” I said while Slayer/Cuddles burrowed deeper into the crook of my leg. “Do you want to hang out since you’re off work?”
He paused. “I thought you just got here.”
“Sure, and you can hang out with me here.”
“I can’t,” Gallus said with a head-shake. “You gotta pay just to be here.”
That was true, the cover charge was ten bits. I had enough extra bits to cover him, but something in his look told me he wouldn’t accept it.
The mare from earlier trotted past us again, this time with a basket of cat toys on her back. “Go ahead, Gallus, stay as long as you want.”
He squinted at her. “You mean you want me to work overtime, or…”
“Nope! Just hang out with your friend, no charge. Call it an employee discount.”
Gallus kept squinting at her as she left, as if he didn’t believe her.
“Cool!” I set down Slayer/Cuddles to scratch an itch behind my ear. “So you’re going to stay?”
“I…guess. Yeah.”
His ears were low, and he seemed distracted.
“I’ll get us some drinks,” I said. Drinks would help us both unwind. “I heard the fizzy ciders here are great.”
I trotted towards a wooden bar on the side of the room. If Gallus said anything in reply, I didn’t hear it. Then again, I wasn’t paying much attention to him because, after a few hoof steps, I realized I’d talked myself into getting drinks with Gallus, like a date.
It wasn’t a date though. We were just two friends getting drinks. I didn’t even know if he was interested in stallions. Then again, we’d have the whole afternoon to talk. That was a lot of time to find interesting things to say. We could spend some of it getting to know each other, maybe find out what he thought of me…
“You okay there, kid?”
My daze broke, and I found myself sitting on my rump in front of a worried-looking bartender. Two bottles of fizzy cider stood on a tray between us.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I told her. “Why do you ask?”
“Because you’ve been sitting there for a whole minute scratching your neck.”
My back leg, which had been rubbing a spot under my jaw, froze. I’d lost track of what I was doing. I grinned sheepishly at her, stood up, took the tray with my mouth, and left. My cheeks and neck tingled with embarrassment.
While I trotted back into the café’s main room, I started thinking about what Gallus and I could talk about on our…not-date. I had a lot of questions about him and griffons in general. Asking Gallus about all the fierce griffons my dad had told me about was a bad idea, but maybe his parents had told him more heroic stories. That seemed like a good place to start.
Gallus had moved to a nook near the back, where he was taking off his costume in front of a rack. He’d already removed his front paws and ears, and was hanging up his vest, but his costume back paws were still on. It struck me as funny. It made sense that a pony working here would need to wear costume paws on their front and back legs, but Gallus’s back legs already ended in cat paws. Couldn’t the café have made an exception for him?
A shadow in the corner grew legs, a tail, and two bulbous yellow eyes. Slayer/Cuddles must have decided she needed to live up to one of her names, because she ambled to me and rubbed against my front legs.
The tingling in my neck and neck flared and turned itchy. I tried to nudge Slayer/Cuddles away, but she persisted. To prove she was sticking around, she booped my nose with her tail.
As soon as she touched me, my nostrils burned. I jerked my head up, but it was too late. My muzzle contorted, my eyes slammed shut, and my lungs sucked in air.
A sneeze exploded out of me. Fizz sprayed into my nostrils, forcing me to sneeze again. I fell to the floor rump-first.
“Dude!” Gallus shouted.
I opened my watering eyes. Cider had flown everywhere, drenching Gallus and every costume hanging near him. I’d never seen him so furious. I started to apologize, but before I could, another sneeze shot through me.
“I’m so sorry,” I whimpered. My skin crawled on my neck, and I couldn’t help but scratch it. It didn’t help. “I have no idea what’s happening.”
“Are you allergic to cats or something?”
“I don’t—“ Two sneezes cut me short. “I don’t think so. My mom is, but…”
My mom had awful reactions to cats. One time, a stray cat wandered to our house, and my mom found him first. Right away, she’d broken out into hives and rashes, and started sneezing so much she knocked herself down…
Exactly what I was doing right then.
“Oh, horse apples.”
Gallus grabbed my shoulder. “We gotta get you out of here.”
He guided me outside, keeping me from bumping into anything. My nose kept squirming, and my skin kept crawling, but not as badly as they had at the café.
“You picked a terrific place to discover your cat allergies,” Gallus said as he helped me lay down and patted my back. I arched up a little, savoring the feel of his claws until he pulled away.
He stood and took a few steps back. “I better leave you alone, unless you’re a glutton for punishment.”
“Patting my back felt good, actually.” I shifted my back towards him a little, offering it to his claws.
“Nah, I meant your allergies.”
“What about my allergies?”
He cocked his head to the side. “You’re allergic to cats.”
“I guess so,” I sighed.
Gallus pointed a claw at his rear.
“I’m half lion,” he said, “which means I’m half cat.”
A snicker escaped me, some part of my brain connecting how perfect it was that he’d be half cat and work at a cat café, before realization dawned. Gallus was fierce but sweet, snarky but tender, athletic but comforting. I wanted to draw him close, burrow into his feathers, and call him mine…
But getting near him set my skin on fire.
Gallus left with a wave. While my skin and muzzle finally relaxed, my heart sank.
My mom had spent years trying to do something about her allergies, visiting doctors in Ponyville, Canterlot, Manehattan, and Vanhoover, but they’d all said the same thing: allergies can’t be cured, so a pony with them had to avoid whatever set them off. That had been good enough for my mom, but it wouldn’t work for me. Even if I could avoid Gallus, one of my classmates at the School of Friendship, I didn’t want to. I began to wonder how much sneezing and hives I could tolerate.
Then I remembered something. My mom had talked to doctors all over Equestria, but she’d skipped one place right next to Ponyville: the Everfree Forest.