Some Bonds Have No Words

Some Bonds Have No Words

By Warren Flynn

Beckett escaped at 10:14 a.m., slipping past when Teresa, the human that cleaned up after his roommate, Callan, dropped her keys.

She fumbled at the door, muttering in her other human language—the same words she used when she found hairballs under the couch. The moment it cracked open, he moved—low and fast, a whisker’s width ahead of her scuffed sneaker.

She never saw him go.

He trotted down the hallway without urgency. The carpet muted his steps. The scent of sharp cleaning-poison mixed with old dog-mark stung his nose. Someone had tried to cover up an accident on the floor yesterday. Humans never understood how their attempts to erase smells only created new ones.

Behind him, Teresa gasped. “Beckett!” Then more words in her other tongue.

Too late.

He didn’t break stride. Didn’t look back. That life, the food dish, the windowsill, the predictable rhythms of Callan’s den, was left behind now. For how long, he didn’t know. That wasn’t the kind of question that mattered.

The hall belonged to him the moment it came into view.

But as he passed the elevator, the faint scent of machine oil lingered, a reminder of his human, along the wall. Faded but unmistakable.

It pulled at something beneath his ribs. Not hunger. Not fear. Just a shape inside him formed slowly, wordlessly over years of quiet mornings and shared silences.

Callan used fewer words than most humans. But he knew how to be still. How to listen with his whole body. He remembered the first weeks after the man saved him from the place of cages and too many smells. The new den was quiet. Spacious. No barking. No cold metal.

Callan didn’t crowd him. He left the door open. Sat nearby. Said nothing.

Beckett had watched from beneath the sleeping-ledge, eyes fixed. Waiting. Measuring.

Then one night, he crept out and climbed onto the man’s lap. Tested his weight against the human’s warmth. Callan didn’t move. Just rested a hand gently along Beckett’s back.

No sounds. Just breath and stillness.

That was enough.

They learned each other’s rhythms after that. Window mornings. Food at the right times. Long silences without demands.

Trust.

The memory settled warm in his chest, like sunlight on fur.

But why this morning, when the world had cracked open, had Beckett moved without thinking?

The elevator dinged.

Two young ones stepped out, dragging wheeled-toys behind them. They looked up and stopped when they saw him.

“Cool,” the taller one said. “Is he yours?”

The smaller one shrugged—that loose-shouldered gesture humans made when uncertain.

Beckett walked between them into the elevator. Their sweet-sticky and crushed-green scent clung to the air.

The door closed behind him.

He sat still as stone. The floor panel lit up. Beckett couldn’t read, but the elevator moved.

Good enough.

Floor 6

The elevator opened into a hallway lined with artificial quiet. Beckett stepped out, moving like smoke. Past a cleaning cart reeking of pine-scented chemicals. Past a door cracked just wide enough to let out bursts of dance music. The rhythms were erratic, the way prey moved to appear dangerous.

And then: a new sound. Sniffling.

He turned the corner and saw her. A small human. Maybe five seasons old. Sitting against the wall with her arms wrapped around skinny knees. Bare feet pink against the rough carpet. Scattered stars of glitter stuck to one cheek. A plastic tiara tilted sideways in her tangled hair.

She wasn’t crying anymore. But she had been. The salt-trace lingered in the air, mixed with birthday cake and the scent of child-fear—different from adult fear, sharper, cleaner.

Beckett paused. Watched. Calculated.

She looked up. Brown eyes wide.

“Hi,” she whispered.

He didn’t respond. Just sat. Her small hands trembled against her knees; nails painted purple but chipped at the edges.

“I’m lost,” she said. “My daddy went to get clothes from the washing-place and said to wait, but I got bored and forgot which door was ours.”

She sniffed and looked down the hallway. Six identical doors. All the same beige. Humans made their dens from sameness and then got lost in them.

“Do you know where I live?”

He turned and walked. Not fast. Something in her smallness, in the way she held herself tight, stirred old instincts in him. Not the soft-feeling humans carried. But recognition—the same tightness he’d felt hiding under dumpsters before Callan found him. Small things needed protecting sometimes. Even from themselves.

He could smell her scent trail clearly, leading to a door. The path was obvious as moonlight on water. Something else too, a faint whiff of old bacon near one doormat. He paused. Sniffed. False alarm. Back to the girl.

He paused. Looked back. Made the slow blink that meant safe in the language between cats.

She stood slowly, clutching her plastic crown. “Wait... should I follow you?”

At door 6C, a rubber dinosaur keychain swayed in the air conditioning.

“That’s mine!” she gasped.

She ran to it. Knocked with her small fist.

The door opened almost before her hand landed.

“Lila!” her father’s voice cracked in relief. He dropped down and pulled her close. Dried-leaf-smoke and worry poured off him in waves.

Beckett turned to leave, but the man stepped out. Scanned the hallway. “What the—was that cat with you?”

Lila’s voice, soft: “He found me.”

The man looked again.

“You followed a cat?”

Tears clung to the girl’s cheeks, sharp with salt and fear.

“He helped me, Daddy.”

He looked at Beckett, then back at Lila. “You’re telling me... a cat aided you?”

She nodded, the plastic crown wobbling.

He blinked. Rubbed his face. “I—okay. Okay. Come inside, love.”

“I don’t understand,” he muttered, still looking at Beckett.

Beckett met his eyes.

Just long enough.

Then he vanished around the corner.

Descent

Stairs now.

The elevator was too slow, too obvious. The stairwell was honest—quiet, grimy, with sharp smells clinging to the corners. Mouse-leavings. Old smoke-sticks. Something dead between the walls on floor 5.

He took it down to 4.

At the landing, he stopped. Voices. Male. One too loud, the other quieter but edged with threat.

“You think she knows?” the loud one asked. His scent was all wrong—metal-fear barely masked by false-flower spray.

A pause. Then a click-spark. Beckett heard metal on metal—keys or something sharper.

The other man finally spoke. “Doesn’t matter. After tonight, it’s done. I’m leaving her.”

The door creaked open. Footsteps faded.

Beckett stayed in the shadows, tail still, ears forward. Memorized their scents.

He listened. Unmoving. Then walked on. Not his den. Not his fight.

Floor 3

The hallway stank of spiced-meat and human exhaustion.

He passed a female pushing a wheeled-nest, speaking into her talk-box at someone who wasn’t listening. The small one inside stared at Beckett as he rolled by. A slow blink. Something almost knowing.

He turned the corner and stopped short. A gathering had erupted into the hallway. Noise-patterns, spilled fermented-grain leaving the floor sticky, humans moving as if their bodies had forgotten how.

Beckett slid past a male making too-loud sounds, between pointed foot-shells that clicked uncertainly. Someone stepped on the edge of his tail. Pain shot up his spine, and he yowled—loud and sharp. Heads turned. Too much attention. Sloppy. He darted for cover, shame prickling behind his ears.

Inside, the den throbbed with too many heartbeats pressed into too little space.

He jumped up on a high shelf. Knocked a fake-bone shape onto the floor. Watched it roll toward the two humans, making angry sounds at each other.

Nobody noticed his presence. The audacity.

The air was thick with body-salt and cheap fermented-grape. His whiskers twitched at the overload. Ten minutes. Then he was gone again, grateful for the relative quiet of the hallway.

Courtyard

He found the courtyard through a side exit someone had propped open with a folding chair. Cool air hit him, welcome after the stale building heat. The space opened up—grass, concrete paths, and scattered benches. A small playground hunched in one corner, abandoned.

And then another predator’s scent. Fresh. Not fear. Not boredom. Raw territorial rage mixed with anxiety.

The barking started before the dog appeared. High-pitched, aggressive. A yappy creature burst from behind the pool shed—small, wire-haired, shoulders rigid with misplaced confidence. It spotted Beckett and froze.

Tennis ball clenched in its jaws. Hackles raised like tiny spears.

Their eyes met. A heartbeat. Two.

The dog dropped its ball.

And charged.

Beckett didn’t move. His claws extended, finding purchase on the concrete. Every muscle coiled but hidden, a spring compressed to its limit.

Let it come.

Five lengths. Three. A blur of brown fur and white teeth.

Then Beckett exploded sideways, at an angle, making the dog’s momentum work against it. His paw flashed out. Claws scored a precise line beneath the dog’s right eye. Not deep enough to maim, but enough to burn.

The dog yelped but wheeled around, snapping.

Beckett was already moving. Low, fast, unpredictable. The dog lunged again. This time Beckett went high, up and over, landing squarely on the canine’s back. Claws gripped. Not piercing, but present.

The dog bucked and howled. Threw itself sideways against a bench with desperate force.

The impact jarred through Beckett’s ribs. He released, rolled, came up in a crouch. Tail lashing. Ears flat.

The dog faced him, panting hard. Blood welled from behind its ear where Beckett’s teeth had found purchase. Its eyes had changed, the rage draining out, replaced by something older. Recognition, maybe.

Fear.

Blood rode on the wind. Every part of him ached to chase, to finish.

Beckett took one step forward.

The dog turned and fled; tail tucked.

Beckett remained still, watching it go. His heart hammered, blood singing with the ancient rhythm of territory defended. But beneath that? Not satisfaction exactly. More like... completion. The boundaries had been redrawn. Order restored.

His shoulder throbbed where teeth had grazed. His ribs ached from the bench impact. Good pain. Earned pain.

Then came the human noise. Loud. Uncontained.

“Oh my God! Toby?! TOBY!” A female in yoga pants and expensive running shoes rushed across the grass. “What happened? Are you—IS THAT CAT?!”

Beckett sat. Began grooming his paw, calmly, as cats do.

“You ANIMAL! You attacked my Toby!”

She stormed toward him. Fast. Angry. The cup in her hand sloshed, and her other foot swung out—quick, crude, aimed right at his side.

Beckett twisted away with a fluid snap of motion, her shoe catching only air. He spun low and fast, back arched, tail puffed, and hissed—long and sharp, all fang and fury.

The woman froze. Flinched.

He met her eyes. Held steady.

She looked away first. Bent down to attend to Toby. One hand on the dog, the other clutching the container that smelled like Callan’s morning drink.

Beckett understood the shape of human noise. He simply chose which ones to heed.

Then he disappeared into the hedge, her shrill protests fading behind him.

Rain

He found shelter behind the pool-house, under fallen shade-cover. Water started falling, fat drops that drummed on the fabric above him. The sound reminded him of Callan’s fingers tapping when the dreams kept him awake.

The air changed with the water, muting the day’s heat and a thousand hidden scents. Earth-crawlers surfacing. Stone releasing stored warmth. Pool-chemical sharp in his nose.

He didn’t sleep. Not fully. Sleep hovered like the birds he watched from the window in Callan’s den, close but never landing.

But he rested, ribs aching where he’d hit the bench. One paw throbbed. The water continued its steady pattern.

The day had twisted in unexpected ways. He’d followed an urge that pulled like hunger but wasn’t hunger. Instead, it was the need to move, to test boundaries, to know what lay beyond familiar walls. He’d found answers in the lost girl’s quick breathing when she saw her door, in the dog’s retreat, in the satisfying burn of muscles used hard.

Yet here, under dripping shelter, his mind kept returning to one thing: the smooth-worn place on Callan’s boot. The exact spot where his paw belonged.

Evening

Light-boxes flickered on across the territory. The sky darkened to a wet-stone colour.

He stirred. Body stiff. The rain had stopped, leaving everything smelling clean and wrong.

He returned to the building through a door someone had propped open. Inside: warmth and the hum of a drying-machine left running.

The stairwell still carried the metallic tang of danger, faint but lingering. Not forgotten.

Back up the stairs. Each floor had its own scent-map now—he knew them all. 7... 8... 9... then 10.

At the top, he paused.

His hallway smelled like cleaning-poison, warmed fish-meat, and something harder to name. Home-place, maybe.

The door to Callan’s den stood slightly open. Light spilled out in a thin line.

Teresa sat on the floor beside it, her back against the wall. A ceramic bowl of shredded chicken beside her. Her cleaning cloth lay crumpled in her lap, and she kept twisting it between work-rough hands—the way humans did when their insides felt too big. Dried tears marked her round face, and her breathing still hitched.

“Beckett?” she whispered. She pressed her hand to her chest, then made the crossing-gesture humans used for their sky-thing. More soft words in her other-tongue. Her voice shook. Beckett thought it might break again.

She didn’t finish. Didn’t need to. Beckett understood. Teresa had been coming many mornings for many seasons now. She left food when Callan forgot to eat. Let the wind in when the den grew too close. Sometimes she hummed while she worked—soft melodies from wherever she’d come from before this place.

He stepped inside.

She didn’t move. Didn’t try to grab him.

Smart.

He took two bites of bird-meat. Then another. It was the good kind, from the special meat-place Callan occasionally visited. Then sat beside the table.

Waiting.

Teresa breathed out slow. Closed the door behind him with a soft click.

Later

The lock turned. Callan’s scent came first—rain-soaked hide, machine-oil, and that weariness he always carried.

He saw Beckett first.

Didn’t speak.

Just set down his head-shell. Dropped the metal-keys in the bowl by the door, the one Beckett had knocked down three times before Callan moved it.

“Hey boyo,” he said finally. Voice rough.

Beckett didn’t look at him. Not yet.

Callan lowered himself beside the soft place. Water dripped from his outer skin. “Did you win today?”

Beckett flicked an ear. He imagined a question beneath. Did the restlessness settle? Did he find what pulled him out there?

“Yeah,” Callan answered himself. “Me neither.”

He moved to the island. Opened a bottle of sharp-liquid but didn’t drink. Just held it as he moved to the sitting ledge.

Beckett jumped up beside him. Felt the familiar dip in the cushion.

Callan raised one hand. Not to touch, just to acknowledge. The same gesture from that first night, when he’d found Beckett alone in his cage in the cold place.

Beckett blinked slowly. Then lay down. One paw touching Callan’s thigh.

Outside, the water started falling again. Softer this time.

Not every bond needed words.

Some were built in the spaces between bad dreams, in the weight of a hand that knew how to be still, in the choice to return when leaving would be easier.

Some were built on silence. And others on staying.

Beckett closed his eyes and listened to Callan breathe. The rhythm was familiar, sometimes catching on old memories, sometimes smooth as deep water. Outside, something wailed in the distance. Inside, the warm maker ticked its evening song.

Tomorrow, the world would crack open again. Tomorrow, there would be new escapes to consider, new territories to claim. The door would open, and the hallway would call with its thousand scents and possibilities.

But tonight, with rain tapping against windows and Callan’s leg solid beneath his paw, something settled deep in Beckett’s bones: Territory was more than what claws could claim. It was the place that pulled you back. The place that recognized your scent as belonging.

The den settled around them. Some human appliance hummed. Callan’s breathing deepened. Teresa had left the good bird-meat in his bowl.

Beckett stretched once, feeling every ache from his adventure, then curled tighter against Callan’s leg. This was his place in the world. He wasn’t trapped; he chose to return after seeing what lay beyond.

Some freedoms lived in the leaving, in the choice to slip through doors and prowl strange hallways.

Others lived in coming back, in choosing, again and again, where to rest your weight.

Home.