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When Ryan woke up, there was a ginger cat lying directly in front of his face licking itself.
He screamed, and the cat jumped up and glared at him in annoyance at having interrupted its bafftime, before jumping off the bed and sauntering out of his room, tail swishing from side to side.
‘Everything alright?’ Yaz asked, poking her head round the door a few seconds later.
‘Did you see the cat?’ Ryan yelled, sitting up in bed and looking around him as though there was another one about to jump out at him from somewhere.
Yaz looked confused. ‘What cat?’
‘The ginger one that just left the room!’ Ryan said, pointing towards the open door that Yaz was currently standing in.
Yaz raised an eyebrow and laughed. ‘I’m pretty sure it was just a dream. Come on, the Doctor’s taking us to an intergalactic waffle house for breakfast. Hurry up and get dressed.’
The cat didn't appear for the rest of the day, or the rest of the week, and Ryan accepted that he must have dreamt it up. The Doctor wouldn’t let a cat onto her ship, surely?
Graham was relaxing in the TARDIS library after an eventful day of running around being chased by things. His feet and legs were sore and he had them elevated on a stool in front of him, the heat from the fire warming his sore soles. His favourite book was in his hand and he wriggled in his armchair, getting himself comfortable. As much as he loved spending time with the others, nothing beat sitting in your favourite armchair with a good book.
And then a cat jumped onto his lap and stretched itself out happily, purring quietly.
‘Um. What?’
Graham looked at the cat. The cat looked at Graham. Graham and the cat looked at each other.
‘The Doc didn't say she had any pets,’ Graham said, brow furrowed.
He scratched the cat’s head and it meowed happily. It was a handsome thing, ginger all over with green eyes and a collar around its neck. Graham checked the tag.
‘Goose?’
The cat meowed again and closed its eyes, curling up for a nap.
‘Alright then,’ Graham said, admitting defeat and bringing his book to his face once more. ‘You’d better stay there though. Remind me to check with the Doc if she’s got a new pet. Other than the three of us of course.’ He chuckled at his own joke, and decided to join the cat in a quick nap.
The Doctor woke him up a couple of hours later shaking his foot.
‘There you are! We got pizza. You coming?’
‘Eh?’ Graham blinked awake and sat up. The cat had vanished, and he looked around the room in puzzlement.
‘Where’s the cat gone?’
The Doctor’s face scronched.
‘What cat?’
‘The ginger one. Goose his name was. He was just here!’
‘No cats allowed on the TARDIS, Graham,’ the Doctor told him firmly. ‘Or animals of any kind. They get into all sorts of places. Now come on, before Ryan eats all the food.’
Yaz was making breakfast one morning when a ginger cat sauntered in, jumped onto the counter, grabbed a slice of her toast in its jaws, jumped off the counter, and sauntered out again.
Yaz stared after it in shock, and the slice of orange she’d had halfway to her mouth fell out of her hand and landed on the floor.
The cat came back in and grabbed that too.
‘Ryan!’
‘So you’re telling me that each of you has seen a ginger cat in the TARDIS,’ the Doctor said, hands on her hips and oil smeared up her arms and on her face.
‘He’s called Goose!’ Graham said. ‘He’s got a collar with a nametag and everything.’
‘And he eats toast,’ Yaz said, still in shock.
‘And he has zero shame,’ Ryan chimed in.
The Doctor looked up at the TARDIS roof and raised an eyebrow.
‘Did you know about this?’
The TARDIS beeped and, while the three humans couldn’t decipher the ship’s noises and chirps and general sounds, they had to say it sounded confused.
‘Right then,’ the Doctor said, tugging off her welding apron, gloves and helmet and abandoning them to the floor. ‘I guess we’d better go look for this cat.’
They turned the ship upside down looking for the cat. Yaz discovered rooms she’d never knew existed and Graham discovered that the Doc really didn't do as much cleaning as she probably should, coming back up from rummaging behind bookcases and sofas in the living room completely filthy and covered in dust. Although in a ship that's internal dimensions was infinity +1, how would you ever keep up with household chores?
They ended up collapsing in an exhausted heap on the library sofa, sore from running around the TARDIS all day cat hunting and aching from moving various heavy bits of furniture to check behind it for their stowaway.
‘And you’re completely definitely sure there was a cat?’ the Doctor said with a yawn. ‘You didn't just all eat magic mushrooms together or something?’
‘How old do you think I am, Doc?’ Graham said indignantly.
‘You’re all children as far as I’m concerned,’ the Doctor replied, an eyebrow raised.
‘There was a cat!’ Ryan protested. ‘Absolutely. I woke up to it a few inches from my face licking itself.’
‘I’m not saying I don’t believe you,’ the Doctor said reassuringly. ‘It’s just… the TARDIS doesn’t just let anything in here you know. Especially animals. I’m sure she doesn’t want a repeat of the time a squirrel got inside the engine room.’
The TARDIS donged above their head as if to say no, she really didn't want a repeat of that.
‘Ginger tomcat called Goose, he’s definitely around here somewhere,’ Graham said, certain. ‘Maybe if we just call his name. Goose? Gooooose? You in here mate?’
‘Oh please the TARDIS is enormous,’ Ryan said with a roll of his eyes. ‘He isn’t going to just OH MY GOD THERE HE IS.’
Goose the cat ran into the room and sat in front of the sofa, looking up at them with his big green eyes. He meowed at them and started washing a paw.
If Yaz was surprised that Graham’s tactic had worked, or that the cat had finally shown itself to all of them, she was even
more
surprised when the Doctor jumped over the back of the sofa and hid behind it with a shriek.
‘Oh come on, Doc,’ Graham said incredulously. ‘You’ll face down mud creatures and things that smell like their own wee and giant metal pepperpots but you’re scared of a little ginger cat?’
Goose jumped onto Graham’s lap and settled down, purring happily.
‘That -’ the Doctor said, hiding behind a reading desk with a lampshade wobbling unsteadily on the top, ‘- is
not
a cat.’
‘Course it is,’ Ryan said. ‘What else would it be?’
The cat yawned, showing off its sharp teeth, and closed its eyes.
‘That thing could swallow the entire universe you live in,’ the Doctor said, glaring at Goose who tilted its head at her curiously.
‘It’s a cat, Doc!’ Graham said.
‘It is
not
a
cat.
What the hell are you doing letting that in here?’
The last part of this was directed at the TARDIS, and the ship chirped and whistled. Ryan recognised denial when he heard it.
‘What do you mean you can’t find any record of it entering? It must have got in somehow! Unless…’
She looked at the cat. The cat looked at her. The Doctor and the cat looked at each other.
‘Unless what, Doctor?’ Yaz asked.
‘The TARDIS doesn’t just contain rooms,’ the Doctor said, eyeing Goose warily. ‘It also has pocket dimensions in it, they’re small and I keep them locked away but a Flerken would probably be able to wriggle its way through if it knew what it was looking for.’
‘A what?’
The TARDIS klaxons began to sound and the Doctor ran for the door.
‘Distress call! Come on gang!’
The three of them jumped off the sofa and followed her out the door, but the Doctor turned back and fixed the cat, who had taken Graham’s warm spot on the sofa, with a beady look.
‘You stay there, we’ll be having words later.’
The TARDIS had brought them to a spaceship which had been brutally attacked by pirates and had no propulsion, weapons or life support.
It was certainly one of Team TARDIS’ easier rescue missions and simply involved getting the crew into their blue box for transport back to their planet, but the pirates had trapped a few of the crew near the flight deck and they hadn’t managed to escape.
‘You lot stay here,’ the Doctor said to her friends, the crew they had rescued standing inside the TARDIS doors looking pleadingly at her. ‘I’ll go get the others.’
She was already running towards the other end of the ship but, of course, Ryan, Graham and Yaz were close on her heels.
‘We’re with you! It’s like you’re not listening when we say it!’ Yaz yelled as they sprinted after her.
In the chaos, no-one noticed the small ginger cat race out from inside the ship, hurling itself down the corridors after them.
The pirates, who resembled humanoid rat type things, had trapped the remaining crew inside the bridge but it only took a quick buzz of the sonic screwdriver to get the doors open, the Doctor darting inside to rescue the crew who’d been tightly bound with rope and had gags over their mouths.
They were shaking their head urgently at her, eyes wide, and Yaz realised with a sinking feeling in her stomach that they’d just ran straight into a trap.
The doors they’d just entered through slammed shut again, and the four of them turned to find the pirates stood in the doorway with guns pointing directly at their chests.
‘Idiots,’ one of the rats said, spitting on the floor.
They advanced steadily towards the Doctor and her friends, the Doctor already pushing the three humans behind her and keeping herself stood resolutely in front of them and the crew, head held high even as the lead rat pushed the barrel of its gun into her chest, eyes black and snout curled into an unpleasant grin.
‘Doctor, have you got a plan?’ Yaz whispered from behind her and the Doctor found her hand and squeezed it tightly.
‘It’s alright,’ she whispered back. ‘Just close your eyes.’
‘Well, its been a pleasure, Doc,’ Graham said, grabbing Ryan and holding him tight.
‘Meow.’
All occupants of the room, captured crew and rat pirates included, turned to look down at the small ginger cat that had snuck in behind the pirates, blinking large green eyes up at them.
‘Goose, get out of here mate,’ Graham said urgently, trying to shoo the cat away.
‘Meow.’
‘What the hell-?’
But the lead pirate rat didn't get a chance to finish his sentence before spiralling tentacles had erupted from Goose’s mouth, grabbed all four of the rat pirates and swallowed them whole, kicking and screaming and struggling in the cat’s mighty, sharp toothed maw.
‘OH MY GOD.’
‘WHAT THE HELL?!’
‘THE FUCK IS THAT THING?!!’
Once the last shoe had been sucked in, the tentacles retracted and Goose belched loudly. He looked up at the Doctor, meowed at her as if to say
you’re welcome,
and then licked his paw and started washing his face.
‘That,’ the Doctor said, still clutching Yaz’s hand and leaning as far away from Goose as she could. ‘Is a Flerken.’
‘Fuck my actual life,’ Ryan said, summing up what they were all thinking.
Once the crew of the spaceship had been gratefully dropped off back on their home planet, the Doctor, Graham, Ryan and Yaz stood looking at their ginger stowaway, who had draped himself across the console and was sleeping off his meal.
‘So what is a Flerken, exactly?’ Graham asked, eyeing Goose nervously.
‘It’s an alien that resembles an Earth cat,’ the Doctor said, lifting one of Goose’s paws so she could push a button underneath him.
‘It has tentacles,’ Ryan said, still in shock.
‘Yeah,’ the Doctor said, making her polite cat face. ‘Its got a lot more than tentacles though. Flerkens can store entire universes inside themselves, pocket dimensions they can hide and store things in or, I guess,
digest
things in.’
She looked at Goose’s belly in disgust and the cat lazily opened an eye and blinked at her.
The TARDIS pinged and the doors opened wide, showing space and a large, swirling galaxy in front of them. Goose immediately jumped off the console and wandered over to the doors, Team TARDIS following at a respectable distance behind him.
‘What is that?’ Yaz asked in wonder, gazing at the swirling whirlpool of colour in front of them.
‘It’s a galaxy, sort of,’ the Doctor said. She looked back at the console and then down at Goose. ‘The TARDIS has been chatting to him, this is where he was trying to get to when he ended up in here. Apparently a friend of his is in trouble, someone called Carol. I offered our services but apparently its best we don’t get involved. Different dimensional universe by the sounds of it, they’re not good to get mixed up in.’
‘Well, it was nice knowing you little buddy,’ Graham said, bending down and scratching the top of Goose’s head. ‘Thanks for stopping by.’
‘Bye Goose,’ Ryan said, and Yaz waved at him.
Goose meowed at the Doctor and she looked annoyed. ‘I was
not
frightened. You just took me by surprise!’
The little cat stepped outside the doors of the TARDIS, raised an paw as if in farewell, and then was gone.
‘Thank god he isn’t a normal cat,’ the Doctor said, bounding back to the console to program their next destination. ‘We could have been waiting all day for him to decide if he was going out or staying in, and he was letting all the warm air out.’