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It took something special for Robin to willingly choose to eat a salad instead of a real meal; and knowing this, her mother had packed her a special delight for her afternoon meal that day. She'd done up a bed of spinach, laid a framework with big strips of chicken. Big chunks of mango flavored with chili, a smattering of crunchy vegetables, and some glazed walnuts to top the whole thing off. The only complaint that Robin could think of was that she didn't try anything really avant-garde, like, you know. Covering it all in chocolate or marshmallow whip. But Robin was prepared to forgive her for that.

The one thing that her mother hadn't been sure about, it seemed, was what sort of dressing Robin would prefer with such a treat. She'd included small plastic baggies with what appeared to be every option in their cupboards. Here was the Thousand Island, the Hidden Valley Ranch, the Bleu Cheese - when all that Robin wanted was the Italian. Leaving her with waste on her hands.

As she contemplated this issue, crunching away at bites of her salad, a new matter presented itself. For reasons that she could not comprehend, since the start of the winter term, there'd been cats pushing into the Meadowview schoolyard. Mostly the same people-shy three, though bolder others had been turning up in recent days. Robin hadn't given the matter much thought, other than to question whether this could mean one of the new students was a were-cat; however, they usually didn't push in on her lunchtime either, so it was a matter that didn't concern her.

But it had been a nice day today, and she'd chosen to sit under her favorite picnicking tree outside. Which meant she was exposed.

"NYYYYYYYYYYYYOW," came a deep rumbling voice, maybe three feet to her left. Robin jerked away and gave a little "eep!" -- only to stare, fascinated, at the tiny kittenish feline that had made such a low, mournful sound.

It was a calico. And it was watching her food avidly.

One of Robin's brows quirked. "It's my food, kitty. It's greens. You wouldn't like it," she informed the cat, overlooking for now the fact of the chicken strips (which she was definitely not sharing.)

The cat's big yellow eyes locked into hers - like it knew what she was saying, and it was unimpressed. "NYAAAAAAAAAAAAAOW," it moaned again, sounding more like the grieving ghost of a cat than a living feline itself.

It moved a step forward. Involuntarily, Robin found herself leaning away from the creepy little thing.

"I don't have anything for you!" she claimed, her voice high and nervous. Wiggling her legs a bit to push herself away from the cat, she scouted around desperately for a distraction.

Then she saw the solution. Two problems, one stone -- "Here, kitty, here! Take this!" Ripping open the first baggie of unneeded dressing, she tossed it a safe distance away between her and the cat. The ploy seemed to work - the feline padded over to it, its tail forming a curious question mark as it sniffed at the offering. Quick enough, it stiffened into a happy exclamation mark - Robin breathed a slow sigh of relief as the cat began lapping up the dressing in the bag, allowing Robin to get a few more bits of her meal in peace.

But only a few.

"NYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAOW!"

"Oh come on, you finished it already?!" Robin squealed indignantly, dropping a fork poised for a bite in order to hurriedly open up the next one. The spooky cat was coming at her again, more confident now that it knew it could get food. Robin barely had time to get the next bag open before it reached her, and certainly wasn't able to get it as far away. Just one bag left after this....

Her fork speared through a huge chunk of mango, which was stuffed in her mouth; and, before she'd even gotten more than two chews on that, a chunk of avocado was shoveled in after it. This wasn't just a lunch now; this was a race. Would Robin be able to finish her salad in time? Or would the cat beat her to the finish line and terrorize her into giving up her meal - the meal her mother had so thoughtfully prepared for her, pairing love with wondrous taste in every morsel?

FAILURE WAS NOT AN OPTION. Robin began scarfing like her life depended on it. Strange, though, that the cat seemed to notice this as well - and now it was eating more energetically, too, battling her neck-and-neck for superiority. Sweat began to form on each competitor's face - well, not the cat's, but it was at least panting a little between bits - as the intensity of the competition heated up. This was no place for weakness!

Robin was almost halfway done with her salad when the cat finished its second bag of dressing. The damned thing was acting menacing now, advancing and howling its demanding NYOOOOOW. Robin didn't even break stride - grabbing the last baggie with one hand, she didn't stop to open it, but ripped its corner open with her teeth and chucked it like a grenade, not looking up to where it was being flung to, focused only on spitting out the grenade pin piece of plastic so that she could get to her next bite --

Oh s**t; there was a boy standing where she'd just thrown that baggie, wasn't there?

"Hrrrmp?" Cheeks bulging like a chipmunk who had just had to stuff that whole peanut in its mouth, Robin broke out of her devouring trance. The look on her face said it all, even warped as it was by a mouth full of barely-chewed food - who the hell do you think you are?

Now, Robin wasn't an animal-hater. No teenage girl was, not unless they were the sort who worried about getting fur or danger or icky pet fluids on their clothes - a class to which tangled-haired Robin clearly did not belong. Now, this cat might personally give her the heebie-jeebies, but that didn't mean she was trying to poison it - and she certainly didn't appreciate the implication that she was!

However, there was a problem. Mouth full of food... hard to talk. For several seconds, all that Robin could do was sit there, staring and chewing furiously, looking either like she had nothing to say in her defense or didn't care enough to bother.

When she finally did get her mouth clear enough to talk, though, she'd had too much time to think about how annoying his self-righteous entrance had been, and how freakin' fast he'd been to throw accusations around. So, rather than seeming apologetic - the way she might have been if she'd been shooting from the hip - she found a better way to approach the issue.

"Excuse me," she informed him haughtily, "but Mister Kitty and I were having a private lunch affair." Robin had no clue if the cat was male or female, of course, but figured that it was a fifty-fifty chance either way; and being wrong would make Yahya look a lot more stupid than it would Robin. "Private. As in, set down the cat and go ******** off." It didn't matter that Robin had been praying for the cat to get bored and leave just a few seconds before. Yahya had made this personal by trying to push his authority all over her lunchtime with the cat, and she'd be damned if she shut up and let him get away with it!

Robin was not in a position of strength here. For one, she knew virtually nothing about cats; though it seemed ridiculous to her that salad dressing could kill a cat, she couldn't say for sure that it didn't. She didn't disagree with the idea that cats should not be poisoned, of course; however, there was a problem. And that problem was Yahya was a jerk and Robin was not going to let him get away with it.

So - not knowing what she could to say in her defense, and not knowing how she could use it to properly shame Yahya - all that was left was for her to get angry. After all, he'd started this whole shouting thing - why shouldn't she follow suit?

"Oh who cares," she fumed, knowing very well that she cared, but also knowing that would get her nowhere when it came to winning this argument. "If Miss Ki-- MISTER Kitty was going to get sick off of it, he wouldn't keep begging me for it! Besides, it's not like I'm feeding him ARSENIC, so stop twisting your panties over it!"

And, just in case that wasn't a strong enough argument for the case of Yahya shutting the hell up, Robin topped it off with the most powerful technique in her book of civil disagreement. She stuck out her tongue and raspberried at him. "PTTTTTHB," she debated, ever so eloquently.