Welcome to Gaia! ::

[ok, so the title is slightly misleading. forgive me. ;A;]

There was absolutely nothing in the world more fascinating than a basket of kittens, except for maybe a basket of kittens you could have. Taji peered intently into the front display of the pet store, where a half-dozen kittens dozed, played, and washed themselves, her fingers splayed against the rapidly smudging glass.

Her mother was nowhere to be found -- they were in the area to pick up some ingredients to bake a cake from the grocery store, but another attack of short attention span left the star spirit wandering away while Madeleine had been inspecting barrels of sugar. And what fortune that she had, else Taji might never have discovered the Promised Land of Cute and Fuzzy Creatures!

Taji's eyes widened in surprise as a huge, new cat appeared, crawling over the glass wall in the back. What an odd looking one though, no wonder they hadn't put it on display! He didn't seem to have any fur, and his ears were invisible, though he had large green eyes that seemed cat-like enough. Even more strange was the fact that the cat was wearing clothes (though, to be fair, he did look quite nice in them.)

"HAAAY," said Taji to the cat through the window, her breath fogging up the glass. She scuffed her bee boots against the sidewalk, pushing against the glass as if in hopes it would give and let her in. "You are a funny-looking cat," she finally decided to inform him when everything else failed. "Are you their brother?"

"Oh," said Taji perplexedly. Well, if he was not a cat -- nor their brother -- then he had to be a boy, which meant someone to get into trouble with! Well, now she had a proper excuse to go inside. After all, his denials of both things were just as good as an invitation to enter the store, and it would be rude to deny it.

Her mind set, Taji stomped over to the shop door, set her shoulder to it, and fought a shoving-pushing game with it until it finally creaked open enough for her to slip through. "Hullo!" She greeted the store in general before quickly locating the boy draped over the glass wall to her left and skipping over to him, her boots squeaking against the floor.

"I am a Taji," she informed him even though he did not ask, grinning happily. "Are those your kitties?"

Thankfully Taji's own attention span was able to keep up with his.

"Hello big man behind the counter!" She greeted the proper owner of the kitties politely, giving a big wave before turning her attention to the source of her poking. "They are big special bees, with holes in them, they carry my feet."

"Yes, puppy!" She loved puppies too, as much as kitties. She ran after him, singing an incomprehensible song that made prominent use of the word 'puppy', and skidded to a stop next to Elazu when they came to the kenneled area. "Awwwhhh!! She is so cute! Floppy ears!! Does she have a name?"

She was admittedly a little jealous -- she wanted a puppy too! She contented herself for the time being by making grabby fingers at the puppies, hoping one of them would notice and come over to be petted.

"Rex," Taji repeated, trying out the name between bouts of giggling and grinning at the adorable puppy. "Recks. Rocks. Ricks. Rax. Rex."

Yes, no matter how she looked at it, it was the best option available. "It is a good name," Taji decided at last, scratching Rex' ears. A sudden thought struck her -- as if something had finally clicked in place in the puzzle of 'What's wrong with this picture' -- and she straightened and made a small noise of puzzlement, nose wrinkling. "Why are the puppies in the.. the thing?" Taji was used to animals in boxes and baskets, but not so much in cages.

A quick look around the room revealed many other critters in similar states of confinement. "Why are they trapped like that? Wouldn't they be happier with lots more room to run around?"

"Ohhhh," said Taji a little perplexedly still. Well, maybe that made sense -- the puppies were going to go home with people, right? So this was just a temporary thing, like -- like a playpen. And.. the kittens out in front, they had a basket to sleep in, so that was alright. And the fish had to be in the glass jars and boxes, because otherwise they would go floppy-flop all over the floor and get stepped on. And the mice.. Well, Elazu was right, it was for their protection, because otherwise people would step on them too.

But what about everything else, like the ginny-pigs (that looked nothing like real pigs!), and rabbits, and birds, and newts, and snakes? Surely there was no reason for their confinement too, unless, of course... "Maybe they're on time-out," Taji said with somewhat of an awed tone, looking around at a store with so many apparently misbehaving animals.

There was a cage of miniature rabbits, three with varying colors, a little ways from the kennel. Taji shuffled over to them and crouched down next to the cage, proceeding to poke her fingers through the wires at them. Though one particularly bold one stepped forward to briefly sniff her fingers, generally they couldn't care less about her presence and continued contentedly ripping hay out of a tiny bale set in a corner and munching on it, scattering the rest of it everywhere.

"You are so messy," Taji told them reproachfully, mimicking her mother's tone. "That is why you are in here, you make a mess. You should learn to eat nicely, and with your mouths closed!"

Taji followed Elazu's gaze back to the puppies while her fingers, unable to keep still, twisted knots in her skirt. "Will Rex be good if you bring her home?" She voiced a worry, "Or will she have to go into lots of time-outs too?"

Rex seemed like a very good puppy when Elazu had called her over, but perhaps the other puppies were bad infl...influ...influenzas. Taji wrinkled her nose at the thought. If there was anything she disliked the most, it was bad influenzas!

Meanwhile, bits of the hay the bunnies were tearing at were slowly picked up by her gravitational halo, spinning weightlessly around the tiny stars and dust bunnies Taji had made her friends.

"Oh! Hmm..." This was not a question Taji recieved often -- generally because she wasn't allowed to 'wear' her halo out in public. Lately she had taken to shoving the contents of her solar system into her pockets and putting them back in place when her mother wasn't looking though (in this case, ten minutes before she arrived at the pet store.)

"It's cos I'm a star!" She said finally, striking an overly dramatic pose and nearly falling over in the process. "You know, like planets revolve around the sun, and the moon around Gaia. I don't have any planets yet though." Secretly she aspired to having some, perhaps with little monkies living on them. Monkies would be the best.

Taji reached up to help him groom her halo, but got bored after the first few pieces of discarded hay. "Thank you," she said politely instead, rocking on her feet, the tilt of her halo adjusting with her movements.