Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh. Or Saw. Or The Exorcist.

A/N: Extra thanks goes to ShinigamiKittens for the first line of this chap, and for Bakura's TV preference. The rest of the thank-yous are at the end, because, well, there are a LOT of them. ^.^

Oh yeah, the first sentence of Bakura's voicemail is not mine. I stole it from the live-action Grinch movie.

The final chapter is heeeere. Wow.

The Joys of Pet Ownership: Chapter 12

x

Bakura no longer had to fantasize about impaling Tabitha on a power drill.

There was no longer a necessity to fantasize about doing violent things to the kitten at all, in fact-because she was gone. Gone, gone, long gone. Out of his life, and out of Ryo's, although the two had different feelings about that fact. Simply put: Bakura was happier than a cat with cream (no irony intended), and Ryo was miserable.

No more did Bakura have to keep mental score of victories in a war between himself and a ball of fluff. No more did he have to look over his shoulder and peek around corners, purely out of paranoia. No longer was he constantly being ambushed and annoyed. No more did he launch into a sneezing fit whenever he sat on a piece of furniture the cat had already claimed.

The night Tabitha left, Bakura had what felt like the best sleep of his life-perhaps because it was the first in a while that was not kept from him by an irate kitten.

After a few days, the last of the rashes from his allergies went away. He tossed the allergy cream given to him by the doctor out of the window with glee, and smiled beatifically at the resulting yelp, as the tube had landed on the head of their neighbor's dog.

The wounds collected from his days as a cat housemate healed slowly, but eventually faded either entirely or into scars.

While Bakura was in a consistent state of joy, his hikari seemed exactly the opposite. Ryo hadn't stopped moping around since Tabitha left, and the black cloud hanging over his head was beginning to take its toll on his yami's happy mood.

"Oh, will you get over it!" Bakura finally yelled after a week of this went by.

Ryo looked up from his breakfast cereal. "Wha?" he inquired tiredly.

"You know precisely 'wha'," Bakura replied irritably. "You've been mourning the loss of the rat for days now. Time to snap out of it. It's not like she's dead, for crying out loud!"

"I know, I know," Ryo acknowledged with a sigh. "I'm being a baby."

"Yes," Bakura agreed helpfully. "Yes, you are."

Ryo shot him a look. "Obviously you don't understand," he said sadly. "You hated Tabitha. I loved her."

In a remarkable and uncharacteristic show of restraint, the thief avoided rolling his eyes. "You sound like something out of a bad soap opera," he informed the younger boy.

Ryo didn't even utilize a scathing retort. "I'm sorry," he said softly. "I just…I just miss her."

Bakura found he had nothing to say to that. After a minute of silence Ryo left the table to get ready for school, leaving his cereal to turn to mush.

x

While Ryo was at school, Bakura lounged on the couch, watching the television and enjoying yet another blissfully Tabitha-free day. He was in the middle of a Saw marathon (and laughing at it, I might add) when the phone rang.

Bakura paused the movie (thank Ra for DVR) and waited for the answering machine to kick in. He hoped it was a telemarketer. He never got tired of screwing with telemarketers.

The answering machine started, and Bakura grinned evilly. He and Ryo had a long-running war waged over the answering machine-Ryo wanted a nice, polite, normal (read: boring as hell) message to be taped on it. Bakura always opted for something a little more..interesting. The result was an answering machine message that changed whenever one male was out of earshot of the other. And since Ryo went to school, Bakura's messages were the ones that often played. Like the current one, for example.

"If you utter so much as one syllable, I will hunt you down and gut you like a fish. Now, if you have a death wish, by all means, make my day and leave a message. Otherwise, quit wasting my answering machine batteries."

Beeeep.

A voice (a rather nervous one, Bakura noted with satisfaction) spoke up. "Um-uh, hello, Bakura-san? Are you there?...Well, this is Aineko Takashi, you know, Cream Puff's owner?"

Bakura scowled. Wonderful. Cat Chick is stalking us now.

"Um, I don't mean to be overly forward or presumptuous or anything, but..well, I was wondering if you would consider..um, I'm a college student, and I also hold four jobs. I'm extremely busy, so I was hoping you could..um.."

Bakura tried to keep his annoyance in check and failed. Abysmally.

He grabbed the phone and shouted, "Spit it out already!"

A startled noise that sounded like something along the lines of "Meep" came from the other end. Bakura waited with growing impatience as Aineko attempted to collect herself.

"He-hello, Bakura-san," she chirped nervously. "How are you?"

"I was a hell of a lot better before you called," Bakura responded waspishly.

"Right," was the slightly affronted-sounding reply. "Well, is your brother there? I wanted to speak to him."

She was another one of those people, Bakura noted, that said "Well" at the beginning of half her sentences. Or at least it seemed that way. Gods, he hated people like that..

"Bakura-san?"

"Look, Ryo isn't here," Bakura snapped, fed up with the whole thing. "If I were a normal, polite person, I would ask if I could take a message, or tell you to call back. But as I am neither normal nor polite, I'll tell you this: I am no one's messenger. And if you call this house again, I'll probably have to track you down and kill you in the most painful way imaginable, and mind you, I can imagine quite a lot. Understood?" And he slammed the phone down.

He wondered if she'd be stupid enough to call back. He waited a few seconds. The phone remained silent; so, smirking, he sat back down and returned to cackling at his Saw marathon.

x

Ryo came home late but jubilant.

"Guess what happened today?" he exclaimed upon entering the house, sounding disturbingly like an overexcited teenage girl.

Bakura was currently in the middle of The Exorcist, and was enthralled in it. He barely heard his hikari, and answered with a noncommittal grunt.

"Come on, Bakura, guess. I know you're going to love it." There was a note of satisfaction in Ryo's voice, but Bakura didn't hear it. The devil was making the little girl vomit pea soup in the movie, and he wasn't about to miss it.

"Go away," the darker of the two grumbled distractedly. "Can't you see I'm busy?"

Ryo took a glance at what was happening onscreen and turned a delicate shade of green. "Well," he said in a queasy-sounding tone. "I thought you might like to know..Remember Aineko Takashi-san? Tabitha's owner?"

Bakura made a gagging sound, still not taking his gaze from the TV.

"Yes, her. Anyway, she called me on my cell phone and asked me to do her a favor. At first I thought she had some nerve, but then I heard her offer and couldn't refuse." He paused, realized his yami was still resolutely ignoring him, and sighed. "Fine, I'll make this short. I now have a job. As a cat sitter."

He folded his arms and smirked again, waiting for the gravity of his announcement to sink in.

"Since when do I care what you do with your time?" Bakura snapped, pausing the movie and facing his hikari. "Go on and take the little furballs on walks all you want. I'll laugh at you. I see nothing wrong with this plan."

"…Subtlety is completely lost on you," Ryo stated irritably. Shaking his head, he turned and left the room. It was probably best to put a safe distance between them before he made things clear. Which was why, ten seconds later, Bakura heard a gleeful call from the kitchen.

"Tabitha's coming back!"

And Ryo ran.

Three..two…one…

"WHAT?!"

x

But the arrangement was already set. Aineko, for all her smothering love, simply didn't have as much time to devote to the cat as she wanted. Tabitha would be brought to Ryo's house at seven each morning, and picked up at nine at night. Except that Ryo had school, so guess who was stuck home with the cat all day.

And-although not for lack of trying-Bakura found he couldn't halt the returning Advent of Tabitha.

Forced to accept the situation, he went and attempted to get his allergy cream back from the neighbor's dog, with extremely painful (for Bakura) and hilarious (for Ryo) results. He stole his hikari's credit card, went online and bought the biggest, loudest shotgun he possibly could, along with a variety of questionably legal tranquilizer darts. To his disappointment, Ryo got the card back before his yami could buy any arsenic.

The day before Ryo's new "job" started, an idea occurred to Bakura. I need an army, he realized. I need minions.

After all, hadn't the cream puff won a battle by calling in all of her cat friends? Yes, he decided, an army was in order. Something to make the cat regret every setting paw into his domain…

x

Ryo set down his backpack and was in the middle of making dinner when he realized an odd silence. The TV wasn't on. Nothing was being tortured or blown up. Which meant Bakura most likely wasn't at large.

With a sinking feeling, he remembered what had happened the last time he had arrived to a silent home. Bakura, the Twilight Zone character. Swallowing, he made his way to his yami's room, opened the door, and found..Bakura. Perfectly normal-looking (for him), wearing an unholy grin, and gazing almost fondly into a small glass case.

"B-Bakura..What are you doing?" Oh God, he's gone psychotic. More than usual, I mean.

Bakura looked up, and the grin widened to epic proportions. "Take a look for yourself," he said with sadistic sweetness, holding out the case.

Every ounce of common sense Ryo possessed was screeching at him not to look. But he steeled himself, bent forward, and glanced inside.

And shrieked.

"Baby scorpions," Bakura explained unnecessarily, his joy growing by the second. "They were on sale. Nobody else wanted them..I can't imagine why."

Ryo backed away, paling. Bakura cackled, long and loud.

Payback time.

Oh yes, he thought to himself. This will be fun.

x

One Week Later

"Hello, you've reached Ryo Bakura. If you-put the scorpions down, Bakura-if you'd like to leave a message, please do so after the-Bakura, what are you doing with that rat poison?!-sorry, please do so after the tone! Er, thank you very much! I'll get back to you as soon as I-BAKURA!!"

Beeeep!

"Umm…Hello, this is Aineko. I just wanted to let you know..Tabitha's pregnant! Would you babysit the kittens?"

x

The End

x

A/N: And that is that. The Joys of Pet Ownership is over!! Let the thank-yous begin!

A GIGANTIC THANK-YOU AND MANY CYBER COOKIES TO:

Always a Bookworm (tyvm for getting me to start this!), ShinigamiKittens, Atomic Lightbulb, Zuma, millenniumthief, marie, devotedtodreams, hiddencry, Yami No Mariku Ishtar, Battle-Royalist, Hikari Kame, kuroneko1571, Bellacide, scrambled-eggs-at-midnight, Kitty Fowl, Rayna, Sparrow, Rain Megami, lovenyami, too-much-romance, unchained shackles, Gae-ta the one without title, Melodies Cry Beyond, RoSeLeaFISHtaR, CommandoGirl, AnimeBabe1031, Lily Angel of Chaos, Neko-Nya-Chan, LilyRosetheDreamer, Emmigummi, 5FIVES, Ariadne Bassarid, Ultimolu, LaughingDeath77, Nibi-Nekomata, DeathFruitsMaximumSecrets (can't thank you enough for all the advice and writer's block-killing services you offered!!), AND EVERYONE WHO FAVORITED AND/OR ALERTED!!!! I thank you all a million times!! –bows-

Love ya all! XD I hope you enjoyed TJOPO! Over and out -SkywardShadow