Faintly, under the noise of the rain, there is an intermittent and discordant honking-whistling noise, as if someone decided an alarm clock should be equipped with very small bagpipes and then didn't improve on the first prototype.

The rain covers the sound pretty well, but eventually someone on the third floor above the restaurant is going to stick their head out and see if they can figure out what is doing that.

There's a thoroughly rained-upon clump of black fur which doesn't look like a usual sort of alleyway occupant. It has a couple of limbs hanging slothlike off the rim of a mop bucket.

Wow, that is the saddest looking cat ever. The head pokes back into the apartment and texts animal control.

Animal control arrives ten minutes later, in rain ponchos and leather gloves, and approach the furheap.

The furheap hasn't moved, and it's shaking in apparent shivering or upset. Its two extended limbs hooked on the mop bucket have a single claw visible on each tip and bend more like tails or tentacles than paws; they shift in time with the intermittent whistling in two unstable notes.

...maybe it's two... cats...? with something stuck to the ends of their tails? One person attempts to get a gloved hand under the furheap.

It tenses but does not struggle. There's definitely just one body there, in a tangle of long limp limbs; its underside feels furless and muscular.

Maybe it's a mutant cat. It must have legs in here somewhere but maybe it got fat before it got loose and this is just a ton of cat belly and also it has two tails. Weird. The rescuer maneuvers it into the cat carrier.

Its claws scritch on the plastic of the bucket as they slide off.

It is definitely not a cat! The six two-foot-long tentacles attached to its body are going to have to be shifted into the carrier too, because they're not inclined to be anything but sprawled out right now. Also, it's now whistling in five or six repeating notes instead of two.

"What the fuck is it," says the rescuer.

"What makes you think I know? Let's get it out of the alley and show it to Jaha, it's annoying people here whatever it is."

They tuck the tentacles into the carrier and load it aboard their nyoom.

Handling reveals that the discordant tune is coming from each of the tentacles in turn; each one is interrupted in its noisemaking by being handled.

It gets a little quieter and steadier as it sits in the carrier, even when the carrier is picked up and loaded.

One rescuer drives the nyoom, one sits in back with the critter.

"You're a singy critter, aren't'cha," he says.

It shifts a couple of tentacles in the direction of his voice. They find the door and try poking through and wrapping around the metal bars.

The undersides of the tentacles are hairless pink-gray skin with an odd pattern to it, almost scalelike. A few inches back from the tip, each tentacle has a small opening which, going by the quieting sound and the tentacles' expansion and contraction, it seems to be breathing through.

Huh.

He takes photos.

The creature continues to not be a hallucination, and water drips off its fur into the bottom of the carrier. One of the tentacles makes a feeble effort to scrape some water away from where another lies.

...would the creature like a towel? He can open the carrier a little bit and slip it a small towel.

It makes little “sss” noises, and the more active tentacles snuggle the towel! But overall, the creature remains extremely flop.

Hopefully that is a sign that it likes the towel??

They arrive at the animal rescue. They go straight past the entrance for normal animals like cats and dogs and birds and stuff and to the back door for nondomestic wildlife (currently occupied by a squirrel, six penguins someone was trying to personally domesticate, an alligator, and an injured owl).

The rescuers put the cat carrier into one of the larger cages, most recently home to a bobcat, and, from outside the larger cage, pull the bar that releases the cat carrier door, letting the thing out into the rest of the enclosure. They both watch to see what it will do.

It investigates the noise, finds the lack of door, feels — and sniffs, maybe — the floor outside, and it makes a little bit of effort to stretch and push itself out of the carrier, but seems too weary to get more than halfway out.

Well, there's a dish of water in there. They have flatly no idea at all what it eats but maybe it'll perk up after it's had time to dry off. Eventually one of them wanders off to submit the paperwork for the dispatch. The other one, the one who gave it the towel, keeps supervising it and taking photos.

Over the course of a couple of minutes, it drags itself out, taking the towel with it, and spreads itself across the floor of the cage, partly on top of the towel, and hangs one of its tentacles on the side of the cage. (The tentacles' tip-claws demonstrate that they can retract.)

It seems more content with its drier and warmer environment; it is no longer shivering or whistling constantly, though it occasionally makes a sighing "sss" sound or a peep. It discovers the water bowl but does not do anything with it.

Eventually the guy who's watching it decides to try offering it a dish each of cat food, a defrosted rat, and timothy hay.

It immediately perks up at the smells, and on the back of one of its tentacles a large-pupilled eye opens squintily, still mostly hiding under a very thick eyelid-brow. It sees the human and shifts back, but when the cat food is set down it immediately reaches for the food and starts picking up pieces with one tentacle (or for the smaller scraps, two tentacles chopstick-style) and eating them with the mouth that turns out to be located on the side of its body between two of the tentacles. The mouth has lips but not apparently a tongue; the tentacles occasionally help it from outside, and soon the dish of food is fairly neatly gobbled up.

Afterward, the creature picks up the rat, but puts it down again, and tries a nibble of the hay but neither spits it out nor eats the rest. When there's no more food to investigate it lip-licks its tentacles cleaner, and settles down again but in a less desperately flopped configuration, a couple of eyes very slightly open.

Well, it can have another helping of catfood if it wants.

It will eat that too! While it's working on that it rearranges itself with the tentacles on the opposite side from the mouth standing up (one hung on the side of the cage, one on its own), and the other two curled up in spirals next to the body, eyes also looking around.

It finishes the second bowl a lot less urgently, and settles one cleaned tentacle next to the rest, sounding a soft breathy chord, while the other looks at the human.

"What are you," he says, rather fascinated. "You're gonna be weirdly cute when you're all dried off but what the heck are you?"

“Shhoooooo”, is all it has to say in reply.

"Are you a shoo?" he laughs.

“Shoooweeeh-eeh-eeh!”, it says, mimicking the pitch of his laugh in its chord-whistling voice.

This makes him laugh some more.

It'll play choir insofar as he's predictable, but after a bit of this seems less interested and more like settling down for a nap.

Okay, if it's tired he'll leave it be and go try to figure out who you report an alien critter to.

The creature naps for half an hour, pokes at the water dish with the midsection of a tentacle, then climbs onto the ceiling of its cage (five tentacles spread out and one supporting its center) and watches the other animals.

The other creatures are mostly minding their own business - the penguins are cuddling a block of ice, the owl's asleep, the squirrel is grooming itself, the alligator's swimming back and forth in its tank.

It will watch the new-to-it creatures for a while, and clamber around all six walls of its cage, and investigate the cage's latch along with everything else in reach.

The latch is designed to be robust against clever birds and monkeys.

It does not have any especial insights into lockpicking and settles down, environment investigated.

It sings to itself. Does anybody want to join in?

None of these animals are singing animals... except the rescue guy, who starts ooh-ing along, trying to guess what it'll do next so he can harmonize.

It doesn't seem to care for sticking to a key, but it definitely likes its intervals and chords in whatever it's singing at a given moment; it keeps up a drone of two notes (changing one or the other occasionally), and has various bird-call-ish short phrases it whistles with its other four mouths on top of that. If he picks up the drone then it seems to expect him to contribute changes to it.

They can have a pleasant time jamming this way. He starts recording, after a bit.

It does not exhibit an objection to recording equipment.

It would be weird if it did.

After a while he decides to try playing back the recording, see what it thinks of that.

The creature perks up at first, but it keeps trying things that don't fit with the unresponsive recording, and it stops and shifts toward the far side of the cage.

Aww. He stops playing it back and resumes singing with it manually while he's cleaning out the penguin enclosure.

That seems to make it less distressed, though not immediately. It will continue singing along, with fewer of the short phrases.

Occasionally it dunks tentacles in the water dish; the level is going down more than accounted for by splashing.

Probably it is drinking some water. He puts a rat in the owl cage for when it wakes up and wants a rat. He refills the weird-creature's water and gives it more cat food.

The creature is sufficiently fed to be more interested in exploring the world outside the cage than the immediate prospect of food! Would he like some help opening that door wide?

"Whoa! Whoa there critter, I don't even know what you are," he says, ushering it back in. "Can't have you eating the penguins or hacking into the internet or whatever shoos do when they're loose."

“Uoa! Uoa!”

It has enough length and quantity of limb to be difficult to so usher, but it is not actually very interested in putting up a fight. It settles back down and eats its food.

"Heh, you're a mimic, what else can you say? Can you say 'Pavo', that's my name."

It doesn't seem to find these phonemes very interesting; it makes little noises as he talks but doesn't repeat anything.

It reaches up and grabs the cage's ceiling with all six limbs, dangles down, and swings itself back and forth, with occasional whistles and hisses.

"What's that mean, I wonder."

It will keep doing that for a while, then poke at the cage door futilely, and go back to resting on the floor.

"Do you think you can behave really nicely if I let you out," Pavo sighs.

The most interesting part of this sentence is the sigh! It will experiment with a few descending tones while settled down.

...it's very cute. He makes sure he has his gloves handy and knows where the catchpole is, and he opens the cage.

In somewhat less of a rush than last time, it climbs out and on top of its cage! What else is in reach?

Box of miscellaneous enrichment toys, the filing cabinet, the blinds.

So many things! It whistles something that might be recognizable from the earlier singing session and tries hanging a tentacle off the blinds, but pulls away when they bend down, then rummages something out of the box.

It is a plastic ball with jinglebells inside of it.

Shake shake. Poke? Can the jinglebells be extracted with claws?

Nope, they're stuck in there, the ball is fused into place around it.

It drops the ball back in the box and reaches for another thing.

This one is a Food Obstacle, though it doesn't have any food inside it right now.

This one gets a tentacle wiggled through its crevices, … sniffing? Yep, sniffing. After no actual food is found it goes back in the box. Next!

The next one is a weighted gourd-shaped object that will stay up on its fatter end even if shoved!

Fascinating! The creature drops down to the floor to bump the toy around.

Adorable. Pavo takes some video in between his animal maintenance work.

The creature will demonstrate some of its six-part vocal repertoire during some of this. Eventually it decides to check out more of the room. What's that fellow creature over in that cage?

That's the owl, awake now and eating its rat.

Hello, fellow creature! Whistle! Tentacle-leaning-on-cage!

The owl SCREECHes at it.

The creature leaps back and scurries — almost cartwheels — back to where it left the tippy toy. It looks up at the human while keeping another eye on the owl.

The owl resumes eating its rat grumpily.

"Whoa there, he's in a cage, he's not gonna hurt you," says Pavo, "unless you stick a - tentacle in there."

These words seem at least soothing if not communicative to it. It bats the toy around a bit, and then climbs up calmly for another look in the box of toys.

There is a wire dangly thing for cats, and a ball that BOUNCES.

It pokes at the things and finds the ball bounces around inside the box. This seems only mildly interesting.

It climbs down to hang off the side of the cage and settle down again, eyes looking around the room. (Sigh-tweet. Is that contentment? Mild unhappiness? Who knows.)

Pavo takes another picture of it. Then turns the phone around so it can see. "That's you!"

Mild surprise(?). Several tentacles' eyes move to look at the phone from several angles. Gentle clawpoke the picture? How does it feel?

It feels like smooth glass.

It stretches forward to wrap a gripping tentacle around the phone.

"I wasn't really offering to give you the entire phone," complains Pavo, but he loses his grip and the shoo has the phone.

It pokes at the screen some more with another claw tip, and then tries flesh contact instead, softly hooting in surprise when it accidentally swipes to the previous photo.

The previous photo is of Pavo's lunch (an omelette).

That's less interesting but still interesting. Swipe swipe poke grip oops the screen is off. Poke? Nudge?

"Give that back, please," says Pavo firmly, holding out his hand.

It loosens its grip on the phone and attempts the dog definition of “shake hands” with a different tentacle.

Pavo dodges the shake and takes the phone.

The door opens and in comes another human.

"What the fuck is that?"

"I was hoping you'd know! Picked it up in an alley."

The phone is very slightly beslimed where it was handled.

The what-the-fuck-is-that looks at the other human with several eyes. Whistle?

"- how many eyes does that thing have? Did you give it your phone?"

"I don't have a full eye count," says Pavo dryly. "It took my phone. I admit I didn't resist very hard, it seems weirdly smart off and on so I was sort of curious what it'd do..." He pulls a tissue out of the wall dispenser and wipes off the slime.

The slime is quite thin and readily wiped off.

“It too!" it toots.

"Huh, does it parrot?"

"Sometimes. I'm not sure how it picks what to say. So you don't know what it is either?"

"Not the foggiest. It doesn't seem very afraid of humans, does it, so my guess would be it's from some unexplored island or cave and more related to octopuses than cats despite the fur? But I don't even know if that's plausible."

It climbs back on top of its cage and watches the new human and the old human.

"That's the cage you gave it?"

"Yeah. It seems - gentle enough, and nobody seems to have gotten poisoned or anything so far. I guess there could be zoonotics."

"Eh, that's true of every feral cat."

"It sings."

"That is not true of feral cats."

Pavo plays the recording he made.

It sings along with the recording for a moment but then stops, quicker than last time.

"I'll sing with me but not with the video."

"Huh. Show me?"

Pavo starts oo-ing.

Shoo me oo me ooo! It likes that much better.

If Jaha starts swaying to the rhythm of their improvisation will it dance too?

Not especially, other than some minor body movement incidental to following them with its eyes.

Huh. Does it react if she starts clapping along?

Doesn't seem to care for that; it's less interested in singing along when the additional noises are present.

Then she will stop; she isn't as tuneful as Pavo. Instead she gets one of the more complicated enrichment toys they have for when they pick up a monkey. "You've got it on - cat food?"

"Yeah, it seems to like it all right."

She puts a cat treat in the toy and closes it up and offers it to the creature.

It takes the toy with a single tentacle, like it did with the phone. A couple of others wave around. The first thing it tries to get at the inside is pushing in to a likely gap with one claw-tipped tentacle, trying to stab the treat.

It can stab the treat, but not get it out of the hole that way!

Okay, how about prying it open the way it was seen shut? Fhweep.

It doesn't seem to want to be pried - it'll budge, but it'd have to be forced to get open that way....

It gives some firmer six-armed yanks, and when that doesn't work, settles down to trying push the food around inside or maybe stab it into crumbs that will fall out. But if any part moves while this is happening, it will investigate that too.

Stabbing it into crumbs works fine, but it can also tilt the ball so that the food goes through a little internal maze and eventually falls out, if it looks closely.

Then it will eventually eat all of the food one way or another.

What do the large creatures do next? 👀👀👀

They're taking more pictures of it and talking to each other. When they notice it's done with the enrichment toy food Jaha will trot out to her nyoom and come back with a boxed jigsaw puzzle. She will show the shoo the picture on the box - a floral meadow - and then produce the pieces. With some hunting she is able to find a sample pair that match and put them together, voila. Will it do the puzzle?

"Why do you have that?"

"Gran likes them."

It will feel the shapes of the pieces (the cardboard may be a bit unfortunately dampened), and flip some of them over so that the picture side is up, but its claws are not suited for putting down pieces on a flat surface, so it isn't very successful at assembling any of them (fwee fhonk?); and it doesn't seem to have the idea of finding matching pieces.

Jaha and Pavo will put together a few more pieces to see if it will get the idea. And help flip the picture side up, and prop up the box so it can see the picture.

It will imitate the humans further but is still clumsy with the pieces and doesn't identify better matches.

Does it seem interested in the picture as it comes together?

It seems interested, but whether it is interested in the picture or the assembly process or the humans is unclear. It is not interfering with humans assembling pieces.

Well, they'll chat and assemble the whole puzzle and see if it reacts to the result.

The creature looks at it and pokes it a bit but doesn't seem especially interested.

They shrug and break it up and put it away. Does it like zoomy fractal videos?

They will hold its attention for half a minute, but increasingly it is more interested in examining the device displaying them than watching, especially once (poke poke) the fractals prove to be smooth glass again.

"It's so interested in the phone."

"Yeah, and it doesn't look like prey drive either, but I don't know what's confusing it..."

If Jaha and Pavo both have their phones out and one is doing fractals and one is doing video of the shoo itself which does it go for?

The shoo itself! Definitely. It's perhaps confusing but more interesting.

What about the shoo versus a cat video?

It seems to be watching both of them. And the humans. And it's getting a little less interested in all the video.

All right, what if they just put their phones away and sit back and watch them?

A question in turn: what if it cautiously investigates some human legs? Poke poke pat pat.

Some pokes get eeps and gentle repositioning of its extremities to do Not That but some are fine.