It's a bit unclear if it tried to collect this inhabitant on purpose, however - generally speaking, one does not let the Starveling Cat in so much as find oneself bloodily mauled upon attempting some act of charity towards cat kind, then come to the uneasy realization a week later that a certain mangy ball of claws and misfortune now lives in your larder.

The castle may or may not have attempted an act of charity towards cat kind, but it has certainly, somehow or another, acquired a very angry ball of bad news currently hissing and crouching on top of a shelf in the pantry.

The pantry doors pop open, quite of their own accord, revealing an empty kitchen; a couple of serving spoons hop right out of the ceramic pot they're stored in and regard the intruder suspiciously.

She glares at them, mrrrrring deep in her throat and eyeing them like she's wondering if they're threats and, if not that, at the very least edible. 

One of them swoops through the air and makes to scoop her right out of the pantry.

Her paw lashes out with the vicious precision of someone fully capable of taking on an entire ratty batalion single handedly and emerging alive and full. 

The spoon is clattered into the back wall of the pantry, and hastily retreats.

The pantry begins to creakingly tip over.  (If this doesn't send her sliding to the floor, it'll stop jerkily at about forty-five degrees.)

It sends her leaping off with an angry yowl is what it does! 

The pantry snaps back to attention and shuts its doors.  The spoons make shooing motions.  There is plenty of castle it's okay to get cat hair on, they seem to say.

She's in full Hissing Running Cat Mode and quite content to keep going, helter-skelter knocking down everything plausibly in her path and a few other things for good measure. 

Doors get out of her way!  Chairs and wobbly shelves and the tchotchkes on them, and a music stand, aren't so lucky.  There are plenty of wardrobes to hide in, or couches to scurry under, though.

A couch to scurry under sounds excellent right now. 

Nice and quiet under the couch; only flickers of light and dust bunnies for company.

If she waits there long enough, the lights will go out.

She veeeerrrryyyy slowly and cautiously emerges after that point.

Something pads silently down the stairs.  It might be a large cat?  It certainly has catlike features.  It has yellow catlike eyes and quiet catlike paws and black catlike fur and rippling catlike shoulder blades.  She can catch hints of all these features, as it moves through the darkness, smoothly over the couch she was just hiding under, but she can't quite make sense of the arrangement they're in.  Not in this little light, at least.

Well, cats come in quite a few shapes and sizes, and an odd configuration of limbs is very unlikely to be in the top ten things she'll be holding against him. 

She steps out into the middle of the carpet and sits primly on her haunches and lets out a rather imperial meow. It's not an apology for being in his territory, not at all. More of an announcement. 

The thing pads toward her.  Darkness seems to follow it, huddle around it and cling to it, so even up close she can't make out its shape.

It looks down at her.

Mrow.

(She glares back, the tip of her tail flicking.)

All in a flash he splits open, into white teeth and thin pink bristled cat-tongues, and lunges for her - 

She stands her ground, hissing back.

(She is a fall down an endless deep well and a hunger waiting at the bottom, she is madness and claws and survival at all costs - )

(And even though she stands her ground, when he reaches her - if he reaches her - she somehow isn't there to be eaten.)

Jaws snap shut around nothing.  He growls and scuttles back into the dark.

He regards her, many eyes narrowed.

There is a voice, from the dark, that is low animal rumbles and coils of black smoke and fishhook-sharp fangs and whispers.

"What are you."

HUNGER

She hisses.

He rumbles.  His back arches, his many paws gently working the carpet as though preparing for a fight.

(But he doesn't strike first, a second time, at least not for a few moments.)

She sits back on her haunches, tail flicking as she watches him.