There is a protocol. Nobody wrote it down, nobody trained him for it, and yet Tatsumaki executes it with the polish of someone who has been doing this job for decades: a new person arrives, Tatsumaki assesses them for exactly four seconds, and then he is in their lap. This is not requested. It is not really optional. It is simply how things are done here.

He goes by Tatsu to everyone who knows him, which is everyone.

The Onboarding

Foster kittens arrive at the farm confused, tiny, and usually loud about it. Within the hour, Tatsu has found them. He does not announce himself with fanfare — no dramatic entrance, no posturing. He simply appears nearby, settles in, and radiates the unbothered calm of someone who has seen a hundred kittens come through and knows, with total certainty, that this one will be fine too. The kittens, sensing an authority figure who is not going to yell at them, generally calm down.

He has never once asked to be thanked for this. He would probably find the question strange.

The Lap Situation

Tatsu's professional opinion is that any available lap is an underutilized lap. Guests, family, the mail carrier who lingered a moment too long — all have been quietly and thoroughly claimed. He does not ask permission so much as inform you, via the simple act of climbing aboard, that a decision has been made.

He is, by all accounts, spectacular at it. People who came to the farm not expecting to sit still for twenty minutes have sat still for twenty minutes. Nobody minds. Nobody has ever minded.

Currently

Tatsu can most often be found: in someone's lap, en route to someone's lap, or supervising a kitten who does not yet understand what a lap is for. He wears a bow tie he did not ask for and does not object to. His expression suggests he has never had an emergency in his life.

"He just — got in my lap. I don't even know him." — every new person, within the first ten minutes