The Cheshire Cat lay on the blanket, eyes narrowed as it enjoyed its mistress's caresses.
Bayonetta hooked its tail with her nimble toes. The fat cat, made entirely of blubber, immediately rolled onto its back, stretching its short limbs as far as possible and purring even louder. Sometimes Salomon found himself curious about the Cheshire Cat's mimicry. In essence, it was an Extra-dimensional Being that relied on his power to maintain a physical form in the Material Universe, an emotional fragment he had selected and captured from the vast Sea of Souls. Its form in the physical universe had been shaped jointly by his mind and its own. Before that, this soul had never possessed a body or self-awareness, much less known that it was a cat. Thus, Salomon saw the Cheshire Cat's mimicry as behavior born from an extension of self-awareness—the influence of the Material Plane upon the soul through flesh and consciousness, perfectly conforming to alchemical theory.
But anyone who used that theory to explain why the Cheshire Cat was so gluttonous would only earn the Emperor's ridicule. The angels, demons, and spirits of mythology were no different from the Cheshire Cat in essence. They did not need food from the Material Plane to sustain bodies formed from Outer Dimensions energy. The Cheshire Cat's ability to retain a complete physical form for so long was unusual only because the person bound to it by contract had an abundance of energy for it to waste. When Salomon entered the bedroom with an arm around Jeanne's slender waist, she promptly took off her clothes and headed for the bathroom to enjoy the bath Dinah had prepared for her. Salomon, meanwhile, walked toward Bayonetta, who was already dressed in a black silk nightgown and reclining against the pillows with a book