"I didn't let them, I asked them." Anders' mouth thins to a crooked line. What should she expect from a man who'd offer himself up as host to a Fade spirit? Modification didn't seem unreasonable, at the time. "They actually seemed helpful, then. What with ... not being Templars, and not trying to make me or anyone Tranquil, and not throwing me into a cell or clapping me in irons. They seemed supportive of mages, and they were fighting an injustice of their own, and I thought if Pounce became an important weapon for me, no one would try to separate us again." It all sounds much less convincing now than it did when Anders originally thought all this, in the tumult and shock and daze attendant upon Transporting. In truth, the last of his stated reasons is the strongest, and the instinct that led him to choose the cat for his weapon.

"He swatted a genlock on the nose. We used to take him into battle all the time. It didn't seem unreasonable. Only now I wish I knew just what they had put into him, or given him, to make him a weapon. More than a milk-and-lyrium cocktail, I suppose."

That's what Anders used to feed Pounce as a kitten.

He fixes her tea with another of those odd little teabags -- something Thedas doesn't have, per se -- and tells her how long it ought to steep, more or less, to achieve the strength she prefers. After all this time he still remembers how she takes her tea. Funny, the things you remember. Presently, he picks up the trailing question. "He never seems in pain, or unhappy. He's the happiest cat I've ever seen, actually. Perhaps he's adjusted better than a human might. I don't know whether I'd say I've adjusted to being here, so much as made the best of it. I detest the methods of these people, but I hate their enemies worse than I hate them. And it's helped immeasurably to have Nathaniel here with me."