New Cat in Town | Night Cat #0.5

New Cat In Town - Chapter 4

The Leopard in the Woods

All I could see was gold.

Bronze, actually. Bronze lights dancing around in my mind, weaving through silver and black threads. Dancing, dancing, dancing… It was mesmerizing; hypnotic, even. I couldn’t stop staring at the shimmering feathers of bronze.

Until a loud roar penetrated my dream and brought me crashing back to reality, that is.

I rolled over onto my back, blinking in confusion. What the hell was that dream about? And more importantly, had that roar come from my dream or from reality? Exhaling slowly, I ran a hand through my hair and sat up in bed and was immediately confused as to where in blue hell I was. It took a moment of thought, but the memory soon came back to me. I was in my new room. In Crescent Falls. Right.

Looking around, it soon became pretty obvious that I’d slept way longer than I’d originally intended to – if the thin beams of moonlight slipping into my room were any indication, I’d slept for at least six hours. And judging by the uncontrollable rumbling in my stomach, I’d also slept through dinner.

Great. Time for a kitchen raid.

Yawning, I rolled out of bed and onto my feet, moving towards the kitchen like the man on a mission I was. And, because I was the luckiest guy on the planet, when I finally got to the kitchen about a minute later, it was to discover that we had absolutely nothing to eat in the house. Save for a few bottles of water, the fridge was empty. So were all the cupboards. I checked them all, praying for even a box of cereal.

No such luck.

Damn.

In a melodramatic fashion worthy of a bad-movie, I threw my head back and let out a woeful sigh. Just as I was about to give up and head back to my room, I remembered the bag of Cheetos my mom had put in her handbag in case either of us got hungry on the drive here. Grinning like a moron, I ran out of the kitchen and into the foyer where she’d left her bag on an end-table.

I snatched it up eagerly and unzipped it – and the smile on my face vanished immediately. Empty. Huh.

Acting on instinct, I dropped the bag back onto the table and went back into the kitchen. I walked over to the sink and peered into the bin on the side. The empty bag of Cheetos was sitting in it.

“Damn it, Mom.” I groaned just as my stomach rumbled again. The fact that I’d refused to eat my pie in the diner had seriously come back to bite me in the ass. “This is what you get for being an ass.”

I considered ignoring my stomach and just going back to bed. But my stomach refused to be ignored. It rumbled and griped until it reached a point where I was certain that if I didn’t get food soon, I’d have to resort to ripping my stomach out of my body. And I really, really, didn’t want things to come to that.

So I did the only thing anyone in my position would do. I went outside. The minute I stepped out of the kitchen and onto the back step I was hit with a pang of grief. I hadn’t done this since the night my dad died. I didn’t want to do it…

I turned around to head back into the house when I heard a strange rustling coming from the bushes at the tree line. I paused, hand on the doorknob. The sound came again and I let go. Inhaling deeply, I closed my eyes, mentally searching for the wisp of silvery light that danced around in my mind. Even despite the fact that I had done this in a while, my Switch was amazingly easy to find. Once I located it, I grabbed on.

When I opened my eyes again, I was no longer an almost-six-feet-tall boy with dark brown hair and bags under his eyes. I was a two-hundred and fifty pound black panther. One of the perks of being a Werecat was that, if ever there was nothing to eat at home, all you had to do was Shit and go hunting.

I came from a long line of Werecats. In fact, both my parents were Werecats; which was actually pretty rare in our world. We Werecats are scattered across the globe, and while you might find a couple of us living together in a small community, it was extremely rare to find a Werecat whose inner cat was the same species as yours. Interbreeding was rare in the Werecat community.

No, scratch that. It was unheard of. Mostly because our cats selves were never attracted to cats of different species. Most of the other Werecats I knew were born of one Werecat parent and one human parent – being the son of two Cheetahs, I was the radical case. So far, it seemed like that hadn’t given me an advantage over the regular Werecats. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

With a yawn, I stretched myself out, sticking my rump in the air and my claws in front of me. Once I’d gotten fully adjusted to the body change, I straightened up and made my way into the woods.

Unlike the rest of the town, the woods behind my house were very different from the one back home. From the trees and the animals that scampered around me, down to the general scent of the woods, it was all different. And for the first time, I found myself welcoming change. If you asked me, it was infinitely better than the cold familiarity of the house.

I ran around for a good half hour. I hadn’t realized just how badly my Panther had wanted to come out. I hadn’t Shifted since the night my Dad died. Months ago. It was a miracle that I hadn’t torn myself in two. But then again, I guess my Panther was mourning too.

I’d just been about to scale a tree, when a familiar scent reached my nose, causing my stomach to rumble again. A rabbit. After a quick moment of deliberation, I decided to leave the tree and go find the rabbit. Would I have preferred something more substantial like, say, a deer? Yes. Yes, I would have. But I’d been hanging around in the woods for half an hour and I hadn’t come across any scents that suggested that deer even lived here. So if rabbits were on tonight’s menu, I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth and complain about it. Rabbit it was.

It didn’t take too long for me track, capture and kill the rabbit I’d smelled. And, sadly, it took me even less time to actually eat it. The little guy had been big for a rabbit, but nowhere big enough to be filling. Still wishing I’d had a deer instead, I moved away from the spot where I’d devoured the rabbit and scaled a tree. Stretching out on a sturdy branch, I began cleaning myself. I started with my paws, licking them until they were void of any blood. I moved on to my muzzle next, licking my paws and rubbing them against the fur on my muzzle repeatedly until I was certain they were clean.

I wasn’t by any means a messy eater, especially with a meal that small, but I still felt the need to clean. It was a cat thing, I supposed.

I’d just laid my head down on my paws to take a quick nap when another scent met my nose. Unlike with the rabbit, I couldn’t place the scent immediately. It was both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

Curious cat that I am, – pun not intended – I leapt off my branch and started tracking the scent. After what seemed like hours of searching, I was seriously starting to think that maybe I’d been hallucinating and there had been no smell at all. Huffing in frustration, I decided to turn back and head home for another nap.

That’s when I saw it.

At the foot of a tree, body elongated into a carefree stretch, was the most majestic snow leopard I’d ever seen. At first, I thought that it was a real snow leopard, but quickly dismissed that thought when I remembered they were indigenous to Central Asia. This one had to be another Werecat.

The fact that I could also pick up the serious Werecat vibes emanating from it helped a little, too.

Apart from my parents, I’d only ever met one Werecat in my entire life. And it had been a Cheetah, just like my mom and dad. So, you could understand why I was so excited when I saw the Snow Leopard and why I couldn’t resist making contact.

I cautiously slinked over to where it had its rump sticking in the air, tail waving happily behind it. Hearing my approach, the snow leopard stiffened and turned its head to face me, large amber eyes wary.

When its eyes finally landed on me, it straightened out of its stretch and immediately shifted into a more defensive stance. I paused, considering my next move. “Hi.”

For a moment, those bright, topaz-like eyes scrutinized me and then the leopard opened its mouth. I stiffened, excited about a possible conversation with a new Werecat.

But instead of answering me, like I hoped it would, the snow leopard decided against speaking, and with an audible snap as it closed its mouth, turned on its heel and sprinted off into the woods.