Enter the Cat Chapter 1

Chapter 1

My life seemed to turn into a series of phone calls …

"I just got a call from Edwin; his team came across the fresh scent of a stray in the pub in town. They found a car he’s used in the pub car park and are trying to track him down right now. They think they’ve come across him before but haven’t caught him to give him a warning." I turn at the sound my father’s voice. Wade Williamson is the Alpha of our clan, the undisputed leader of our family and its loyal allies.

Let me introduce myself before I go any further. My name is Micah Williamson and I am an Australian Werecat. I am a member of the Williamson Clan, the third son in a family of six sons and one daughter. I am also the undisputed leader of the clan’s group of warriors

– tomcats who police the clan and protect it from strays and outlaw werecats. Our clan lands are in the states of New South Wales and Queensland; our home is near the Border Ranges with the rugged unsettled land our backyard.

Here Wade owns huge amounts of land where he grows exotic hardwood trees and pine trees to be cut for the timber industry as well as leases some of the best farming land in the area to local farmers for grazing beef cattle. Some of the land we use to grow lucerne hay to sell for winter-feed to farmers and in winter we grow oats to cut and sell as silage for feeding to cattle.

One adventurous farmer tried raising deer to sell to local butchers and supermarkets as venison but he found the wild dingoes in the area quickly developed a taste for freshly killed venison. Now the remnants of the herd run feral breeding in the rough bushland where no one on two legs ventures.

Funny thing about those dingoes in the area is they never venture onto Williamson land. And some crazy old bushy who lives in the adjacent Mount Lindsay National Park swears there are black panthers roaming the park having been bred down from two panthers left behind by the American soldiers that had trained in and around the rugged National Park during the second world war.

"In town you say?" I ask worriedly. Town is under an hour’s drive from home - the stray is too close to my young vulnerable sister for comfort.

"I want everyone on this, I want that stray caught." Wade tells me tightly.

"We’ll be right onto it!" I growl, the sound starting deep in my chest. The natural instinct of a clan werecat tom is to protect any and all Queens and she-kitts. Since Jazzy is my sister this instinct is doubly strong because it is also linked with our being siblings - her existence ensures that my family’s genealogy will be passed on.

"Catch him and bring him back here. We’ll talk to him, find out why he’s in the area and set him straight on a few things if necessary. If he’s nosing around and looking to settle in the clan lands without permission then I’ll see he gets a lesson he never forgets," Wade orders.

"Sam! Get your team together! Steven! I want to talk to you!" I yell as I head towards the Warrior Quarters or as we tended to call them the quarters. I can’t help thinking of my young sister Jasmine, or Jazzy. She has been sickly most of her life and many had doubted she would make it to ten years old. When she had turned ten many had doubted she would become a teenager. Now Jazzy is no longer a child and fast becoming a grown woman she is finally starting to out grow her childhood illness and thrive. The urge to protect her from any and all threats is very strong; Jazzy is the future of our pride – she will marry and provide the next generation of werecats in our family.

Now there is a new potential threat to her safety, a stray so close to home. Strays are different to us clan cats - they tend to be nomads wondering and unable to settle down in one place comfortable with who and what they have become. We are born to werecat parents while they are the product of a werecat crossbreeding with a human or the descendant of one of these offspring with the werecat genealogy. They are born as humans and some event or illness ‘turns’ them into were cats. Many don’t survive their first shape-shift, don’t manage to revert to human form and starve through lack of hunting skills or go crazy shortly after returning to human form.