Undiscovered: Book One: The New Jungle

Chapter 10

"What's that noise?" Christine whispered with a quiver in her voice.

"Get back." Randal hissed, brandishing the stick he used to whack the snake.

Then out of the brush stepped an animal that even Chris found adorable. Out stepped wildcat slightly smaller than a house cat. The little creature meowed at them, clearly curiosity was replacing instincts in this case. It began padding up to the group and began batting at Christine's shoelace.

"Aww, look at him, he's so cute. I want one." She began. "Where's your mama little guy. Someone as cute as you shouldn't be out here alone."

The two boys just stood in shock as Christine began stroking the little creature.

"What is going on, I thought Christine was afraid of germs. But here we are watching her play with a freaking wild animal." Chris said confused.

The little kitten was mainly a rusty brown color with broad stripelike spots. It almost looked like a mix of a jaguar and a tiger, but of course that wasn't the case.

Just then there was a loud screeching noise from behind the group. It sounded a bit like a panther call, a mix of a cat squall and a lion roar, but more deep. Chris compared it to the scream of a banshee. The group turned around slowly and low and behold, there was the kittens mother. This thing was huge, bigger than any member of the big cat family. It towered at slightly over four feet tall. It's elegant body was more than fourteen feet of rippling muscle. It once more let out that horrible screech. The group got the message.

"Very slowly back away, don't run. If she sees you running its predator instincts will be triggered and it will kill you, no doubt about it. Wait until you are far enough away to pick up your pace. And Christine, give it her kitten." Randal whispered sternly. As the group backed away. Christine allowed the kitten to scamper away to its mother and the cat gave them one final harsh look and turned away, the kitten waiting, watching them back away before joining its mother. The cat disappeared into the brush after screaming one final time and the group began to walk away instead of backstepping.

Once the group had recovered from the shock of the encounter and gotten back to camp the started talking.

"So, Christine, are you going to tell us what happened back there?" Chris began.

"I just thought it was cute, it wasn't afraid of me, and it reminded me of my cat." She replied.

"Wait hold up, you have a cat. If all pets you get a cat. They get fleas, they shed, they spray, and the only effort they make to clean themselves is licking their fur with their dirty tongues, and you have one." Chris stated as if Christine had just stated that she planned to murder the president of North Korea.

"Wow, I didn't know me liking cats was such a big deal." Christine replied.

"It's not, we just thought you didn't like animals cause their dirty." Randal said, defending her unnecessarily, trying to be nice to her.

"Well, you were wrong, I like animals, their just dirty." Christine said.

"Well, let's get some sleep, before the beast cat finds us and bites our extremities off." Randal joked.

"Bites our whats off?" Chris asked.

"Extremities, I don't think you want to hear what it means out loud. You would cringe a lot." Randal replied.

"Oh, okay! Well that got weird fast." Chris said with mock surprise, faking a retch.

The group managed to get to sleep, although they still jumped at the snap of a twig. With good reason. They were barely beginning to understand what this rainforest has in store.