The Werewolf Stalker

1: When Stalking Goes Too Far

Teeth, thin and sharp, bit to bone. 

"Ow!" I growled, baring my teeth at the culprit. My sister's eyes flashed blue as she growled back at me, blood smearing sideways from the corners of her mouth, "Celosia Nuita Tear I swear I will throw you into the river if you don't let go."

Her teeth dug deeper into the muscle of my arm, grating the bone. I winced.

"Fine."

I lifted my arm, dangling the small child over the ground as she held stubbornly with her teeth. Trotting quickly to the river's edge, I gave a quick, firm shake. In a flurry of red-bronze hair and panicked yowls, her teeth slipped from their hold, leaving long and deep scores as she was tossed toward the water. My arm began healing the instant her body hit the water.

For a moment, there was a thick gurgling, but she resurfaced. The yowls resurfaced as well. 

"I'm wet!" She screamed angrily.

"Serves you right."

"Mommy says it's good for me to bite!" She argued as I pulled her small form from the water by grasping the back of her hair - her scruff as it be. She instinctively curled. 

"You're teething," I allowed, gathering her wet-reddish locks into my hands and squeezing out excess water as she attempted slick it off her arms with the palms of her hands, "That doesn't mean you should bite others."

She let out a low growl of protest, baring her teeth at me, before running off. Her shoulders were hunched and her hair lank. She looked more like a rat than a cat. I rolled my eyes. She would be attempting to groom the water out for hours on end no doubt.

I sat back down by the water, sketching in my journal. Unfortunately a few red drops now stained the pages, but they were already rumpled and yellowed with overuse. If anything, they just added to the character.

My own long red hair glinted distractingly in the sunlight - I was reminded of cardinals whenever I saw it. Delicious.

But it would be silly to eat my own hair. All of us went through that stage though.

Not eating it. Cleaning it.

Our instincts drove us to groom it, but human hair isn't as easy to lick clean as cat hair. Only the young children and infested do it. The young ones do it naturally - like how human children suck on their thumb. The infested do it instinctively too - fleas are nasty, itchy little buggers and it's hard to resist. We all succumb to self-cleaning when we're in feline form - it makes more sense.

I tied the ruby distraction up into a loose pony and returned to my work; I had to feed my family. All seventeen of them.

My mother and father had conceived three litters total. In that way, werecat society was a tad confusing. We had human like obligations to our family beyond cat like reproduction, and yet it was difficult to limit that instinct to have children. Too keep things in check, parents were required to get surgery after the third litter, regardless of how many children were conceived. 

The first litter of our family had produced octuplets. The second, only triplets. The third, sextuplets. That was above average. Average is usually two to five per litter - depending on breed of course.

Despite our unusual size and hungry mouths, all of us were welcome. In our community that is. 

The werewolves more than disliked our family's growth. 

I didn't think they had a right to -They average about six per litter and their average range of births per litter is greater than ours. Like us, the werewolves derive from all different dog breeds and some breeds simply have higher fluctuations in litter size than others, but the ranges in the dog species are significantly greater.