Z - Animal Lovers

Animal Lovers

She'd been living on her own for a year now. Not working. Sulking I
suppose you could call it. Her partner of the past five years had moved
out having finally admitted his part in the suffocation of her life.
Still, they'd had some good times and learnt a little along the
way.

In recent years she'd been worrying that life as a woman was one of no
hope of self-fulfilment, and the relentless requirement to be perfect
in every way. That summer, the hottest on record, her nails, blunted
and torn by the keyboard, had begun to grow again. And they grew longer
and stronger and faster than ever before. They grew so fast in fact
that she was sure she could see it happening. She also noticed at some
point that she had become rather lazy. Not the fat, laziness of the
idle rich, you understand, but more of a luxurious, unrepentant
laziness she felt she deserved after suffering years of commuting, and
working, and dusting, and commuting. The angry everyday bustles and
silly resentments had worn her out. All in all, she didn't believe the
return had been worth the effort.

Lying there in her garden, brown and stretched, she took a sip of the
mango lassi she'd made earlier. Still cool, she wiped the creamy drink
from her lips using the back of her hand. As she did so she noticed
something coarse, something that didn't feel quite right. She jumped up
excitedly and ran to the bathroom. Looking at her reflection in the
mirror she saw a magnificent pair of whiskers, as black as the hair on
her head. At last, they'd come through. She knew they would.

She'd been about thirteen years old when she first remembered feeling
uncomfortable in her body. She felt awkward dressing-up and had an
aversion to all fabrics especially crimplene. Her mum made her dresses
and shorts out of towelling and cotton and these were just about
bearable. She hated her school uniform. Whenever she could she'd find
somewhere quiet and stretch out naked.

Well, enough is enough, the time had come. She was feral. She had
become the cat she had always wanted to be. The years of strange
stretching and strengthening exercises made sense now. She could leap
and twist in the blink of an eye. She could flip over backwards if
required. A fence was no longer an obstacle and an open door a thing to
be explored. She had the time.

People seemed willing to feed her and when they were unable she lived
on milk. After a while she hooked up with another cat. He was a very
handsome cat. 'Though he lived in the area he was not too close as to
be a threat to her territory. Together they roamed around and saw some
things you wouldn't believe. They made friends with the other animals
and birds living in the neighbourhood. They even liked the dogs.

Conventional communication, they had both learnt, was pointless. It
only led to misunderstandings and vexations. And so conversation was
limited to body language. Other than that, a sigh meant an
acknowledgement of pleasure, and a shriek was a cry for help.

Then, one day, her feral friend spoke to her. He told her that he'd
been offered a job in the real world. It turned out that he'd been
applying for jobs all along. Anyway, it was an interesting job and,
after three months, he was still enjoying work at the wildlife
sanctuary. Encouraged by him she too sought work in an area where
expressing oneself wasn't considered a crime against humanity, and, as
luck would have it, she found a position that proved to be more
challenging and sometimes more enjoyable than rolling around on the
floor naked.

Two lives down and on to the third. Things were only getting better and
she was still not quite yet forty, which is very young in catfolk
terms. They ate at table now and the food was good, but afterwards,
they never could forget, they would remove their silks and satins and
stretch out on the floor, sighing to their hearts' content.