by Kate Everson
fence walk and showed him how to keep his balance. He was actually very good at it, being an athlete to start. We walked til dawn, then exhausted, we all went to our homes for a quick nap before the full light of day changed us back to our normal selves.
It was the start of a whole new relationship. Alex, Dahlia and I began to take regular walks in the night, seeing the world in a whole new way.
“I love you,” purred Alex.
And Dahlia and I just held twitched our tails and began to wash our faces. This was a great way to tame a human!
But I couldn’t stay Cat forever. And neither could Alex.
We had to go on with our real lives and try to deal with our secret.
“Karla?” Alex asked me softly one day as we were heading out to the gym to practice. He leaned close to me, like he never used to do, and whispered in my ear. His whiskers tickled. They weren’t quite as long as his cat whiskers, but they were growing. Maybe he was trying to be totally cat-like in both human and animal forms.
“Uh-huh?” I said softly, like a cat purring.
“Karla, can we talk?” he asked, pulling me aside. “There’s something I need to know.”
“Sure,” I said, and we went over to a corner of the park and sat on a bench under the apple tree. Already, blossoms were beginning to form, and soon the tree would be filled with a beautiful fragrance of spring.
I knew what he wanted. It was not easy being both cat and human in one form. He wanted to know how it was all going to work out.
Alex sat very close to me on the bench. He had never sat that close before. I mean, before we had become cats. Now, it seemed, he had taken on a new personality. He liked to cuddle more. He didn’t mind being stroked around his ears. And when he leaned in towards me, I could feel the heat off his skin. It made me want to purr.
“Karla, what does this all mean?” he asked, looking at me with his big brownish eyes. They sparkled in the sun, and inside them I could see forever. He was a big tomcat all right, and that was just fine with me.
“Alex,” I answered sweetly, with a lick of my tongue to catch the sweetness of my own words. “It just means that we are bonded now, in a whole new way.”
“I like that,” he smiled, and snuggled even closer.
People were beginning to notice the new bond we had. My other friends commented on it, but I just laughed it off.
“Oh, Alex?” I would laugh. “We’re old friends from way back. Almost like kissin’ kittens!”
But they would look at me strangely, and walk away. Most people knew I had just met Alex in gym class last year and he had helped with some of my techniques in tennis.
Even my mother started to wonder.
“Karla, who is that boy?” she asked, as Alex walked me home, up to the porch.
When he tried to give me a quick kiss on the cheek, mom was right there at the door, scowling. He departed in a hurry.
“Oh mom,” I would say. “That’s just Alex. You know Alex, don’t you?” and I would quickly disappear into my room.
But at night it was a different story. Everything changes at night. And so did we.
Alex and I did not really need Dahlia any more, as we had learned the ways of Cat real quick. But she came anyway and seemed to like our company. We were all feline when the sun went down.
That night was no different. We walked to the river and waited for the transformation. Hands to paws, fingers to claws, face with whiskers, ears pointed up, skin covered in soft fur, and a beautiful long twitching tail for balance.
I loved the way Alex looked when he was all dressed up. My man Cat. He was black as night, with one white streak over his nose. I was a soft grey, with specks of white and orange. We sat beside each other and looked up at the sky. Dahlia sat with us.
There was no need to speak when we were in cat-form. Anything we needed to say was instantly in the other’s head. Once in awhile we would meow or yowl, depending on the joke. But mostly we just enjoyed each other’s company.
It was not as easy transforming back to human once dawn broke. It was starting to hurt. The claws weren’t retracting as quickly, and sometimes they didn’t retract at all. I had to go to class once with half a human hand and the other half cat. It was very hard to write, and I kept pulling my claws inside my sleeve.
Alex was having the same problem with his whiskers. Instead of a nice beard and moustache he had amazing cat whiskers that he had to keep trimming every hour. He would race into the bathroom and snip away at them before someone would see.
It was fun being a cat, and I loved the way Alex had grown so close because of it. Without this, how would I have ever gotten a boyfriend?
But I knew it would all have to end some time. We had to make a decision. Go all out as cat or crawl back inside our human shells forever.
“What do you want to do?” I asked Alex.
He didn’t know either. He was beginning to love our midnight rambles all over town. He may have even started liking me.
“I want you,” he started at me with those gorgeous cat-like eyes.
I could feel a purr coming, but I held it back.
“I know you do, Alex, ” I said softly. “And I care about you too. But we can’t go on leading double lives. We have to choose.”
Inside my heart I knew that if we went back to human I might lose him completely. But I wanted what was best.
“Karla,” he whispered, his tongue almost in my ear. “I want you any way I can. Cat or girl. I want you all the time.”
I gasped. Who was talking? Was it the Alex I knew or cat-man? That tom cat had a lot of instincts that Alex had never showed.
“Alex …” I backed away slightly. “Alex, that isn’t you talking, is it?”
He hung his head, and I could still see some fur on the back of his neck from last night. He was getting hairier every day.
“I don’t care!” he yowled and lunged for my neck.
I shrieked and raced down the path, with him at my heels. I fell and he was all over me, licking my neck, my face, my eyes. It felt so wonderful. I hated to tell him to stop.
“Stop!” I whispered.
And amazingly, he did.
As Dahlia sat there watching us, Alex backed off and sat on his haunches staring at me. Then he slowly turned tail and walked away.
So that was that. He was gone.
We never met at night any more after that. He kept a respectful distance, even in the gym. I was sad to see him go.
But one night, while asleep in my bed, everything changed. Again. I heard a soft yowl outside my window. It had to be him.
I opened the window and crawled out onto the lawn. There he was. My Alex. Cat-man.
“I hated being without you,” he said. “I will take a feline form forever just to be close to you.”
At that moment, Dahlia leaped in front of him. She waved her magic paw and instantly, we were both totally human. But miracle of miracle, Alex still loved me. I could see it in his eyes. Glowing in the dark with love.
He held me in his strong human arms and I knew I would never be lonely again. The cat came back. But the human stayed. And that’s where true love began.
The End
Read more at Life Lessons from a Cat, and Love Letters from Home.
