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“Do you like being a cat?”
The unexpectedly soft question distracts him from watching for the witches, and he looks towards Dani; a young girl whose innocence reminds him very much of his little sister before the witches took her life and changed his form forever.
“Why are you not asleep, Dani? You will need to be rested should they find us again.”
She shrugs one shoulder from where she sits, leaning against the wall, as her brother and Allison doze next to her. He thinks the two of them are asleep, though, he hasn’t gone over to check.
“Not tired. I can’t sleep knowing that they’re out there waiting for us. Or looking for us right now.”
She pins him with a hard stare.
“You didn’t answer my question, Binx.”
He stares back at her with his ears flat against his head.
“I would rather not.”
“Why not?”
Max and Allison shift in their sleep at her soft whine before their restless movements eventually subside. He turns his attention back to Dani and tries hard not to bare his teeth at her for the question.
“That is because it’s not a tale that you would enjoy hearing about, Dani. I do not like thinking about that time.”
He remembers the pain of crunching bones as they break and reorder themselves to accommodate the strangeness of the new transformation. He remembers the laughter of the three of witches as they mocked him.
The world is strange and so much more intimidating through the eyes of a cat. The smells are different too. It is an entirely new world that he needs to understand and survive or die trying.
All of the people - his parents included - that once knew him and his sister all shout vulgar words and throw things at him. He would be lying if he said that he didn’t understand why they did it.
Cats like him are regarded as vessels for witches to conduct their magic with and more often than not shunned or killed.
Watching from a distance as his parents mourned the loss of both him and his sister. Seeing his mother stop smiling after they buried his sister. Her eyes seemed to lose their light. Watching as his father did his best to keep working through the pain of losing both of his children and the fear of perhaps losing his wife as well.
“Binx.”
He blinks as he growls softly, twitching his tail once in response as he realizes that he has been staring at her, rather than watching for danger.
“What do you want me to say, Dani? That it’s fun to be an animal that you were not born as? That it was delightful to be in pain as the witches forced a transformation of my body that tore me apart? That reformed my shape so completely?”
He stands up and turns to face her, trying to keep his voice low so as not to wake the other two humans just yet.
Trying to find shelter in a closed doorway or by some boxes from the cold rain. Losing that place when someone invariably discovers him there.
Fighting with other animals for scraps of old and rotting food while starving and weak, before he successfully learned to hunt live vermin.
“Do you really want to hear that it took nearly an entire month of starving and dying then coming back to life again before I learned how to successfully hunt down food? Another before I could fight for territory and successfully hold it from another cat?”
Her eyes are wide with unshed tears in a pale face as he unleashes long held frustrations.
“Or would like you to know that when you die and come back, it feels like some part of you is intrinsically missing? Like a memory so treasured and important is lost to the hands of time forever? I hardly remember what my life was like before becoming a cat, Dani. I don’t remember the taste of freshly made bread. I don’t remember what the faces of my parents or my little sister look like anymore. The softness of my mother’s hands. The sound of my sister’s laugh. The gentle fond smile on my father’s face. Hell, I don’t even remember what my own face once looked like.”
His fur starts to tingle and he tries to hold back an annoyed growl. A sigh of familiar magic that he knows rather well and has learned over time to sense. One or all three witches are somewhere nearby and they need to move now.
“Dani. Wake Max and Allison now.”
The young girl moved to do as he asked and as she moves past him, he hears her quiet apology.
“I’m sorry, Binx. I didn’t know.”