“Rachael!”

“Hey Connie,” the girl- Rachael replied, “glad you could make it!”

The two girls embraced each other, seeming very comfortable, it was obvious that they had known each other for quite a while.

“Is that him?” Connie asked, pointing towards me with a big smile.

“Of course, I’ve only stolen one cat today,” Rachael giggled.

Connie cautiously stepped forward and extended her hand for me to sniff. She was a much taller, more matured looking woman. Next to each other, Rachael could almost have been her daughter. I don’t mean that she looked so much older than her age, only that Rachael looked so much younger. I pawed forward, keeping my eyes locked on the new girl. Despite knowing logically that I could trust her, I found myself unable to simply approach her as a friendly person, an illogical part of me demanded that my nose have the final say.

“Come on, Teddy, it’s okay,” Rachael encouraged.

I stretched my neck out and carefully sniffed thee offered hand, picking up the scent of not only her natural odor, but the beef and cheddar sandwich she had eaten for lunch. There was also something else in her scent, something that smelled slightly off with her body chemistry. I had never paid much attention to what any one human smelled like before, but it was distinct enough to be obvious. Had I been able to speak in some way, I would have warned her to go to the doctor.

“He’s adorable,” she cooed, moving her hand to pet the top of my head. “You named him Teddy?”

“Yes, he reminds me so much of the first teddy bear I can remember having, it only seemed fitting.”

“So are you going to keep him?” Connie ceased her gentle strokes and turned around to face her friend. “You know that you got this apartment for a steal because they liked you, but… I don’t think they’d be so nice if they knew you’re keeping a pet against their rules.”

“I couldn’t just leave him,” Rachael said, looking at me pitifully. “You should have seen him, all alone in that murky, dusty basement. I had seen him a few times on campus, but I had always assumed he had an owner. It was heartbreaking to find out where he lived. Who knows how long he was sleeping down there all alone.” She looked to me again, distress evident in her features. “He obviously has been house trained and is friendly with people, maybe someone just kind of threw him out or moved without him. I hate to think that someone would do that to a defenseless animal, but people can be cruel.”

“I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have taken him,” Connie said soothingly. She placed her hands gently on Rachael’s shoulders. “I am just wondering what you’re going to end up doing with him. It might be easier to find him another home or take him to a shelter.”

Rachael looked to her friend, mouth set firm in a frown. “I will not take him to a shelter, he’s a black cat.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“People believe in stupid superstitions,” Rachael sighed, “things like black cats are bad luck or the tools of witches. You know, dumb things like that and because of it black cats are more likely to not be adopted and then end up being put down. I don’t even want to really get into the fact that some people will just flat out kill black cats they find.” There were tears in her eyes as she glanced to me again before wiping them away with the collar of her sleeve.

“Okay, sorry, I didn’t know,” Connie said. “I guess you could just try to find him another home. Maybe put up some signs around campus for a missing cat, it’s possible he just got out and never found a way back home.”

“I suppose I could…”

“You really want to keep him, don’t you?”

Rachael looked between me and her friend, her cheeks flushing slightly. “I do miss having a cat,” she admitted.

“But you’re not allowed according to your lease,” Connie argued, her shoulders slumping. Her body language gave away that she didn’t really believe that she’d end up winning the argument.

“I’ll just have to be quiet about it, it’s not like I throw wild parties or anything. It’s not like a dog where you have to let it out everyday, a few times per day.”

“I still think it’s a bad idea.” All passion had left Connie’s voice, already monotone from defeat.

“It will be fine, I promise.” Rachael had made up her mind, she was going to keep me whether it followed the rules or not. I can appreciate that kind of spirit.

Rachael stepped around her friend and bent over at the waste, holding her arms out to me. I knew what she wanted, but I didn’t respond. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the idea of being picked up. As a human, it was certainly not anything that had come up since I was a young child and I had never allowed anyone to get close enough before to pick me up as a cat. I had no idea how to react or what to do with my body as she wrapped her hands under my torso and picked me up. For a moment my back legs flailed, claws out, it took a great mental effort to calm my nerves and not end up scratching the poor girl. She carried me to the couch, wrapping me with her arms like you would a small child. It was strangely soothing, comforting me in a way that I don’t think I had felt since my mother had been alive.

“ Let’s talk about other things.” Rachael stand down with me, placing me in her lap where I instinctively curled up into a ball. “Have you thought anymore about how we can put the club together?”

“Honestly, not really,” Connie replied as she sunk into the couch next to us. “I just finished a biology project, so I spent pretty much all my free time trying not to fail it. Have you?”

Rachael nodded while absentmindedly petting my back. “I’ve thought of a couple names for it so far. What do you think about Brooms and Baubles?”

“That’s really cute,” Connie said with a soft laugh, brushing her hair from her face, “but do you think that people will know what we’re going for?”

“The kind of people we want to hang out with. I mean, we’re already really narrowing our field from the start for wanting to start a club based on alternative religions and crafting.”

My ears perked up in interest, swiveling around like I didn’t already have painfully perfect hearing. Alternative religions… is that what they call it in this decade?

“I guess, but what was the other name?”

“Cauldrons and Crafts,” Rachael answered, trying very hard to keep a straight face. “I kind of have a theme going.”

Connie shook her head, but she had a big smile on her face, eyes twinkling like she hadn’t expected anything less. “Okay, let’s go with Brooms and Baubles for now.”

“Great, I can turn in the paperwork tomorrow then!”

“You’re already done with it?” Connie asked. “Wow, we just got it like yesterday.”

“Yeah, well I wanted to get the ball rolling, I want for us to find some new friends already and have something to do on campus besides go to classes and feel awkward.”

“To be fair, you’re already finding things to do like rescue stray cats,” Connie gently teased. She reached out slowly and began to scratch under my chin and again, I started to purr deeply out of instinct.

Between the two of them petting and scratching, I felt my eyes become heavy and before I could do anything to stop it, I slipped away into another near coma, deep sleep. The next conscious moment I had was in darkness, I was terrified for a brief moment before my eyes adjusted and I could see just about as well as I did during the day. I was still on the couch, though the girls were gone, I had been curled up tightly against the arm of the couch. A quick sniff of the air revealed that Connie was likely gone, her scent present, but heavily fading into the background scents of the apartment.

I stood with a great stretch, extending each front leg in front of me one at a time, then rounding the motion through my back as I stood up. The feeling of peace and relaxation that flowed through my body was beyond anything I had ever experienced as a human, I would sorely miss it whenever I could become human again.

Padding silently through the apartment, I made my way to the bedroom to find the door mostly closed, I could hear Rachael’s soft, airy snores through the crack. Not wanting to wake her, I pushed my body weight slowly against the door, opening it with nothing more than the sound of the bottom of the door lightly scraping against the top fibers of the carpet. It only took two steps into the room before the human part of my brain loudly questioned just what my plan was. I was by no way some kind of creeper, yet here I was sneaking my way into a young woman’s room in the middle of the night. I was stunned enough by my actions that my jaw dropped open and my tongue rolled out of my mouth, then I began to clumsily back out through the door, nearly falling over my own feet. I stood in the hallway and sat on my haunches, if I had been able to, I would have let out an anxious, disbelieving laugh.

There was no way I could, in good conscious, enter into her room while she was sleeping. It was so beyond inappropriate that had I the ability to flush as a cat, I would be bright red from embarrassment. I had only been twenty five when I transformed, but it had been two decades since it happened, and that made me a middle aged man having just tiptoed into her bedroom. Unable to express the feelings of my faux pas any other way, I dropped my head to the ground and pressed it to the wall and lightly thumped it over and over. I was certain now that if I ever was saved from this form I was destined to get back my form with an awkwardly balding head and suspicious mustache that will make passing mothers clutch their children just a little tighter.

Once I was able to recover myself, I peeled my head from the wall and slunk back to the living room. I returned to the couch, feeling like the least I could do would be to try to undo my actions and remind myself to keep straight in my mind that I was not really a cat and very much still a human… though I could barely remember what I used to look like. I could remember that I was about six foot with auburn hair and brown eyes, but it was like remembering any other fact, the picture of myself in my mind had become cloudy and muted with the passing years. If I were tasked to draw or describe what I had looked like, I could perhaps get the general outline, but all the fine details evaporated as I tried my hardest to recall them. It scared me a bit to recognize that now days when I thought of myself, the image of the slick, streetwise black tom cat came into my mind first.