Cammie and Catseye - Visiting the City

[x-catseye.livejournal.com]

Catseye tags along with Cammie for a run into New York City, but goes off on her own to avoid tampon shopping. She seeks out some fellow cats to play with but discovers that she's not treated as a cat any longer.



When she'd learned that Cammie was planning on going into the city to shop, Catseye had begged to come along for the drive. She and Yvette were planning on taking their written tests for their permits next week, and she wanted to ride along in the car so she could see if there was anything she was still unclear about. Cammie was a good teacher, who always answered the catgirl's questions, no matter how mundane or convoluted. "If Cammie goes around a parked car she has to signal, yes, and must go back into her lane before coming to a side street so if other cars are turning Cammie's car does not get in their way?" she asked, watching the road carefully.

"Yeah, pretty much. Parallel parking is a pain in the ass, it took me forever to get it," Cammie said. She had been ready to take her driving test when she left and had learned how to drive even better from a man who ran a chop shop. She preferred bikes, but cars were great too, "Basically if you think you have to move out of the lane you're in, signal. That way everyone knows you have to move. Some people are jerks about it, but you won't be."


"Catseye does not want to be a jerk," she agreed wholeheartedly. "Catseye has been parallel parking a little and yes Catseye thinks it makes her butt hurt." Luckily she was just going for her written test soon, and not the actual road test. "Does Cammie have to shop?" she whined, fidgeting in her seat. "Can't Cammie and Catseye just drive and drive and maybe get burgers?" The catgirl wasn't a fan of shopping- it was one of the human things she still couldn't grasp.

"I wish. But no, I need girly things," ie: tampons, "And I was going to look at some used CDs and records and stuff," she said. When it came to the old school punk music, some of it was still best on records. Or maybe that was her being a bit stuck up, but everyone had their things. Hers just happened to be fist fights and punk music, "If there's something you want to do while I'm out being boring after we get burgers I could drop you somewhere. And then come and get you when I'm done. Like, if you want to go to a park or to an animal shelter or something."



The catgirl made a face. She knew what girl code for girlythings meant, and was glad she didn’t have to deal with human hormonal cycles unless she spent more than three weeks straight in girlform without shifting into catform. Which had never happened.

Her head tilted to the side as Catseye thought over the offer Cammie made. "Maybe Catseye will go to an animal shelter to visit. Catseye is waiting to hear if she can help at one of the shelters but Catseye can still go look at the cats and say 'hi' while Cammie is being boring, yes?"

Cammie grinned and nodded. She didn't often hear boring as a word used to describe her, but she could understand it, "Sounds like the purrrrfect plan," she said grinning at Catseye, "You got any music preferences, I'll buy you a CD or something while I'm out and you're talking with your friends."


"Can Cammie pick Catseye up after the girlythings shopping? Catseye likes music shopping, it is not boring. And cats do not 'talk'," she corrected haughtily, swishing her tail.

"Hey, you're the expert. I only know cats are warm and fuzzy and of all the cats out there, I like you the best," Cammie said with a nod. "Burgers, shelter, and then I'll pick you up after I get the girly things and we'll go to an old fashioned record store."



Catseye preened at the comments, nearly hugging Cammie before remembering that it would be a bad idea considering she was driving. "Catseye thinks she likes Cammie the best right now for coming up with the best plans. But what is a record?" she asked, confused. "Is it like a CD?"


"Well, kinda. A record is like a really, really big, really breakable CD. Most of them are old. Some people like the way the music sounds better on records, and some stuff you can only find on records," Cammie said, "You'll see when we get to the store. Where you can look around all you want, okay?"



****



As they pulled up at the block of one of the local animal shelters after Catseye had gorged on burgers, she turned to Cammie. “Catseye will meet Cammie back here in an hour after girlythings are over?” She wasn’t wearing a watch, since she thought using clocks was silly. The sun would tell her when an hour had passed.



She hopped out of the car and made her way into the building. Many people were in the shelter’s cat rooms, so many that Catseye could barely get close to the cats. The air in the room made her wrinkle her nose, stomach clenching. She hated the smell of shelters- they were worse than hospitals, even, because at least to mask the smell of sick and fear, there was the smell of clean on everything in a hospital. The shelter lacked a hospital’s cleanliness. Animals were cramped into tiny cages, either afraid or numbed by acceptance of their fates, indifference to their situations. Only the youngest kittens had no fear of what would happen to them. And fear wasn’t the only emotion that was stifling the air in the room. There was anger as well, from the older cats, the ones who had been abandoned by their people, the ones who had been surviving as best they could on the streets before having their freedom taken away from them, to be thrown in these tiny cells and left at the mercy of humans. Would they be taken to a home with the humans, coddled and fed and allowed to sleep in warm, sunny spots? Dressed up, forced to have their pictures taken? Have their tails pulled by small humans and then beaten when they used their claws to try and make it stop? Would they be made to sleep in cold, dark rooms to catch vermin? Would people forget to feed them? Would they be fed things that their stomachs hated, things that would make them sick? Or would they be ignored by the humans until their time came to go into the white room with the needle?



As plainly as if the cats were talking to her, Catseye felt all these thoughts, these emotions from the scents in the room, from the expressions and postures, the eyes, whiskers, tails, feet, backs. They didn’t know that this was one of the places that wouldn’t kill them, just as they didn’t know what sort of people they would be leaving here with, or if they would continue to live out their days here forever.



She’d been in shelters before, had felt the thoughts and emotions of the cats in the cages, but never before had the purple-haired girl been worried about them. She’d never been bothered. She wanted to play with them, not think about what was going to happen to them, not feel guilty, feel responsible for what happened to them. She was thinking like a human. It was upsetting.



Realizing that she would be unable to play with the cats in catform right now anyway, with so many people around, Catseye spun on a heel and escaped the room, the shelter, and the block.



Wandering downtown, she began to feel steadier. The air of the city helped, the scents and noises that were so familiar to her from her time living on the streets as a cat. Shifting into catform made all the complicated thoughts momentarily cease as she found herself wandering back towards her old haunts, comforted as she focused on the smells, the places to get food, the places that looked warm and cozy for sleeping. Thinking like a cat again instead of a human was something she was much more comfortable doing.



Four young cats, a tom and three queens, were gathered around a garbage can in an alley she had called home for several months, behind a deli that used the most delicious pastrami Catseye had ever tasted, a place that was particularly careful about only using the freshest meat, which meant plenty of edible scraps for the scavenging felines.



She approached the cats happily but cautiously, her movements playful but not particularly passive, indicating that she wanted their company, but didn’t intend to steal their food or try to join their colony. During her time in New York City when her human life span meant that one colony would die, before finding a new one, she had found this approach to be very successful. Most cats were territorial and extremely wary of others from outside their colony, but when they weren’t on their territory to begin with, and there was plenty of food to be had, having a quick game of Chase and Pin usually wasn’t a problem.





The tom hissed at her when she approached, and Catseye stopped abruptly, adjusting her posture to something defensive. She just wanted to play! Two of the queens flanked her and sniffed at her, then took up warning poses for the other cats to be tipped off that this cat wasn’t to be trusted, that something was Wrong. Confused, Catseye arched her back and hissed. Why were they being mean when she just wanted to play with them? What was Wrong?



They retreated to their fellows and the four stalked towards her as a group. Not intending to get into a confrontation, Catseye backed out of the alley cautiously.





Indignantly, she continued along her way to some of her old haunts, telling herself that the deli cats were just paranoid, and then chastising herself for thinking of the term like a human. Several alleys later, she came across a lone tom, weathered and aloof, watching for vermin in front of a grate behind an abandoned warehouse. She adopted her playful, non-threatening posture again and approached him, making it very clear that she just wanted companionship, not his food.



The tom was suddenly moving very quickly towards her. Catseye caught the whiff of a scent she knew all too well- the tom wanted to mate with her! Eeew! As with girlform, Catseye had to remain in catform for a whole cycle without shifting before hormones affected her and sent her into heat, so she had no interest in doing anything like that! She’d been a cat for more than thirteen years straight before rediscovering her ability to shift into a girl while under the care of the CatLady, but her human aging meant that she’d been the equivalent of a kitten for most of her time before the CatLady, and other cats had never tried to mate with her.



Hissing, she dodged the old tom’s approach easily, ears flat against her skull and a warning growl coming from her throat. Defeated once more, she ran out of the alley.



Ewewewewewew! was all she could think for several moments, and the fact that ‘ew’ was so human a sentiment made her irritable. The realization that this had never happened before due to her human aging contributed to her foul mood. It meant that she’d always been a little bit human, genetically, that the other cats had always recognized that she was a little bit different, and she had just never noticed it before! Why question the fact that you were never forced to have a smelly tom on your back? Better to just be grateful that you weren’t of interest to them, instead of trying to decipher why.



Catseye thought that the fact this tom was treating her like a regular cat would make her happy as it proved that she was really a cat, but the realization that she’d been different from a regular cat all the years she’d lived as one didn't give her any comfort.


Still determined to find some cat, some situation that could remind her of what she used to be, remind her of the life that she understood, the purple feline sought out the territory of her old colony, the last she had lived with before going to the CatLady, before coming to the mansion. Most of them, like herself, had been taken to animal shelters when the CatLady had passed away, but Catseye knew that some of the colony, the ones who had been wary of the CatLady and retained their freedom, had escaped the shelters back then. It had only been a few years. She hoped they would still be there, and that they would remember her.


The familiar scents when she reached her old territory of two queens she knew well cheered Catseye up immediately. They'd been barely more than kittens when she'd come to the mansion; constant playmates. They were the only two cat scents in the area- the rest had gone off hunting. This cheered her up even more. No toms to deal with.


She bounded up to the boxes where the queens, a tortoiseshell and an orange tabby, were napping in the sun, stopping only a few feet away from them as was courteous. They must have recognized her scent as well, because both stood up, whiskers twitching, curiosity in their postures. They knew her! Elated, Catseye let out a happy "mrrrrrrrrrt!" and struck up a playful, pouncing pose.


The orange tabby mirrored her pose, and the tortoiseshell took the opportunity of Catseye watching the orange cat to set up a flanking attack, pouncing on her from the side. Catseye flipped the other cat playfully, but the tortoiseshell had already taken off. When Catseye turned to face them, she recognized that something was wrong. Something had happened when the other cat had gotten close, and she had warned her companion. They were both standing there, looking at her with suspicion. They smelled of fear. They were afraid of her. She studied their posture, their faces, and she understood.

They didn't see a cat when they looked at her. They had thought she was a cat at first, but when they'd gotten close they'd smelled something wrong. They'd smelled human.

But why? Because she lived with humans? Or because she was a human?

Because she wasn't really a cat, and had never really been a cat. Not like them. The encounter with the tom had made her realize that. And maybe the other cats had never understood what she'd been before she went to live at the mansion. Maybe she'd been too young then, and without any human influences. But she was different now. She'd been trying to learn how to be human, and in doing so, she'd made herself even more different from a regular cat. From what she'd grown up as, what she'd always believed herself to be.

The attack came fast, and because Catseye had been distracted by thoughts that weren't about survival, human thoughts, she'd been caught off guard. Teeth and claws startled her out of her shocking, depressing realization.

Recognizing that it wasn't the cats' fault that she wasn't really a cat, Catseye didn't want to fight them. She let them scratch and bite. It was what she deserved, for trying to be something she wasn't.

After a few minutes, the noises of the attacking cats prompted the attention of the shop owner whose building the cats' territory was behind. He arrived with a broom and a lot of shouting, and then the attack was over.


Catseye lay on the pavement for a long while, feeling lost, thoughts attacking her as vigourously as the cats had. The remainder of her hour passed and she didn't notice. After half of another, she felt paralysed by her pain- the pain in her head, and her heart. The most painful thing was that being in catform, she couldn't do what she really wanted to do. She had to shift into girlform before she could cry.


Loud, wracking sobs had the shopowner coming out again, and a look at the purple-haired girl covered in scratches and bite marks lying in the spot where a cat had been brought a frightened expression to his face. Only then did Catseye stagger to her feet and leave the alley.

Cammie had been looking for awhile now. Catseye wasn't right where she dropped her off but that wasn't all that uncommon. When she didn't s how up in the first few minutes, Cammie parked the car and went looking.

Her experience on the streets was a very human one, and it made her fast and efficient at finding people, though she was by no means professional. When she did finally see the purple haired girl she ran towards her, "Cats, what the hell happened?!" she looked around for who, or whatever had done this, intent on kicking their ass, "Are you okay?"


The catgirl wasn't sure if she was happy to see Cammie or not. It was nice to see a friend, she decided after a moment, someone who wasn't a cat. "Catseye tried to play with some cats she knows but they knew Catseye was not a cat!" It came out in more of a wail than she'd intended. "When Catseye lived with them she was a cat but she is not a cat anymore! They thought Catseye was something wrong, and it is true," she spat vehemently, "Catseye is something wrong!"

"Whoa, whoa, it's okay," Cammie said, trying to do something to calm the catgirl down without touching her, "There's nothing wrong with you. Those cats were jerks. You're better than the other cats. Do you want to go back and have the doctor look at you?"


"No! Nononono! Catseye does not need a doctor," she assured Cammie, sniffling now as she forced herself to stop sobbing. "Catseye just wants to go. Catseye will wait in the car while Cammie looks at records." She couldn't bring herself to do such a human thing. Not when she felt so confused.

"I won't do that," Cammie said, "You're not sitting in the car by yourself. Come on, Cats," she said, "Forget those jerk-cats, let's get you home. You'll feel better, okay?"


"Catseye thinks she will go to the woods," she answered, sounding mopey, though she was grateful for Cammie's kindness. "Catseye has to think. Lots and lots of thinking."