Cats surfaced throughout history as revered, majestic, and regal creatures that stood in high regards, no matter their physical location or place in time. Throughout Africa and the Middle East, and every culture in between, cats held their place as distinguished beings. They say that cats were the Prophet Mohammed's treasured companions Think back to Egypt and the amount of monuments created to admire the felines inhabiting their realm, with Gods involving feline form. The sphinx, for fucks sake. In Cairo and Alexandria, cats are welcome inhabitants of the streets while shop owners and restaurant managers take care of them, inviting them into the stores for actual meals. Where I had grown up, cats roamed in a similar fashion. Granted, I had grown up in Africa where there were lions, tigers, and no bears (see that humorous reference?) so the "big cats" were in charge of the wilderness. My sisters and I constantly came home with strays, preferring their company to other forms of pets. It wasn't until I had moved to the United States that I had ever seen a domestic dog, and let me tell you. There are few things I dislike more than bad comedy movies, burnt popcorn, and vampires.

Dogs are one of them.

E very other household in the United States seemed to have a dog present. Big, small, I hate them all. They barked loudly without dignity. They drooled. They smelled like soggy moldy towels that were left in a damp corner of a garage: rank. Without proper training, they ran rampant and I seriously couldn't figure out enough words to describe how little I liked most dogs. There were exceptions, yeah. I could deal with working dogs, or those that had explicitly detailed training. But the others? You can have them. Their loyalty meant nothing, considering they were bred to love you, regardless of your actions toward them. Cats, on the other hand... Their trust was won through time, patience, and aquiessing their ridiculous natures. With that description in mind, it was no wonder I preferred cats considering my own personality was rather related.

Had the were who was currently lodging himself in one of my shipment's boxes been a form of a canine-were, I might have been inclined to remove him forcefully from the premises. Fortunately for both of us, he was clearly not, and his favorable secondary form was more amusing than a nuisance. The way his eyes calculated me, the way his skin easily melted away to reveal sleek fur and golden eyes, it was going to be evident he would relegate me as a lesser being. That was unsurprising, considering every cat I had ever met owned the human, and not the other way around. It brought a mild smirk to my lips, acknowledging the present tense servitude I would have to pay to the feline man before any aggression or dominant nature of my own was revealed.

Believe you me, he would be able to smell the dominance through his instincts. The fact that I put it aside to hand him a ball and scratch his paws evidently pleased him, until it no longer did. The whim was humorous, especially as I had whims of my own that might cause whiplash. Church, my near-feral cat, was as simply mercurial as this man, but on a far... tinier scale. His little self wasn't even a quarter of the size of the man's were-form which was incredibly laughable because he acted just like a domestic house cat might by launching easily from one box to another in search of his crinkly prey.

"Fortunately for you, I don't need that back."

In relation to his words, I spoke without an irritable lilt. I never liked commands, but following orders of a talking cat-man seemed fairly reasonable in all honesty. I could have reacted violently with my own instincts much as I had before Raven revealed that she wasn't a danger, but I rather liked seeing a human acting like a cat. Before long, though, I wished I had as the second slew of garbled words came out of his mouth as quickly as the door was wrenched off of the building.

"Fancy that. Free remodeling," I said through my grit teeth. "Aren't you the generous creature," I muttered when the hole in the door was only enough for him to fit through. With ease, I destroyed the metal hinges on the door, and let it fall down in front of me so that I needed to exert no effort to open the door and follow the thing in.

Without missing a beat, he was on top of a relatively unoccupied counter, lounging in a luxurious way only a feline could. It wasn't long before he looked content with snuggling a weapon that was sharply pronged at the ends like that of a medieval battle mace. Fitting. Before I was able to focus on my actual work, it seemed like a better idea to string something up to entertain him before he decided to become an actual nuisance. There was enough rope to knot around the ends of several ball and chain type objects, and I went ahead with that to make quick work of it before tossing them around the rafter nearest to the leopard. He would look up, eventually, I was sure and know that like all things, it was meant for him.

I wanted to work, I really did. But it was far more entertaining to watch a full grown man play with items that generally only intrigued tiny little fluff balls of contempt.




(PS: I'm sorry for no HTML. I couldn't copy it for some reason D:!)