by Renard, Loki
Kitty vs Alien
Feral Aliens
Loki Renard
Copyright © 2020 by Loki Renard.
Cover images via depositphotos @anthonypaz, @salivit @s_derivanko, @vishstudio
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
1. Chasing Kitty
2. Cat Carrier
3. Your Fugitive’s Name is…
4. Crime and Punishment
5. Chain-Kept
6. Kitty Breeding
7. The Hunt
8. Good Vibrations
9. Broken
10. The Great Escape
11. Welcome to the Wild
12. The Village
13. Wild Cats
14. Mother
15. City Retreat
16. Hard Labor
17. Happily Ever After
Epilogue
Feral Aliens Book Two Sneak Peek!
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1 Chasing Kitty
Skoll
“Raindrops on roses…”
“You’re not here for her,” I remind myself. “This is not about her. Ignore her.”
But ignoring her is like trying to ignore the sun. She is everywhere. She is everything. She is the desire I cannot sate, the hunger which makes me starve.
“AND WHISKERS ON KITTENS!” Her sudden shrill tone bursts through the afternoon air. The human I love is doing what she tells her cat is the ‘rock’ version of the song. It seems to amuse her greatly, though she is alone and cannot possibly know she is entertaining anybody besides herself.
This planet smells like meat. I am glad for the mask they make me wear, or else my fangs would be clear to all who see me. The mask means my strangeness is hidden away from the world, and that allows me to hunt among the unsuspecting humans without interference.
This is not my world, and I do not belong here. But the human who lives next door has become a small comfort. Her presence is very much felt in my life though she barely knows I exist. She sings in the shower in the mornings and sometimes in the evenings. When she does, I can hear her quite clearly through the wall, the water running as she warbles happily, unaware that everything she believes her life to be is a lie.
She is pretty, though it is not merely her appearance which draws me to her. She has a pleasing strawberry blonde pelt on her head which curls about her ears and drifts toward her shoulders in a way I find entrancing, and bright blue eyes not so different in color from my own. She has been a distraction throughout my investigation, albeit an unwitting one. I have felt the need to carnally relieve myself many times in the hope it is simple lust which makes me focus on her to the exclusion of all most all other things, but my desires always return. The breeding instinct is strong in me, twisted by this human female.
Her name is Kitty, an irony she does not appreciate and may not ever understand. If I do my job properly, she will never know what happened. In a matter of hours, I will have my prey and I will never see her again. That may be why I cannot keep myself from staring, why I try to drink her in with my gaze. I have never spoken to her, much less touched her. I am not here to sate my appetites. I am here to work. I am here…
“THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS!”
She does not sing in what humans would call tune, but she sings with such gusto and life that I cannot help but be drawn to her. I have noticed she sings that song to herself when she has had a bad day at work. I wonder what happened today. I wonder if she’s dreading Monday. She has a cup with a ginger cat on it who professes to hate Mondays. It is her favorite mug.
I know that because I am a bounty hunter. A private investigator, of sorts. It is my job to notice things like that. It is not a fixation, or an obsession, and it is certainly not unrequited love which tears at my heart day and night, leaving little room in my thoughts for anything besides her.
Still, every time I am in her vicinity, I find my gaze drifting to her. Even now, I am watching her. I should be paying attention to my target, the wily beast who has evaded me for years, and who I am now within a hair’s breadth of catching. He is sitting at the entrance to her property, guarding it for her. He is possessive, as I am, but he is also small and weak, and I will not allow him to outsmart me again. I have his scent — but I also have hers, and hers draws me more primally than his. A bounty is undertaken for money, but this kind of connection, this only comes…
“Fuck!” I use the Earth curse. My fugitive has spotted me.
His eyes widen and I know he knows that I know what he knows. His secret is out. This is over. He runs. I lurch out of my hiding place, determined to claim my bounty once and for all.
Kitty
My story begins, as all good stories do, with an attempted murder.
I’m telling you that now so you won’t be too shocked when all the attempted murdering starts in a few dozen words. Just in case you were eating something nice. Or maybe drinking something nice. Basically, if you’re doing anything nice at all, stop now.
Who am I to tell you to stop doing nice things? I’m the voice that has been injected into your head. Anyway. Let me tell you where I am, and to a lesser extent, who I am.
My name is Kitty. You don’t hear that name much anymore. It went out in the 1960’s, along with affordable housing and fear of nuclear war. Nowadays we have different concerns. I don’t need to tell you what they are, because you already know, and you’re sick of them.
It’s a Sunday afternoon and I’m in the garden of my rented house, digging a hole. You don’t need to know what the hole is for. Suffice to say, it needs to be deep. I’m past the crumbly dark brown topsoil and into the annoying yellow-orange clay layer which sticks to the head of the spade and makes it impossible to use. The clay reminds me of the clay in those videos on the Internet where a talented person can build a whole house out of clay and mud, but I’d put money on my attempt being a mound of wet slurry.
REeeeooW! A sound of pure feline fury and outrage interrupts my musings on mud bricks, as I hear the angry hissing of my cat. A moment later there is a silver tabby flash as Mr Tiddles streaks past at full speed.
I’ve never seen him move that fast in his life. Mr Tiddles is the lazy kind of cat. The kind of cat you see on the couch on Tuesday and is still there Thursday. I’ve held a mirror up to his nose before to make sure he’s still breathing. The vet puts his age at around eight years old. I’ve only had him for three of those years, ever since he showed up on my doorstep one night, a completely soaked and ragged looking stray. I’d just broken up with my last boyfriend, and there Mr Tiddles was, just as pathetic on the outside as I felt on the inside.
It is impossible to say how much I love that cat, or what I’d do to protect him.
But it’s not impossible to show.
Hot on Mr Tiddles’ furry heels is my neighbor. He’s wearing a three-piece suit and a face mask. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him without the face mask, but that’s not rare these days. I see the lower halves of people’s faces so infrequently that noses and mouths are starting to seem indecent on some level. His name is Tom, or, no… Tim.
As far as I know, Tim works in finance in the city, and likes to spend long evenings in silent darkness. He’s quiet, which makes him a good neighbor. What doesn’t make him a good neighbor is the fact he’s chasing my cat. He has a net, in which he is trying to ensnare Mr Tiddles. Fortunately, Mr Tiddles is far too agile to be caught by Tim from finance.
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“What the fuck are you doing?” I curse the question.
Tim doesn’t answer me. He doesn’t even seem to hear me. He and Mr Tiddles are ping-ponging around the garden at high speed, and with every second which passes, the angrier I get.
“Leave my cat alone!”
Tim doesn’t acknowledge me. I have misjudged this person. I thought he was an unassuming sort of guy, cute if you like men who wear clean cut suits and can calculate the ROI on a FUK. I swore off men three years ago, so he hasn’t interested me until now, and now he’s interesting me for all the wrong reasons.
The net almost catches Mr Tiddles, and I am done screaming questions. As Tim dashes past in hot pursuit of my cat, I lift my spade and slam it right into his head.
Nobody touches Mr Tiddles. Nobody.
As the metal makes a sickening thump against his skull, there is a moment in which I realize I’ve probably just killed someone. In a split-second, I’m wondering where I’ll put the body. Under the roses? No. I don’t want to have to dig them all up and put them all back in again, and what if I have to move? I can’t leave Tim from finance in the garden. I’ll have to roll him in a sheet and put him in the car, then take him out to the forest and put him in a shallow grave. I’ve already got the spade, so I’m halfway there.
“Ow.”
A sound at my feet indicates that I may not have to worry about dealing with a body after all. The spade hasn’t killed Tim, but it has stopped him in his tracks. He’s lying on the ground in front of me, flat on his back, his hand to his head.
I have never bothered to really look at Tim before. I had other things to look at. But now I find myself staring at him in a mixture of outrage and belated curiosity. Belated, because I should have paid more attention to the man who had access to my cat.
He has big dark eyes. Bigger and darker than most. Underneath the mask, or rather, poking out from underneath it, he has a thick beard, which is so raven black I think he’s dyeing it, just like his hair which is shaggier and wilder than it should be for a man who works in finance. I don’t know where they sell suits for seven-foot-tall crazy Vikings with a penchant for waistcoats, but wherever it is, he shops there. He’s buttoned up, even though he has to be hot after chasing Mr Tiddles around. His shirt is done all the way up to his neck, and his sleeves are long, as are his pants. He looks like he just came from the board room, grabbed a net, and started fucking with my pet.
There’s something wrong with this guy. Big time.
“Leave my cat alone, psycho,” I warn him, standing over him and brandishing my spade.
“You hit me,” he says, sitting up slowly. He really doesn’t want me to hit him again, but I will if I have to.
“You’re not allowed to hit people,” he says.
"You are in self-defense. You were chasing Mr Tiddles.”
“You're not the cat. How could hitting me be self-defense?”
He has a point, but I have no interest in admitting I might be wrong. It’s time for another question.
“Why the fuck are you in my garden harassing my cat?”
He draws in a deep breath and opens his mouth to say something, but then seems to think better of it.
“Tell me what the fuck is going on, or I’ll spade you again.” Spade is a verb now. I spade, he spades, she spades… it just works. And I am going to spade the shit out of this asshole if he even dares to look at Mr Tiddles, who is now sitting on the garden table, cleaning his paw as if nothing was going on.
“I can tell you what is going on, but I don’t think you’ll believe me.”
“Try me. I’m open-minded. I’ve tried peyote.”
“Peyote is not going to scratch the surface of what I am going to tell you, Kitty.”
“You know my name.”
“Of course I do. We have lived in adjacent apartments for three months while I conducted my investigations.”
“You’ve been investigating me, creep?”
“I have been investigating the being you call Mr Tiddles.”
“The being? He’s a cat, weirdo.”
“That’s not a cat.”
“Yes, it is. I’ve taken him to the vet. They would have told me if he wasn’t a cat.”
“It’s a cat to your human perception, but…”
“Jesus, you’re weird as hell.”
I think I know what’s happening. He’s having a mental break of some kind. Maybe he’s on that methamphetamine I’ve heard so much about, but haven’t gotten around to trying. It seems super moreish. It’s also pretty dangerous. I need to get myself and Mr Tiddles away from this maniac before he does something really fucked up.
“Stay away from us, or I’ll call the police.”
“I am the police.”
Oh god, this is bad. Dude is having a full-on breakdown.
“You’re not the police. Mr Tiddles is a cat, and you need to get out of my backyard, or…” I brandish my garden implement again.
“Stop,” he says. “Stop. I can’t take another spading.”
He starts messing with his clothes, and that’s when I notice that his suit has ripped in several places, almost as though he burst through it in such a way as the seams could not take it. That’s weird enough. Even the cheapest suits don’t usually just disintegrate around the wearer. But it’s not the suit which wins the weird title for today. It’s what I can see through the ripped pieces of suit and shirt. Tufts of fur where there should be skin. Some of them are white and some of them are an iridescent black-blue.
For a second, I think he could be wearing some weird fur suit beneath his other suit, but that makes no sense at all. Where his shirt has burst open, I can see that the fur isn’t some fake attachment. It is growing out of his skin in a thick pelt which ripples with his abdominal plane. I step back, shocked, horrified, and more than a little intrigued by what I am seeing. It’s not, not hot. But it’s also very strange.
“What the fuck are you?”
“My name is Skoll,” he sighs, apparently giving up, but not making any more sense. “I am a bounty hunter from the Felidae system, specifically, the planet Purr. Your cat, Mr Tiddles, is a desperate criminal fugitive. I’m sorry, but I’ll have to sedate you for the journey.”
“What…”
2 Cat Carrier
Kitty
I wake up inside a very large cat carrier. This does not please me. I know that it is a cat carrier because of the smooth plastic walls and the grille at the front, a swinging door which contains a plastic container big enough for me to bathe in. There’s water in it. I suppose that’s my drinking supply. This has to be a joke. A big, shitty, cosmic joke.
“Oh jeez…”
“Welcome back, Kitty.”
My name is growled in a way which makes my entire body break out in tingles. I don’t recognize the voice at first. I don’t recognize the speaker either. There's a flash of muscle and fur through the distant bars which comes into sharper view when I creep closer.
It’s him.
“… Tim?”
“Skoll,” he reminds slash corrects me.
“Skoll. Where the fuck am I, Skoll?”
“You are on our planet, Purr.”
“Purr? Really. Cat aliens called their planet Purr?” At first I thought he was on drugs, now I think I must be the one on drugs. This is one outlandish experience I could do without.
“It has a more complex name, but for your senses and sensibilities, Purr will do.”
Tim, or Skoll, as he prefers to be called, has shed almost all semblance of humanity, including the face mask which hid his distinctly feline jaw structure. The beast has fangs. And muscles. And the kind of piercing gaze which makes me feel guilty even though I know I’m not guilty of anything at all.
His shaggy mane of hair has been set free from human expectation and has expanded around his head and down over his shoulders in an impressive fall. His brows are thick and dark over narrowed eyes which remain like ours. His are blue still. Perhaps I should find
that reassuring, but instead it looks uncanny set above a flat-ish, half-human, half-feline nose, broad and lightly touched with fur. Then there is his mouth. The structure of his jaw is broad, square, and fanged. Again, I see human and animal in his make up, a mixture of the two which is greater than either.
He has markings over his body, dark fur and white fur running dappled over his muscular form. Some of it is thick like an animal’s pelt. In other places it’s more like the hair a very hairy human male might have, but sleeker and better groomed, with a soft shimmer to it.
I spend a very long time just staring at him, taking him in, trying to understand what the hell has happened. I remember everything, but it still doesn’t make sense. One moment I was wrestling with him over a spade, and the next…
“Where am I? What’s the deal with the carrier? Some kind of poetic justice?”
“You’re in prison,” he says simply, his lips curling up in what I might call a mischievous smile on a less dangerous-looking creature. “I designed the enclosure to be familiar to you.”
“You mean you designed the enclosure to fuck with me.”
Skoll the cat alien man is kind of a dick. Just how much of a dick is yet to be seen, as he is wearing pants, which look rather strange over fur. They are black and stretchy, reinforced at the knees. They look like motorcycle pants.
I have seen creatures like Skoll before, in books about the Ancient Egyptians, who were very into all this stuff with half-men half-animal creatures. Therianthropes, they called them. I’m familiar because I did two semesters of classics in college before graduating in biology, a degree I used to become an independent landscaper. Hence the spade, and knowing how to use it.