Felidae

by Ciarra Sims

  After Felicia’s debacle the rules had been tightened to the extreme. Tabitha’s freedom had been curtailed to the point she could never go out alone or unescorted by a chaperone. In by dark and no transforming outside the house. And so Tabitha had reached adulthood on the naïve side where sex was concerned. She was brought up understanding birth control was a necessity and estrus should be cautiously allowed for health reasons but only under controlled conditions, i.e., when safe and isolation possible. If it hadn’t been for her rascal of a brother Tom, Tabitha might have remained naïve.

  Tom was a bad boy and considered Trouble Deluxe, though his sleek good looks and carefree attitude let him get away with almost anything. In this case Tabitha had found her brother’s stash of adult magazines tucked between his mattresses, when she had been wandering through his room. Well, Tabitha had actually been snooping. Her brother was a mystery to her. She adored him and his carefree spirit, coming and going through the window in the dead of night, ignoring the house rules.

  The magazines were only the tip of the iceberg. In his closet, tucked under a stack of old comic books were videos. At first Tabitha hadn’t been sure why Tom had a copy of Alice in Wanderlust and Debbie Does Dallas, Part 1 and 2. Who was this Debbie and what was she doing in Dallas?

  The answer was soon apparent as Tabitha snuck the tapes into the living room, late at night and stuck one in the VCR. By the time Debbie finished with Dallas, Tabitha was equally informed. Everything would have been fine if her mother hadn’t woken up and her alert ears picked up the sound of moaning and groaning coming from the living room.

  Was one of her kittens hurt? She tried to watch them like a hawk, but they prowled so, it was difficult to watch them 24/7. She only hoped one hadn’t darted in front of a car. She scrambled out of bed and padded downstairs.

  There in the living room, Tabitha sat in front of the large screen TV, her eyes huge, watching porn. Mrs. Fenwick let out a yowl that would have awakened the entire household, had anyone been home. Not only was it discovered her daughter was watching X-rated movies, but all of her other children were absent, having snuck out. Thank God Seline was at her grandmother’s. Felicia and Tommy were the errant ones.

  Mrs. Fenwick shook her head in disappointment at her middle daughter. Certainly Tabitha had lacked the skills necessary to be helpful to her grandmother, but this-this went beyond clumsiness and inattentive behavior.

  The movies were confiscated and Tabitha placed on restriction and Tom…well, Mrs. Fenwick could not help the soft spot in her heart for her only son. He was a charming rogue and she couldn’t stay mad at him for long.

  But even a spanking could not dispel the images Tabitha had seen on the screen, close-up, in vivid color. Wow. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but what a way to go! Tabitha vowed, someday she would find someone special to try out those engrossing positions and wildly uninhibited actions on. It couldn’t be just any ol’ randy human with alley cat tendencies. It had to be someone special, someone irresistible and alluring. Now Tabitha had found that person and she knew it was Brenton Calder.

  The more she thought about it, the more determined she became. And Tabitha knew just the person who could help her achieve her single-minded goal.

  * * * * *

  After her doctor’s appointment Tabitha drove her midnight blue Mazda Miata over to the older part of the city where elegant and stately large homes in Victorian architecture perched on the hillside overlooking the valley. As she wound her way up the narrow drive towards a hulking residence, the bushes and dense old growth of hedges and magnolia trees rustled with sparrows and robins. Tabitha’s acute hearing could pick out every nuance of twittering and wings fluttering. She tried to keep her attention span on the road but it was so hard not to dart her head this way and that, eagerly watching the nervous birds. Maybe she’d have time to do a little hunting after she had fulfilled her mission and spent some time with her grandmother.

  Tabitha’s grandmother from her mother’s side of the family was descended from a long line of witches’ familiars. Grandmother’s knowledge of herbs and remedies and such was uncanny. Tabitha always felt guilty when she visited the old residence on the hill and she tried to be especially attentive to her grandmother whenever she talked about her craft.

  The fact was Tabitha had been slated to be apprenticed to her grandmother and learn all the secrets and lore that would be passed on for more generations than could be counted. But that was the problem, Tabitha was number deficient. She measured potions in error. A dash of this, a pinch of that. Or was it a half cup or quarter teaspoon? She must also learn Spellspeak, a mixture of Latin, Gaelic and Bodiccean. But Tabitha’s attention span was nil and after several near tragic consequences and mis-spells that resulted in one unscheduled eclipse and a thirty second time lapse in the western time zone, she was expelled and her sister Seline was apprenticed in her place.

  Dear, sweet Seline, who was thought too gentle to be a proper familiar, was the last hope for a direct female descendant. Though she had a green eye and a blue eye, which was not considered a desirable trait in a familiar, she was sleek and black, and attentive which overrode her shortcomings. The deciding factor was Seline’s penchant for numbers, and her spells were mixed with exactness and precision care. This was something Tabitha would never achieve despite years of tutoring.

  Seline greeted Tabitha from the sunny padded seat in the large bay window at the front of the house where she was drowsing in the sun. Her dual-colored eyes glittered in recognition and she stretched her furry form languidly before leaping down behind the heavy velvet curtains and appearing in human form at the door, a terrycloth robe hastily wrapped about her dark form.

  Tabitha was just climbing the steps to the wide porch as Seline beckoned her in. “Come in! Tabitha, you look terrific. Like the cat that swallowed the canary! You didn’t, did you?” Seline’s long dark hair swirled around her, as she looked worried. Seline was too gentle to hunt birds or mice and she hated the thought of her siblings being less considerate.

  Tabitha laughed. “No, I like my meat cooked or at least steamed, except fish. Thank heavens for sushi!” So much for her having a chance to hunt, Tabitha sighed. Seline would have a fit if Tabitha caught so much as a mouthful of feathers. Sisters were such pains! She wondered if her grandmother still kept a well-stocked koi pond. “Is Grandmother around?”

  “Of course but she’s sleeping. She had a late night last night, it being a full moon and all.”

  “I’d forgotten her responsibilities. Did you go with her?”

  “No. Gram says I’m not ready to be indoctrinated into the coven yet. But soon!”

  “Well, I’ll just visit with you until she wakes up then. I hope she has the potion I need.”

  “Ooh, I have been well-schooled in mixing potions.” Seline tried not to brag. “Remember when Gram had you mix gotu-kola with catnip and you got high on the catnip and started chasing your tail until you got too dizzy? I’ll never forget finding you lying in the kitchen floor, muttering about ‘gotta koala, gotta koala’.” Seline giggled.

  “Don’t rub it in, sis. I’m the first to admit I’m not cut out for the higher learning of Spellspeak. But this potion is in Grandmother’s locked cabinet.”

  Seline’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, it’s one of the forbidden ones.”

  “Yeah well, something has come up that I need to know.”

  “Need to know? Or are curious?” Seline laughed.

  “Same thing when you’re a cat,” Tabitha shot back.

  “But Tabitha those potions are dangerous and unpredictable,” Seline cautioned. “That’s why only Gram administers them.”

  “I know. That’s one of the few things that stuck in my mind through my apprenticeship debacle. But Grandmother said if ever comes a time when the problem outweighs the side effects to come to her. So here I am.”

  “Sounds very serious.”

  “If I’m going to survive in this human world, I have to understand certain
things.”

  Seline gasped, “You’re talking about S-E-X!” She spelled out the letters in a whisper.

  Poor Seline, she was even more in the dark about mating habits than Tabitha. But for Seline it would have to stay that way until she reached thirty or her power would be drastically diminished. Tabitha was forbidden to even broach the subject with her sister. “You know I can’t say any more, Seline. I’ll wait for Grandmother.”

  “Okay. You want to chase each other around the house?”

  The sisters never outgrew a game of tag. Once inside and the door firmly shut, the two transformed and took off at a dead run through the halls and under chairs, jumping onto the piano and racing across the ivory keys, causing them to crash notes in discord. Tabitha jumped onto the coffee table in the living room and, too late caught sight of the vase of roses in the middle. The table had been recently polished and her paws slid without traction. She sideswiped the vase, causing it to tip over. Roses, water and Tabitha ended up on the hardwood floor. Tabitha transformed and lay naked in a puddle of water cursing under her breath.

  Seline peeped around the corner of the hall, cautiously, before transforming and rising to two legs, finding her robe and making herself decent.

  “That vase was not there the last time I was here!” Tabitha accused.

  “Sorry.” Seline hid a giggle. “You look like a drowned cat!”

  “It’s not funny, Miss Goody Two Paws!” Tabitha splashed the water in Seline’s direction.

  Seline jumped back. “Stop it or I’ll tell!” Her voice rose two octaves as her fear of water took over.

  “’Fraidy cat!” Tabitha taunted loudly.

  A voice from the stairway carried down. “What is all that racket down there? Seline, is someone here?”

  Instantly Seline straightened up and called back in a grown-up lilt. “It’s Tabitha, Gram. She needs to see you.”

  The voice came again, this time in a growlish tone. “For heaven’s sake, why didn’t you wake me? You’d think I was ancient the way you coddle me, Seline. I am fourteen in cat years, only seventy in human. I fancy I have a few lives.” The sound of slow shuffling footsteps on the stairs changed to the pitter-patter of soft paws. A pudgy, blue-gray, medium-haired feline appeared at the foot of the impressive carved staircase. Back on even ground, the gray changed into an older woman. Both girls politely glanced away from the naked form until the gray wrapped herself in a bright flowery housecoat kept handily on a coat rack next to the newel post.

  The older woman breathed a sigh, “It’s so much easier to negotiate the stairs on four legs instead of two. Redistribution of body weight is the only way to go on inclines and declines.” She paused at the sight of her naked granddaughter lying on the floor. “Now what have you gone and done? My vase! My flowers!”

  “Sorry, Grandmother. We were playing and—”

  “Playing? At your age? And where are your clothes? You are too old to be cavorting about like kittens,” she admonished as Seline found the pile of Tabitha’s jeans and lacy top and held them out to her sister.

  Seline was engrossed in Tabitha’s thong underwear. “What are these?” The stretchy piece of fabric dangled from her fingers.

  “They’re my delicates!” Tabitha tried to be diplomatic. She knew how hard it was on Seline to stay celibate and the poor girl had six more years to go.

  “They sure don’t look like my underwear!” Seline quipped.

  “Nor mine.” Grandmother looked disapproving.

  Tabitha grabbed the tiny bit of material and turned around to don them. She hastily shimmied into her jeans. “I saw them in a catalog. The humans wear them, it seems they like the way they fit.”

  “Well, it looks darned uncomfortable to have a string between your nether regions if you ask me. You shouldn’t take up all those human customs,” her grandmother warned.

  Tabitha fought with her bra to get the straps straight. How was she going to broach the subject with her grandmother about her reason for coming? But Seline knew she was forbidden certain topics and made a simple excuse. “I’ll clean this up and get more water in the vase.”

  She was gone as Tabitha finished dressing and was tying her shoelaces. “Grandmother, I have been observing the humans and their mating habits. I have questions that cannot be answered and must be felt. I am cautious and take precautions and I want to be equally careful with whom I mate. But the one I have chosen does not choose me.”

  Her grandmother looked at her from shrewd green eyes. “You cannot force someone to touch you. It is forbidden.”

  “I know the rules. He must willingly come to me. But do the rules not state if he has willingly given himself once, then does not desire me any longer, I may seek aid?”

  “You have been intimate with this human?”

  Technically it was true. Well, sort of in Tabitha’s mind, so she nodded. “Yes.”

  “And now he does not want to honor the bargain, accept his responsibility?”

  Tabitha fought against showing her unease at twisting the rules of the revered Spellspeak. “He kissed me and we experienced sexual release together but now does not desire me.”

  Her grandmother shook her head. “You have chosen wrong, but you made the choice. He must honor your choice. It is written that once a Felidaen with his or her body has honored any human, if the Felidaen so desires, the union can be enforced. Do you swear on ancient honor that he wished it as much as you?”

  “Oh, yes. He wished it very much at the time. I still wish it; he does not. I have tried to overcome the thoughts and feelings that have come over me at odd times but I cannot.”

  “It is often such when you have bonded. Our kind is aloof and distant but once we attach ourselves to a human, it is strong and lasting. Even if the human does not feel the same way. But that can be remedied. So be it. Come with me.”

  The older woman led the way to the kitchen. They passed Seline on her way back with the vase of water and roses, freshly arranged and pretty to behold. She smiled uncertainly and again Tabitha felt for her sister. It should have been her who lived cloistered and untouched, learning the ways of old. But Tabitha was not made for the maturity and ancient revered knowledge of Spellspeak. Wasn’t she about to prove that now? Technically Brenton was not hers and had not lain with her, though they had both reached climax in each other’s company. But who wanted to quibble about technicalities when the solution was so easily at hand?

  The large kitchen of the old house was modern in conveniences such as a refrigerator and gas stove, but it also had a large pantry with a sliding panel leading to a staircase down to the partitioned cellar. Here Grandmother approached a large cabinet that was locked by no metal key. The cabinet was dark wood, old and worn, but free of wormholes and solid as it had stood for centuries, transported from another country, handed down from chosen ancestor to chosen ancestor. One day the cabinet would belong to Seline but for now it was strictly Grandmother’s. The scrollwork hand-carved in the wood showed different animals changing forms. A dove became a hawk, a dog a wolf, a snake an alligator; like some fanciful evolution, and well it might have been except for the cat deeply etched in the wood changing into a person.

  Near the center of the cabinet stood two indentations, shaped like palms. No one would ever understand how the cabinet could distinguish one print from another but a hundred different hands could press against these prints and the cabinet would stay sealed. But when Grandmother pressed her hands into these molds just as her predecessor had, the cabinet released its hidden catch and clicked open. When Grandmother passed on, the cabinet would then only recognize Seline as its mistress and would hide its secrets from all others. So it would be for many generations to come, unless Seline passed on without a direct female descendant.

  Tabitha waited patiently as the cabinet slowly swung open without a creak of ancient wood. Curiously, Tabitha tried to see around Grandmother and inside the gaping door, but except for a few empty clear vessels, the other flagons and phials
were murkily opaque or colored and did not seem to have any labels disclosing the contents. Grandmother, despite her years, seemed to know what was what as she hummed and passed her hand around, caressing some oddly shaped embossed flasks and murmuring to others, like precious offspring to be coddled with assuring words. “Ah, here we are.” The older woman sighed contentedly.

  A small bottle with pewter mounts was produced that held what looked like innocuously clear liquid inside. Tabitha held out her hand reverently, but Grandmother only chuckled. “No, my dear. Oh, no! Even this minute quantity would be the death of you. Death by…” Grandmother seemed to recall she was talking to her granddaughter and blushed slightly. “Well, just you never mind. It would be pleasant the first fifty times in succession, but copulating a thousand times, nonstop, despite pain and agony… No, you see why some things should never fall into untrained hands. Imagine if someone were to put this into the city’s water supply! Gads, people like dogs, rutting in the streets. Night and day, nonstop. It doesn’t bear thinking on.” But her grandmother must have been contemplating the sight as she paused eloquently. “Where is that Phoenician vessel with the golden stopper? Ah, there my lovely. Come to Gram.”

  A tiny phial no bigger than Tabitha’s pinkie was produced and a dropper measured out ten drops. The golden stopper sealed the vessel. “Now it’s two drops for you and two for him. No more for the first dose, or I cannot be held accountable for the side effects on either of you! You both must take it or it has no effect. The pheromone-like reaction calls one mate to another exclusively, but beware…it is not always conducive to time and place. What I mean is as long as you are in the same room together…”