Alley Cat Romeo? [Open]

[Gilbert Beilschmidt]

Click. Click. Click. Shuffle.

Two red eyes peered carefully down the long building as he balanced awkwardly on the edge. Gilbert's favorite pastime in the morning, if time was given, was climb up a tall building and just stare at the no ears pass under him. It felt safer, even though he could fall and kill himself by accident if he wasn't careful. The albino cat-man, didn't mind the cool crisp air that pierced through his extremely thin clothes, or that he never received a wave back from below.

It might have been cat instincts that like high places, but that didn't bother him. It amused him how tiny the no-ears looked, he liked how he could follow them from rooftop to rooftop, unaware like mice that they were being stalked. It amused him horribly, that the no-ears didn't care for him, if anything they yelled and shouted at him all the time, and he didn't get along with his own kind very much.

He stayed mostly in the alleys, and by the 'hearts' as they were called. Those were no-ears that didn't mind them, and would feed and actually take care of them. There was a small family, and the little girl no-ear, took great care of him. She was...related somehow to his previous, and dead, owner. Her parents let her, and he was trusted with taking care of her, but he was never happy in the house.

So he was allowed to roam free, and he even disappeared for months, but the family was going through a rough spot. He only appeared for short bursts of time to visit the daughter, but he no longer asked for anything. The older no-ear noticed, and she would smile at him more and give him things, but the man....he was still very indifferent to him.

He knew his kind were easily picked on, and it seems that the daughter told the daughter of his boss-no-ear, if he remembered correctly, and the boss-no-ear was wondering if anyone like him was around, and apparently the work was harsh....though he didn't understand why the humans went to do that, but that was humans. Soon enough, the sun was coming up a little higher, and he stopped his running mind long enough to scramble down the building to the another one, then another one, before he was finally on the ground and in the alleys. His tail swished behind him, as he looked at a few people passed before he went deeper into the alley.

But today felt weird...maybe he should be on guard more than normal...

[Veata Chea - Cambodia]

A low grunt filled the tiny alley as a creature no larger than a small cat lumbered down the narrow area. With the occasional pause her blocky head whacked curiously again metal trashcans, brown eyes large and expectant as they toppled over and spilled their contents. Her small stump of a tail actually gave a few wags and then comically large paws compared to her tiny body began to roll the round bins out of her way. The process repeated itself until no trashcan had been left unturned, leaving the playful creature to fall onto her furry rump just in time to hear foul curses as humans literally stumbled onto her little mess. Sparing only a moment to pull her lips back in an uncharacteristically human smile, she shook her short fur free of any debris and left the couple of their bickering.

So, perhaps this hadn’t been the best area for the need to be a Sun Bear to come on but some things simply couldn’t be helped. It wasn’t like Veata had wanted to alarm civilians into such a state of panic that they would attempt to catch her. Why, she was just a tiny cub in this form; there was no way she could cause any real damage. They hadn’t been able to see beyond her ink-black claws and white rows of sharp teeth in the end though and had set off in pursuit of her. Why people made such a big deal of spotting a Sun Bear on the streets in this part of the world she would never understand.

If the female could have tsked she would have but as it was she was still getting the hang of her vocal cords. Time was always essential in the matters of readjustment. Veata had to fight not only to move without toppling over but to tamp down Sun Bear instincts as well. For hours it would feel like an enduring case of schizo: constant fighting over the simplest choices between human and animal instinct, fruitless attempts to reason with the bear half of her head that it was not a good idea to eat from trashcans, and how would she ever forget the urge to roll around in every puddle of water she came across?

Inwardly the Khmer gave a sigh of relief when she felt the bear’s curiosity spike over something in the alley ahead. It was dark, didn’t hide any humans as far as she could tell, and, quite frankly, was probably the safest area to be at the moment. Goodness knows His Highness would skin her if she was caught by something like animal control. And with that she dragged herself up and practically waddles awkwardly to the cool darkness, allowing her nostrils to flare and take in the rancid scent. Whatever it was that had caught Veata’s attention stood out like a red flag and the Sun Bear in her refused to let go of it.

Too tired to fight she allowed her paws to shuffle forward toward whatever had caught the cub’s fancy. It wasn’t till a cumbersome paw slapped down onto the ground did Cambodia realize that she had just attempted to essentially stomp on some poor cat’s tail. Oops. Veata had nearly forgotten how it took so little, like a cat’s moving tail for example, to set off her wild mind. After living out all these years in her life she always failed to recall how all that uncontrollable need to explore every little damn thing in the world that had possessed her as a child came flooding back in this cub form.

Before Veata could reel in her beast counterpart in favor of her still-human mind her nose had jammed into the side of her new “plaything” as her oh so lovely Sun Bear mind dubbed the male feline. From her throat came another grunt but this one of excited contentment as she tried to shove him down; no doubt to poke him all over and discover if he was worth eating or playing with. Really, being a cub was no different from being the equivalent of a human four-year-old: both needed watching over, both were impossibly playful, and in both cases Veata had trouble trying to control either of them. Too bad for the cat that no mother figure was here to rush in and tell her to leave the nice kitty alone.