"Couldn't have been kids," He extrapolated. "Maybe a fox, but then he would have eaten at least one of them. Guess a bear could have done it, too. Except I've never seen cats ganging up on anything, not like that." He paused to look up at the sky. "Maybe it was aliens, boy. I heard they've been going after cows and sheep and such. But no, these cats aren't mutilated or nuthin'. They just look like they were on the losin' side of a big battle."
It might have taken him twenty minutes to come back, armed with an old Mossberg 835 and a pocket full of three-inch shells. "Hope this'll do the trick." Cooper was glancing around nervously. "Most I've ever done with this thing is hunt ducks. Anything bigger than that might just get more pissed off than it was last night, so you be ready to bolt on out of here. Don't you try to be no hero, Rambo."
Cooper hoped he wasn't about to run into some Bigfoot or something. He checked the air, glad that the calm breeze wasn't blowing in the direction they were going.
Rambo sniffed around, and suddenly, sat down and stared straight ahead. Just like he'd been trained to a couple of years back.
"Whatever it is, it's up there, huh?" Cooper whispered. He checked the breeze again, confirmed that it hadn't changed, and crept along a line of chaparral until he found a space he could crawl through on his belly. Getting down into the dirt was the tough part. "I'm getting too old for this stuff, boy."
Cooper shuffled his body forward, quietly and expertly, not making a sound that might warn whatever was on the other side. What he saw, at first he simply didn't believe.
He witnessed a small clearing, and some fifteen cats were sitting right there in the middle of it. They were all common house cats, with gray or white or black fur, or a combination thereof. Many of them exhibited the wounds and scars from recent fighting, and they were all facing in the same direction.
What was most bizarre was that all of these cats had their eyes closed and were purring rhythmically. They were bowing and lifting their butts in the air much as prostrated Muslims would when praying.
And the object of their worship was yet another feline. No ordinary cat, this oddly hued specimen had light orange fur, spotted with darker orange and black circles, and was endowed with a long ringed tail. Its head was majestically striped, and its bold green eyes took in the scene with a regal calm that was startling for a mere animal.
Cooper searched his mind for the name of such a magnificent creature, recalling the many wildlife shows he'd watched throughout his life. An ocelot, he recalled, finally.
An ocelot that was being worshipped as a god would, by followers that would wage war and murder their own kind. It was an abomination to everything Cooper had ever believed in. An abomination that he meant to put an end to.
The old man thought to blast that aberration to Kingdom Come. As he lifted his shotgun, ready to pump the shells, he became aware that the ocelot was already aware of him. The cat stood up from its rest, and incredibly, it began to walk toward him on its feline legs, walking just like a human would.
The damned thing grew as it approached him, becoming twice as large, and then twice as large as that. The old man felt his heart speed up, a very bad thing considering his shaky health, but what other choice did his heart have? The goddamned ocelot was as tall as he was now. Its face was almond shaped with large, studying eyes, and it had long whiskers, and pointed ears atop its head.
The old man made a mistake, when his gaze traveled away from the feline face, down its neck and to its chest. The fur there was much lighter, and he saw bulges in it, two of them, still growing with clearly seen, aroused nipples on the end.
"What the hell are you?" He asked, leveling the shotgun at the monster's belly.
Without a care in the world, the now human-shaped ocelot swung it arm out and pushed the weapon's barrel away. It could have taken that shotgun and shot him with it, he figured, as he was too transfixed by its metamorphosis to react.
It spoke to the old man, but of course he had no inkling of what cat language was. All hear heard was gentle rumbles and quick sniffs.
Where the hell was his dog?
The old man took a step back, afraid to turn his head in case the ocelot started up some other trick on him. He scanned left, then right, but Rambo was nowhere to be seen. One of the cats whimpered in an odd way. As the old man examined the cat's fur, he saw that it was the exact same shade as Rambo's. The odd cat was looking at him the same way his dog would.
Impossible, the old man thought, but hardly had he finished having this notion that his dog was gone and a cat had taken its place, when the big feline standing in front of him stretched her arms out and embraced him. It, she, was going to kill him, he feared at first. But she didn't kill him, or at least not yet, as she sniffed at his neck and cheek the way cats usually sniff their food.
Mrs. Grant's pests were always in his yard, sniffing around like that whenever he had Rambo inside the house. The cats made it a point to intrude into the open space behind his house, as if to deliberately taunt his dog. Well, over the last couple of years, the old man had figured out a way to piss them off so they wouldn't return. He'd set out something the cats would like, provoking them to come closer so they could have their little sniffs, but right in the middle of that he'd set some old cheese. The old man would have himself a good laugh, as he watched the cats come up and get a good whiff, and right away make like they were about to throw up.
"Boy, oh, boy, I wish I had some old cheese on me right now." He muttered, as the big feline still held him, sniffing his flesh, and even giving him short, little licks. Yup, she was going to eat him, he figured. She sure was big enough to.
But she didn't eat him, and she didn't kill him. She pulled the shotgun away and let it fall to the ground, absently as if her attention was fully focused on him. The little licks kept getting closer to his mouth, repelling his mind, but he knew how cats behaved. If he tried to run, she'd probably chase him and shove him to the ground. She'd probably play with him until he croaked, or until she got tired of pawing him with her claws, like cats did to mice or squirrels they caught.
The ocelot scented him, but he was also scenting her. She had a smell, a rich and powerful smell that reminded him of musky, sweaty sex. The old man was still trying to understand what that smell meant for him, when the feline's bumpy tongue slipped over his lips, and into his mouth. She didn't kiss him; she probably didn't know how. What she did was poke that little tongue into his mouth, dragging it over his saliva as if it had a taste to it. Those whiskers, that fur on her face, those took some getting used to, but the soft feel of her body, her sensual scent, and even her soft purrs made it tolerable.
"Cat's aren't supposed to be the size of people." The old man murmured, when the feline pulled away to study his face. "I'm not talking about the big hunters, either. I'm talking about cats the size of ocelots."
She spoke again, but the old man was as close to deciphering her meaning as he'd been the first time. He felt her hands caressing his back, over his shirt. The shirt was tucked in, but she must have had something like fingers, as she pulled it out of his pants. Her hands weren't exactly human hands, but they weren't paws, either. They were a sort of cross between the two. The old man knew this because those parts of her went under his shirt, touching his bare skin.
"This ain't normal." He said, with a dry mouth.
The big cat began tugging at his shirt. When it didn't come off right away, she used more force.
"You want it off, that it?" The old man asked. "Well, I don't want you to tear it! I only have a handful of good shirts left!" He broke her hold, wondering if he should make a run for it. But no, he was too old and there were all those dead cats lying around to think about. Maybe those cats were dead because they had disobeyed her.
He pulled his shirt off, revealing his old, leathery skin and his short tufts of gray hair on his chest. "Just so you know, you haven't caught me at my Sunday best."
The ocelot-woman didn't seem to care. She sniffed at his bare shoulder, and at the top part of his chest, before she started licking him again. What was it with these cat-women, anyway? Did they have a thing for an old man's saliva and sweat? It had to be something like that, since cats were always licking their own fur all the time.
If this was an old woman, he probably would have run off and left her standing there. That's how embarrassed the old man was about his aging frame. He'd been healthy once, and strong, but that was a long time ago. The reason he stayed, he figured, was because it wasn't an old woman but an aberration. The feline's non-humanness made their interaction acceptable.
When she licked lower on his chest, around his nipples, he took a chance and touched her furry breasts. They were warm and aroused, he felt, or sense, or scented, or something to that effect. The feline grew more animated and amorous as he touched her body, she purred louder, and mewled while staring into his eyes.
The old man smirked and let out a few chuckles. He'd heard all about what aliens did with people. There was that case in Brazil, where aliens invaded some random guy's house. They drank his beer and watched a soccer match with him. There was another time, but he didn't remember where it happened, where two tall Nordic beauties had seduced another man for an entire night.
He was feeling up a nice set of tits, furry but still nice. When the almond face came in closer, he accepted the short tongue, and kissed her in return. The feline's movements accelerated in accord with her rising excitement. She rubbed her chest against his. She raised her leg against his outer thigh. She brought their hips together, letting him know exactly where she wanted to go next.
"Sorry, but the plumbing doesn't work anymore." The old man said, sheepishly. "It was all the smoking that did me in."
She turned around, rubbing her furry ass against the front of his pants. The old man felt like he was sitting in a strip club with a fistful of twenties. The ringed tail was up and out of the way, brushing against his bare stomach. It wiggled right along with the rest of her.
Maybe she was magical, because he hadn't had a pecker in decades and here she was making him stand up at attention. The old man felt it pushing against his pants, and she knew it was there, as she rubbed her butt right in front of it.
"All right, if I have wood, I might as well use it." The old man resolved, undoing the front of his pants. He was cognizant that the familiar cat, which had once been his familiar dog, was still sitting there watching them. "Rambo, you turn away now. I don't want you seeing any of this. It might traumatize you or something."
Obediently, the familiar cat sidled away to face in another direction.
The old man pulled his pants halfway down his thighs, and sure enough, he had freed Willy, and Willy was revving to get started. He grabbed the feline's sides, pulling her as close as he could get her. She was still gyrating her ass on him. Furry ass or not, he was excited enough to reach between their bodies, holding his erection for the first time in a long time, and aiming it at the weirdest female he'd ever seen. He gasped at their intimate introduction; she mewled.
He would never tell anyone about this, not even his last two drinking buddies. Well, he might tell them if he got drunk enough to become boastful, because he had something to brag about for once in his life. He would say, oh, yeah, them aliens were down there in the creek that time, and I got a hold of one of their women, and I showed her a thing or two! Mars might need women, but these alien girls, they need men, and how!
He could fuck her. If he wanted to, he could simply shut his eyes and pretend he was doing the dirty with a hairy woman, real hairy. Sure, it would be hard to imagine away that long tail that kept sliding across his chest, like a prehensile monkey tail even, and he couldn't ignore the obvious feline purrs she made... Screw it, he thought. He would fuck her and do it knowingly, and he wouldn't pretend he was doing anything else with anybody else.
She was tall, her legs strong enough to take his motions without needing something to hold on to. Her stability made him want to go faster, and he did. He wanted to plunge into this cat-woman from the stars... Wait a minute. Maybe she wasn't from space, but from the Hollow Earth. Maybe she'd drunk radioactive waste and had mutated into the form she had now... Maybe...
"Enough!" The old man grunted. "Just give it to her, because you only get wood like this once in a blue moon! Give it to her so good she'll go back to wherever it is she came from and tell all the other cat-woman about me!"
And he did. He pushed into her fanatically, shaking her furry body from head to toe, while she did her best to stay in the same spot. He got her crying out like a cat in heat... Well, because she was a cat in heat! He squeezed those furry cat-tits and breathed onto the back of her cat-head, until his body tightened up for that memorable split second, and then it was all over for him. He gushed out a river and a half of fluid, huffing away until he went empty. He shook, and she shook, and when the tremors subsided, they were both panting and spent.
