The Cat

The Cat

Disclaimer: Marvel owns the X-world and all those who are members of that world. The Cat is mine. This is just for fun not for profit so no harm, no foul.

Chapter 1: Introduction

I am The Cat; not Catwoman, or Catgirl or even The Pussy Cat Doll. Just The Cat. I am not a Cathy or Katherine or any or those type of names that would use Cat as a nickname. What my human name is not revenant to this story; however if you must know, I just might just tell you later on. Or maybe I won't.

I am a shapeshifter. I can shift at will into any feline form and not lose my human mind, plus I can still speak. I am not a were-feline who can only shift at certain times of the year and only into one form (i.e. werewolves). Those poor shifters loose their humanity while in animal form and create all sort of havoc. Once they shift back to human form they have no memory of what they did while in animal form. I remember what I did or did not do. Nor am I a mutant who can shift from form to form.

I was not cursed to be a shifter, I was born to it. Both my parents were shifters, from a long line of shifters and from the time I was a child I have been able to change my form to any member of the cat family. By the time I was a teen, I discovered that I could partly shift so that I would look like Bast, a cat headed woman who also had a cat tail and claws on her fingers and toes. From what my parents told me I am a very rare type of shifter. There is only one every century or so that could do the partial shift.

When I shift I can be as small as the Asian fishing cat or as large as a Bengal Tiger or a Liger, half Tiger half Lion. As I am a woman, no matter what feline form I am in I will be a female. I found that prowling the streets of the city in my favorite shape, a Maine Coon Cat, I could see and listen in to all sorts of happenings. In my human form, my job is that of a free lance reporter. I have printed several stories where no one can figure out how I got my information. When asked for proof I can provide it, as I wear a collar/necklace that has a voice activated micro digital camcorder that can record for hours, hidden in it. In human or Bast form it looks like a necklace, in cat form large or small it looks like a collar. The Bast necklace has been past down from the Egyptian times to the ones that can shift to the Bast form. I added the camcorder to the necklace.

So far the only time I have ever been in trouble when I was on the prowl, was when I ran into a pack of feral dogs. I was on the trail of a famous singer who was slumming around the bad part of town. She had ditched her babysitters and the photo-geeks by climbing out a little window in the back of this sleazy club. No one thought she would do it. I sort of lucked out as I had gone around back to sneak into the club by the same window. I followed her to this crack house about 3 blocks from the club when all of a sudden these dogs started to chase me. They chased me into a blind alley and I was trapped, but I turned the tails on those dogs. I shifted to the Bengal and chased the dogs back out of the alley into the street, freaking out several hookers and their johns. By morning there were cops and animal control combing the area looking for the tiger. By noon, the tiger was forgotten as I had turned in my story to one of the TV stations about the celebrity in the crack house being arrested when one of the cops looking for the tiger stumbled over her in the crack house.

I have seen all sorts of things that have gone on in this city and every once in a while I will step in and help out some poor jane or joe who has gotten themselves in a tight fix. Now don't get me wrong even though I have the ability I am no super-hero. I have seen the real deal.

One night I saw two feral men fight it out on the top Lady Liberty herself. The smaller dark hair man had these foot long metal claws that came jutting out of his hands, three to each hand. Boy, those things were sharp; they cut through the metal skin like it was butter. When the larger blond man threw him off the top, I thought he was a goner. The winner went inside and a few minutes later I saw a red beam of light and the blond man went flying through the air and crashed on a boat down below. I then saw the dark haired man fly up to these glowing, spinning metal rings where Liberty's Torch should be and land. There was a red beam of light again and the old man dressed in a purplish costume with a helmet and cape was hit and knocked down. The dark haired man cut the rings and rescues this teen-age girl with a skunk stripe in her dark hair. She looked like she was dead until he laid his hands on her and he then collapsed when she woke up. Then three other people, two women and one man, all dressed like the dark haired man in black leather, came rushing out of Liberty's head got the man and the girl and loaded up this fancy jet and flew away. They got away before harbor cops arrived. I sneaked aboard one of the boats and headed back to the city.

When I got home and shifted back to human, I pulled the disc out of the camcorder and stuck it in my laptop to see what I got. I got nothing except for static. I found out later that something magnetic had messed up the recording.

Of all the rotten luck, here I had a great story but no proof.

Several days later when I got in touch with my sources at Police One, I found out that the old man was this super mutant villain known as Magneto and the blond man was Sabertooth. The others dressed in black leathers were the X-Men and the dark haired man was Wolverine. Well that explained the magnetic interference that messed up my disc.

I know I would like to run across him sometime and get to know him better even though he is not a shapeshifter and my parents may disapprove of a mutant. But I don't care what they think, it might be fun to know a non-shifter but who would understand the need for secrets. I'll have to keep on the lookout for this Wolverine and introduce myself. Maybe.