Yuki the Cat

This Feline Life

There were years and years that passed between that night with the snow witch and now. Regular people, uncursed and out in the real world, filled whole lifetimes—living and dying—while I rattled around inside my new body, trying to find out how to live as a cat.

I learned a lot in those days. I walked long roads and met my share of vagabonds. I stowed away on ships and saw more of this world than I ever would have as a mortal man.

I spent many years cursing that witch for the fate she'd dealt me, but those were gifts she'd left me with: lifetimes to explore the far-flung corners of the globe; a body that could run and jump and squeeze into secret places.

I may have not been happy, but I was at least contented for a time: once I'd gotten used to that new body and learned all that it could do.

However, these days I'm back to cursing her, that witch. Sometimes I wonder if she's not here with me, revelling in my suffering, disguised as my new mistress.

There's no other explanation, really, for how willfully she ignores the signs that I'm clearly far more than a cat.

I can open doors, for one.
You wouldn't think it possible without thumbs, but I've gotten pretty deft with these paws.

Another: I love ice cream. And bread. I routinely drag toast out of the toaster, and she finds me munching it on the counter.

I can eat cat things when I need to: fish carcases and this modern, dry, dusty cat food. However, I find it hardest to give up the things that I loved back in Nippon, in my former life. I find myself obsessed with soy sauce, and I lap it up like cream whenever she puts it out.

As odd as it may seem with a whole new set of muscles, I can still remember some of my tricks from my life Before. Some of them even work better in my new feline body, which seems far less of a slave to the forces of gravity. I do this incredible ninja thing where I bounce from wall to wall down the hall.

I could write my name in paw prints across the wall. I could spell out "I AM A MAN" for her, and yet it would always be the same:

"Great Yuki!"
"Clever Yuki!"
"Amazing Yuki!'

I'll turn my slitted eyes on her after my most amazing, most clearly human feats, and there will never be the vaguest ember of realization in her eyes.

It's times like these that I'm most sure she's the snow witch. Or, if she's not, that the witch is in there somewhere, hiding behind the girl's eyes to cackle at my torment—to pull puppet strings and extend my torture.

What other reason could there be for this girl never once suspecting that I was something more than an animal? How much more proof does she need that I'm a man trapped in the body of a cat?

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Just to confirm, this is all only HALF my imagination, and the other half is a straight catalogue of the actual activities of Diana's cat, Yuki. She, pretty much, writes herself, and maybe there's something to this whole cat-actually-being-a-human-cursed thing.

This is a little late in the day for your typical Wattpad Wednesday, but I made it in under the line :)