In Love with a Dog

Chapter One- Change of Plans

“One problem. Maury isn’t a girl.” She looked a little upset for a quick second, then turned to me with a big smile.

“That’s great! Well… for us. Maury can’t go, but at least now you CAN!”

“What? Huh? What’s the plan?” She rolled her eyes at me, like it was so obvious.

“Maury can’t go, so he’ll have to stay here. He’ll be with Kira, so you won’t have to watch her. Us three girls will get dressed up, and sneak into the party.” She said each word slowly, as if I was too stupid to understand had she said it normally. But, I was still confused.

“Three girls? There’s four of us.”

“Lillian can’t come. She’s too young. Maury will just have to watch her too.” At the sound of this, Lillian jumped up, her face already a bit furry.

“I am not too young. Have any of ya’ll been paying attention? I’m am PERFECTLY capable. I’ve been on every mission we’ve had since I got my cat!” As she spoke, her anger grew, flashing her eyes to her cat’s, so that as she finished speaking, her words turned into a growl and her whole body was taken over by the transformation. We all stepped back to make room.

Her clothes turned to shreds as a large, bobcat-sized, striped black cat took her place. Lillian’s cat, Tiger Lily began backing up while growling at all of us. Lillian hadn’t learned to control her transformations as well as the rest of us yet. Her and her cat couldn’t communicate well, and Tiger Lily didn’t recognize us in our human forms. We were lucky she was showing fear rather than aggression, but there was time for that to change. I wasn’t scared for myself, as I could also turn into a cat, but I needed to get Kira out of there.

She had already begun crying, quite unusual for her, but I never transformed around her, and this was the first time to see one of us in full animal. I really could see it as being terrifying, especially to a three year old who used a night light. I ran over and swooped her up, but was caught by Sashara on my way out.

“I’ll take your sister home and watch her. You’re able to control Tiger Lily in a way that I don’t understand. You need to stay here, and get Tiger Lily to turn back into Lillian.” I nodded quickly and handed Kira over. We didn’t talk much, but that was mostly because of the age difference and our clashing interests. I trusted Sashara.

As she walked out the door, I turned back to Tiger Lily. Maury had left. He was a scaredy cat, unlike the rest of our pride. Tyra was standing away from Tiger Lily, trying to talk to Lillian, telling her to change back. I sighed. That was not going to work.

I began taking my clothes off. It wasn’t embarrassing. It was only Tyra and Tiger Lily. I wasn’t worried about anybody in my pride seeing me without clothes. I was used to it. We had to change in front of each other all the time to change into our cats. Once those were out of the way, I brought out Star, my dark brown, striped, cougar-sized kitty with mix matched eyes.  Unlike Lillian, I was able to control my cat. It was a wonder that she did come along on all the missions since getting her cat late last year, but it was a rule we had that if a member could fully transform, they were allowed on missions, whether they had good control or not. Still, we’d always had to worry about Tiger Lily going off and doing something unexpected, as Lillian never seemed to have control of her.

I walked toward Tiger Lily. Tyra saw me and backed away, afraid I would have to fight her. Instead, Tiger Lily calmed down and came up to rub herself against me. Being in my cat form, I could subconsciously feel her thoughts. We were connected, and I was feeling how although comforted by seeing me, she was still afraid of Tyra. I bumped her back, and looked down into her eyes, pouring my thoughts into her.

“Tiger Lily, it’s okay. Tyra is your friend. You know her as Beauty though.” With things starting to make sense, she calmed down. “Good. Now, you know there’s another voice inside you, yes? Now, why are you ignoring it? Listen to  Lillian. She’s a part of you.” Tiger Lily backed up into the wall, jerking her head from side to side, trying to get in touch with Lillian. A few minutes passed before Tiger Lily threw open her eyes, but they weren’t hers. They were human. Gradually, her entire body changed until it was Lillian sitting hunched over on the floor, breathing heavily. I commanded Star to resign control of our shared body became Katrina again.

Tyra, who had been standing behind us, ran up to Lillian to comfort and help her. I pulled on my clothes before turning back to the two of them.

“Well, Lillian, it seems nobody will be doing anything tonight. You ruined it for us all.” Lillian sighed and Tyra frowned.

“I’m sorry. I know I can be too young for some things, I guess, but it didn’t seem fair. I thought you guys were just being mean to me, and I didn’t mean to bring out my cat.” Tyra laughed.

“Of course you didn’t mean to bring out your cat. It’s happened to all of us when we were growing into our cats. Well, maybe not Sashara. She always seems to have control over her emotions.” I laughed. Tyra was right about that.

“Yeah, okay. Now, I hope you brought a change of clothes. If not, I can go get you something, but I need to get home to Kira.” I said to Lillian as Tyra gathered her stuff to leave.

“No, I brought some stuff, but mom isn’t going to be too happy about me ruining these.” Lillian held up her shredded clothes for us to see just how ruined they were. I laughed before walking over to the door. I replied with one hand on the door before heading out.

“Alright then, I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”