Entry tags:

bastet

I want to be a hunter again
Who: Max [Bastet] and Cali [NPC Kitty]
What:​ Kittens and goddesses and playtime, ohh my!
Where:​ Is it in a dream, or is it real?
When: April 25, 2017



Nothing could possibly compare to the disappointment Max experienced upon waking up Sunday morning in the middle of a perfectly normal vacant apartment on the Deluxe floor. Her hut, her stash of food, her warm sun and sand, and her view of the Nile were all gone, replaced instead with a normal empty apartment with its normal windows and its normal view of Los Angeles.

Cali was there, curled up on the floor nearby, perfectly content despite the absence of their desert paradise. Max sat up on the carpeted floor, sighing from the loss of the previous week of bliss, though still holding on to the wonderful memories of it. How right it had felt. How comfortable and free she’d felt.

She stood and looked out the window, watching the sun rise over a perfectly normal LA, pressing her fingertips to the glass as if she could force it to change back into the hazy desert warmth she missed. Finally she turned away from it, looking down at Cali stretching on the floor. “Come on hon, let’s go home,” she sighed.

For the next two days she went back to her regularly scheduled life, though after the past week of pure happiness her satisfaction with that life seemed diminished. She’d always loved her job, her little apartment, her strange little life, but after that taste of paradise, it all seemed hollow to her now. Less, somehow.

Monday night she was booked for a celebrity outing, and she went all out with the makeup and fancy clothes to try and lift her spirits, but even that didn’t seem to do it for her. She smiled and enjoyed herself of course, but it just wasn’t the same, and she was constantly missing the soft sand and hot sun on her skin.

Tuesday was spent food shopping and getting her house in order; a satisfying day of cleaning her apartment and putting everything where it should be after her frantic packing of essentials in order to camp out the week before. That night she’d fallen into an exhausted heap much earlier than usual, Cali curling up next to her on her pillow and purring them both to sleep.

* * *

It felt like she’d barely closed her eyes when they were opened again, but things were different She couldn’t feel herself lying down on the mattress, but curled up, her legs tucked under her and her head supported on the pillow by her two furry paws.

Paws?

She lifted her head, her keen sense of her surroundings immediately telling her that everything was suddenly much larger than before. Or, rather, she was much smaller. She sat up, looking at Cali next to her, and then down at her...paws. Covered in jet black fur. She lifted one to inspect it, a sudden instinct overtaking her and she licked her paw several times, rubbing her face to wake herself up.

Her feline face.

She opened her mouth to ask a question, and a meow came out, though it made perfect sense to her.

‘What happened?’ she asked. Cali blinked at her and sat up.

‘Good morning, Mistress.’ Max blinked at her in surprised.

‘Cali?’ As she watched, Cali seemed to smile, though no change was apparent on her features.

‘That is the name you call me,’ she replied, purring happily. ‘Come, there is food in my dish, Mistress,’ she said, stretching her limbs and then nimbly jumping down from the bed. Max stood and mimicked her cat, finding her new body surprisingly easy to control, her movements second nature as if she had always been this way.

They left the bedroom together and Max hesitated, turning in to the bathroom and easily jumping up onto the counter. And in the mirror, she saw herself.

She was a sleek black cat, her coat shining with health, her eyes such a bright coppery orange that they almost seemed to glow in the darkness of her fur. She looked regal and commanding, but still soft and playful, and if she had the proper human muscles, she would have smiled in satisfaction at her appearance.

‘Come, Mistress,’ Cali meowed, leading her down the hall towards the food dishes. Max jumped down and followed her, seeing happily that there was plenty of food left out from the night before. Cali stood near the dishes, as if waiting for Max to eat first, which she did.

‘I think I should start giving you actual meat,’ Max said after she’d eaten her fill. Again, she felt that Cali almost smiled.

‘This is sufficient, but I would be very grateful some meat once in a while,’ Cali said, polishing off the remaining kibble and taking a drink from the nearby fountain.

‘Cali...why am I a cat?’ she finally asked, not at all weirded out by the fact that she was asking her for advice. Cali considered this, and there seemed to be laughter in her returning meow.

‘You have always been, Mistress, you just forgot how to be who you are,’ she said, canting her head slightly as if in a submissive pose. ‘It is my duty to help you to remember. Soon you will be our Queen again.’

Max frowned, but it came across as a narrowing of her eyes. ‘Queen? I’m not a Queen of anything…’

‘But you are...I thought the sand and the sun was helping you to remember. You changed a few times while you slept, but this is the first time you woke in this form.’ Max thought about that for a bit, going through her dreams over the past week or so. She had been dreaming of cats, of Egypt. Craving meat, napping more than usual, purring when she was happy. Becoming more and more...catlike.

‘But why?’ Cali didn’t answer, but again seemed to smile. ‘What, am I Catwoman or something?’ she joked, but instead of laughing with her, Cali blinked slowly at her, a gesture she immediately knew was one of love and respect.

‘You are Bast,’ she said, as if that answered everything.

Max decided to think on that for a while, and instead focus on the now. And the now included playtime.

She and Cali spent most of the morning and afternoon alternating between playing: chasing each other around the apartment, playing hide and seek, catching toy mice and crinkly balls of cellophane; and curling up together to chat, about life as a cat, about things Cali liked and didn’t like about the apartment, about what life was like outside, and about how it feels to be a human. Eventually the two ended up curled into each other, purring and napping in a warm ball of fur.

* * *

Max woke later that afternoon, curled up around Cali on the floor of the livingroom, her cat’s little head pillowed on her stomach. Shortly after, Cali woke, pressing a paw to Max’s stomach as if in acknowledgement that she was no longer a cat, and then snuggled closer to her, purring in contentment. Max lay there for a long time, thinking about the experience, wondering if it was a dream, or if it had been real.

She got up a while later and started getting dinner ready, cooking up some chicken for herself and making sure to prepare a portion for Cali as well. Later that night, after they were both fed and happy, she got ready for bed, and found something that gave her pause.

On the bathroom counter was the toy mouse that Cat Max had purposely placed there while she and Cali were playing hide and seek. She picked it up and looked it over thoughtfully, turning the toy over in her fingers as Cali came up silently behind her, purring and rubbing against her leg.

“Queen Bast,” she said to herself, playing with the syllables on her lips, and smiling when she liked the way they sounded.