Treats of the Place Where Growly McHissy-Face was Found

Because YOU demanded it! A story featuring Jestin's one and only cat: Growly McHissy-Face! Told from Growly McHissy-Face's POV!

This short story takes place years before Dragon Metal Book 1 and contains minor spoilers for that book.

Treats of the Place Where Growly McHissy-Face was Found

Rain splattered his black fur.

He curled up in an alleyway and tried to keep warm against the cold breeze. Barely the size of a hand, the kitten shivered in the dark. He cried out with his little kitten meows, calling for his mother, his brothers, his sisters. But he heard no answer, only the pitter-patter of rain against the pavement. 

He was alone. And he didn’t understand why. 

Cold and starving, the kitten cried for hours. His instincts told him to find shelter, safety. But his legs wobbled every time he tried to move. Fear swirled through his little belly. Confusion clouded his mind.

His tiny ears perked at the sound of footsteps splashing in puddles. The kitten sniffed but had to force each breath through his little stuffed nostrils. He tried to look into the dark, but his eyes had swollen. 

A voice whispered in the shadows. The kitten didn’t understand the words, but the voice sounded soft and soothing. 

Still, the kitten didn’t know whether to approach the voice or hide; his hair prickled. He cried out, he needed help, he needed safety, he needed comfort…

Slowly, soft hands lifted him from the street. The skin felt warm against his fur. Fingers rubbed his head behind the ears; the voice whispered more words. Through his stuffy nose, the kitten smelled whiffs of smoky ash. 

The hands rubbed his back, flattening his wet fur against his skin. The kitten’s tension and fear relaxed with each pet. He started to purr, softly, like the putter of a toy motorboat. 

His swollen eyes shut, and his breathing slowed. Hands wrapped around him like blankets and held him close to the chest; warmth radiated from the body like a furnace, and the kitten let himself snuggle into that feeling, purring quietly, until he drifted to sleep. 

***

Weeks passed. 

The kitten waited in the darkness. Light fluttered through the shadows in front of him. Movement. His ears perked. His pupils widened. He smelt dust, leather, and wisps of musk. 

He waited. Wiggled with his paws beneath his body. And then he pounced. 

The kitten darted from under the bed like a bolt of fur and swatted the dangly feather toy. His tiny paws battered the flutters of blue and yellow, and his little claws tugged at the string. The voice gave him praise, happy. 

He rolled onto his back and gnawed at the feather, rabbit-kicking with his rear paws. 

The voice said words that the kitten had learned to recognize. 

“Good boy.”

“Good babies.”

He rolled onto all fours and bolted into another room for no apparent reason other than he could, speeding as fast as possible, around and around. The voice laughed. A good sound.

***

Months passed. The young feline sat at his favorite window and looked out upon the street. His eyes followed the dried leaves that blew across the brown grass. Birds fluttered from bare tree branches to power lines. 

The cat felt a pang of desire. He needed to hunt. 

His human walked by and petted him behind the ears. The cat leaned into the warmth of the touch and purred. His kitten mind couldn’t understand the complexities of emotion on an intellectual level. Still, he felt loved, and he returned that feeling. 

He sat at his window for hours. 

An odd sensation prickled his fur. Fear? He didn't smell, see, or hear anything amiss, but he felt fear. Nothing specific, nothing directed towards him or his human; just a general sense of foreboding that seemed to permeate the entire world around him. 

The feeling didn’t go away. 

It lingered. 

And he didn’t understand why. 

The cat’s tummy started to rumble. It was about that time. 

Sure enough, his human called for him. “Foods?”

The cat loved that word. Strange feelings forgotten, he bolted from his window, dashed into his kitchen, and devoured the food in his small pink bowl, slurping wet pieces of salmon and crunching dried pieces of kibble. 

***

Another month went by. 

His human argued with someone in the bedroom. The cat recognized the other person’s scent--stale cigarettes mixed with cheap soap. The man spoke with a slurred, gruff drawl. He sounded agitated and angry. 

The cat pawed at the bedroom door. But it wouldn’t open. 

His human screamed. Fear. 

The gruff man shouted back. Anger. 

Then, the door whipped open, and the gruff man stormed out. The cat hissed at him, arched his back and poofed his tail to look intimidating. The man ignored the cat and shouted more words. 

His human screamed back at the man. The cat recognized a few words. “Leave! Get out!”

The gruff man stormed out the front door and slammed it shut. 

The cat lowered his tail and relaxed. Something stirred inside of him he couldn’t understand. A desire to protect. To fight and defend. But he was so small. Tiny. And humans like the gruff man were like giant, unpredictable apes. 

His human went back into the bedroom. The cat heard sniffing and tears. He pitter-pattered into the room and saw his human on the bed. She laid her head into her pillow and sobbed. The cat hopped onto the bed and curled up next to the pillow. He purred, his way of comforting his human, and pawed gently at her hair.

She reached out and held him close.

***

Months passed. 

The cat lay in his soft, fluffy bed next to his human’s pillow. He purred and stretched. Bliss. 

His human started to turn. The cat had learned long ago to paw at the human’s arm so she didn’t flop over and accidentally squash him. Crisis averted, he curled up and started to drift back to sleep.

Then he smelled something. 

Smoke. 

Danger. 

He hopped out of bed and faced the bedroom door, which was closed. Heat radiated from the other side of the door. Fire. Smoke. 

The cat hopped back onto the bed and meowed. He pawed at his human to wake her up. She muttered and flopped onto her other side. The cat meowed and pawed her again, persisting. 

“Okay, okay,” she whispered as she rubbed her eyes. “What time is it, it’s not even…”

She stopped talking. She must have smelt it too. Smoke. Fire. 

His human got out of bed and walked to the door. She touched the door handle, screamed. Hot. 

She looked around, frantic. The room had two horizontal windows near the ceiling. She stood on her bed and started cranking one of the windows open. She coughed. Smoke clouded the room. 

The cat faced the door as if he expected the fire itself to burst into the bedroom and attack them both. Something stirred within his belly. That feeling again. The desire to protect. Defend. Not just a feeling. But a power. 

His human fell off the bed. She hit the floor hard and stopped moving. 

The cat darted to her side. He meowed and pawed at her, but she wouldn’t move. Heat and smoke washed through the room. The sound of raging flames crackled from the other side of the door.

He kept pawing and meowing at his human but knew he had little time left. He didn’t fear for himself. He feared for her. His best friend. His family. 

That feeling inside of him, that power he didn’t understand, that desire to protect and defend, it stirred. Sparked. And then it ignited into a flame of its own. 

The cat became mist that twirled like fog and reshaped. Solidified into something new. No longer a cat. A panther. His eyes glowed yellow. And he growled at the smoke, which seemed to shudder at the presence of the beast. 

He smashed through the bedroom door with the speed and force of a rocket. That made it worse. An inferno unleashed into the room and spread across the walls. Smoke clouded his vision. But when he focused, he could see through the smoke. 

The panther turned back towards the wall opposite the door. He had moved so quickly, with so much power, not just a being of flesh and bone, but a primal force. He crouched, coiled his muscles, and sprang through the wall like a wrecking ball, blasting a hole through the side of the house. 

Crude, but it would work. 

The panther dashed to his human and used his teeth to lift her by the shirt. He jumped through the opening, and they landed in the yard, just as the ceiling collapsed with plumes of flame, smoke, and ash.

He set his human down and nudged her with his nose. Safe. She moaned and rolled in the dried grass, waking up. Good. He nudged her again, softly, to reassure her, to tell her she was okay. 

But when she opened her eyes and looked at him, she screamed. 

She scrambled backward, climbed to her feet, stumbled, eyes open with fear. 

The panther realized his human probably didn’t recognize him. So he reached deep into the power that swirled within his spirit, and he tugged at that power, like unwinding a ball of string. He became mist and reshaped into the form his human found familiar. A cat. 

But his human still looked at him like she feared him. And she reeked of that fear. 

She called him words he recognized. Monster. Demon. None of those words sounded right, why would she ever call him such things? He’d saved her. He’d been there for her. He’d taken care of her. The same way she had taken care of him. 

He walked towards her. Maybe she needed to breathe in his scent to recognize him. 

But she shouted still. “Get away from me!” she shouted. “Go!”

Those words. Why would she use those words? Full of anger. Fear. So much fear. 

Sirens blared down the street. Red lights flashed through the darkness. His human ran towards the noise and lights, leaving him alone. She’d feared him. He’d caused that fear. That terror.

Was he really a monster?

Unwanted?

Abandoned, again?

He looked into the flames that consumed his home. 

And he knew. 

His safety. His comfort. 

Gone. all gone. 

Alone, again. 

Abandoned, again.

And it was all his fault. 

A monster. 

He ran alone into the night. 

End