The Catswold Portal

She stared down at herself, at her rumpled dress. How close she lay to Braden, nearly touching him. His hand lay across her hair. She watched him, stricken, terrified he would wake. He slept sprawled naked, tangled in the blankets, blankets and sheet tumbled away from his bare back.

How long had she lain beside him as Melissa? She had felt no pain at the changing. Unless it was pain that woke her. Carefully, slowly, she slid off the bed.

He didn’t stir. She tiptoed to the door, but then she turned back and stood watching him. Seeing him from the viewpoint of a woman was very different from seeing him through the eyes of a cat. The cat had seen height and strength and security, had been aware of his kindness and restraint, had seen a human she could be comfortable with, and one she could tease and manipulate when she chose. But now as a woman she saw him differently, and different emotions moved her.

He was strong and lean; she liked the clean line of his jaw and the little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. She liked his deeply tanned face against the white pillow. He had a smear of green paint on his left ear; she wanted to wipe it off. She could still feel the heat of his body where she had slept against him. She knew his scent sharply, as the little cat had known it.

Beyond the windows, red streaks of dawn stained the bay. He would wake soon. He would look out at the sunrise then roll over and plug in the coffee. If she was still sleeping on the bed as the cat, he would stroke her and talk to her, and she would purr for him. If he found her gone he would call her, then pull on a pair of shorts and go into the studio looking for her, calling her.

He stirred suddenly and rolled over almost as if her thought had woken him. She fled down the hall and through the dark studio to the glass door. She was fumbling with the lock when he called, “Kitty? Kitty, kitty?” She wanted to giggle. He had never named her, just kitty, kitty. She heard his footsteps. Panicked, she got the door open at last and ran for the bushes.

She crouched down in the little space under the bushes at the end of the terrace, her back scraping against the branches. She wanted to change back to cat. But she didn’t know how to change.

She didn’t know why she had changed to a girl; she knew she had been a girl before, but she could remember nothing except being a cat. She remembered traveling through strange, hostile country, and before that a dark, smelly man shoving her into a leather bag. She remembered the smell of diesel fuel as she fought to get out of the bag. Then the diner. She remembered traveling, miserable and hungry, her swollen eye hurting her, and her swollen paw sending pain all through her body. She remembered the stray cats and the fights and the blazing eyes of the rat as it crouched to leap at her.

She looked up the garden to the door in the hill. The door had drawn her here, pulling her on, hungry and hurt and frightened. She heard a door slam somewhere up the hill and then in the lane a car started. She could smell bacon cooking, and could hear faint voices from the houses above. Soon Braden would come out searching for the little cat. She didn’t want to be caught here hiding in the bushes. But she didn’t know where to go. As a cat, she would simply have run up the garden and disappeared in the bushes. Now she didn’t know where she could hide. In her distress, a memory touched her: a woman’s face so pale it was nearly white, surrounded by blackness. Then she remembered animals; a huge toad as big as a person. A tall creature with a woman’s breast and a bird’s face and all covered in white feathers.

She pulled her skirt around her sandaled feet for warmth, listening to the din of birds in the garden. Their riot stirred her hunger; she wanted to slip out and grab one. She was appalled at herself, not at the thought of eating raw bird but of being seen catching and eating it.

The studio lights came on, and she could hear Braden inside calling the cat. Through the windows she could see him searching behind the stacked canvases. When he turned, she slid deeper under the bushes. He disappeared toward the kitchen, and she fled across the garden and across the lane.

Running toward the village brought new memories. She hurried past houses tucked among huge redwood trees. Scenes began to come to her: she was a child walking along this street holding a woman’s hand, they were going to the village for ice cream. She couldn’t remember the woman’s face. Then she was inside a shop that sold bicycles, stroking a red bicycle. Then she and the woman were crouched together beside a stream looking for stones. These memories did not fit with the white feathered womanbird and the toad, or with the black room where a woman’s white face seemed suspended.

Walking, she had soon passed all the houses. Now there were only shops. To her left the redwood trees rose up a hill above the stores, and there were houses tucked among the dark trunks.