After another unplanned nap, I trotted into the living room, hoping that the remote would be easy to find. Luckily, it was sat on the edge of the couch, hanging over just enough for me to bat it off the arm and onto the cushion so that I could use it. Not having much individual control of my toes made things difficult, but eventually I was able to press the correct buttons to turn on the TV. There wasn’t much on in the middle of the day, but I was still entranced by the movement and colors on the screen. While I was lucky enough to get to keep my human vision, that only seemed to help the cat brain I was working through see even more tempting things to want to reach out and swat. It wasn’t long before I was off the couch swatting at things on the TV while the more rational side of me was trying its hardest to actually take in the afternoon news.

It had been a long, long time since I had been able to catch an entire news broadcast. Sometimes I would be able to catch snippets when I would sneak into cafes or the student union for a short while before someone inevitably spotted me and I would have to leave. As far as I could ever tell, the world was still on the same course since the last time I had useful thumbs. The rich still got richer, the poor poorer, and people still thought that voting against their own best interest was the best course of action. I had forgotten how much I had actually despised being reminded of how short-sighted society was. It re-dawned on me that I would not trust most of the people in power with the ability to make me a grilled cheese sandwich, let alone the decisions that determined my place and experience in society.

Unimpressed, but having thoroughly attacked a news anchor that was very talkative with his hands, I sauntered back to the remote to shut it off. As the sound and picture died, I was already struck by just how quiet the empty apartment was. I was use to the sounds of distant lectures and people laughing and talking as they walked by my window, that the relative silence was foreign. Had it really been so long since I last lived a normal life? Counting back the years in my head, twenty years had already passed in my feline form. It both felt longer and shorter, essentially a whole new generation of society had already risen while I had been away from it. I briefly considered if I would even be able to fit back in when… or if… I returned back to human society.

Not wanting to dwell too long on my predicament, especially since I still felt freshly indignant from my latest attempt to free myself, I wandered my way back to the girls’ bedroom. I was determined to find out all I could about her and perhaps why she decided to “rescue” me from the basement. It could have all just been happenstance, but I had lived too long and seen too much to chalk it up to that. Most things that seem to be random in life are actually carefully orchestrated events by someone’s hand, even if you have no idea who that “someone” is.

My nose was first drawn to the chair where her backpack had rested, following a trail of a spicy, almost licorice scent. Sniffing the chair seat where the bottom of the pack had set produced the strongest scent, helped me deduce that she had to be carrying around a fair amount of anise. It had been so long since I last was able to study so it took me a long moment of wracking my memories to come up with what witchcraft value it had, but eventually I settled on the idea that it had something to do with protection. I couldn’t be sure if it was protect against spirits, psychic damage, or any of the other laundry list of reasons why witches use it. While I had studied much of modern witchcraft, it had never been a favorite of mine, there was often too much glitter and people holding crystals to their foreheads at random claiming that it helped their headaches. I had long held a personal opinion that the only purpose of modern witchcraft was to keep people thinking that magic in general was a hoax, which works out very well for the rest of us that practice.

Next up was the end table and the drawer where I had sensed additional botanicals but had not checked for sure. The problem was the angle of the chair to the drawer, at best I would only be able to open it an inch or so. Cats are good at getting into small spaces, but they’re unfortunately quite that good. Jumping back down to the floor, I paced around the chair legs several times, as if staring at each side of the wooden structure would reveal a grand plan for me. Determined to at least try something, I stood up on my back paws, leaning on the side of the chair facing the end table. Slowly, the chair scooted across the carpeted floor until I had to either stop or risk toppling face first into the ground. Looking up, it would now open a reasonable amount, but the new problem was getting it open.

My first thought was to jump to the top of the end table, then reach down to pry open the drawer. The start went mostly to plan, except for the fact that I ended up knocking off a good chunk of the items she had up there. I watched them clatter to the floor with a deep sense of satisfaction, even though I was just a human in cat form, I couldn’t deny that I understood why cats were known for knocking things to the floor. Next, I laid down and reached for the thin crack between the drawer and the top of the table, wiggling my claws into the space to try to get enough purchase to pull it open. Several failed attempts later, I gave up trying that approach and sat back up, the hair along my back raised in irritation. In anger, I swatted at the drawer, accidentally hooking my claws in the wood, flipping me forward with my own momentum. Unable to claw my way to saving myself, I landed upside down on the carpet, the drawer pulling and falling on top of me.

Scrambling my way out from beneath it, I surveyed the damage. There were herbs, crystals, and baggies of different salts strewn across the floor next to the bed, some of them threatening to spill their contents across the floor. When she eventually came home, she probably was not going to be very happy with me, but at least I now had access to the contents. There were more herbs in the drawer, but I hadn’t expected the small quantities of many varieties of salts, some artificially colored to be bright purples and greens. While the botanicals furthered my suspicion that she was some kind of new aged witch, I was puzzled by the possession of so many different kinds of salt. Some people believed in a difference between sea salts, but I don’t think I had ever seen intentional dying to change properties. It was a ludicrous idea, but there it was, clearly printed on the front of the clear plastic packets: “Good for money-related spells” or “To increase passion.”

Beneath the sachets that stayed in the drawer was a wooden box with a pentacle carved into the top. Inside the box was a silver pentacle necklace, a blunt-bladed knife with a mother of pearl handle, and a small cast iron cauldron big enough to only hold a single tea candle. It was absolutely everything I needed to be absolutely certain that she was a practicing new age witch, so much so that it was almost comical. I couldn’t have picked a more cliché set of altar items if challenged. I couldn’t yet piece together why exactly I ended up in her possession, but it certainly was not at random. She wasn’t exactly the same sort of magic practitioner as I had been, but it was too big of a coincidence not to be coordinated for some reason.

I stared at the mess I had made for a moment, relishing in the satisfaction I felt, but also feeling bad that she had to come home to it. There was no way I could make it any better, so I opted to follow my cat instincts and hop up to the bed for another nap. Trying to investigate anything in this wretched form always took way longer than it needed to between all the urges for sleep, grooming, and eating. I had always knew that cats were lazy, but I had never considered the extent until I became one myself. If I ever got out of this feline form, I promised myself that I would forever be a dog person.

I woke up to the sound of a gasp, the girl standing in the doorway with her hair frizzing out from her ponytail holder, signifying that she had already had a long day. Still waking up, I opened my mouth wide in an exaggerated yawn and stretched, both my front and back legs extending as far as they could go. I didn’t mean to seem so callous and uncaring about the mess, but I also can’t deny that one of the best feelings in the world was feeling fresh and rejuvenated.

Her shocked gaze slowly shifted from the mess beside her bed to me kneading the bedspread and purring in contentment, flipping back and forth between the scenes like she was watching the world’s slowest game of tennis. After a few moments, her shoulders drooped and the backpack she had been holding up dropped to the floor. Taking a few steps forward, she approached the mess, eyes darting from one tossed bag to another, trying to judge just how bad the damage was. Her expression changed from shock and horror to relief after her assessment showed that nothing was actually broken or spilled.

“Had some fun while I was gone, huh?” she said. Her voice was lighter and less angry than I had expected. “I guess it’s partially my fault, not like there was much for you to do around here.”

I said at her blankly, ears twitching in response. At least she was observant enough to realize I wasn’t used to being cooped up after my years as an outside cat. I didn’t even try to think what that meant considering I was still, at my pure essence, a human. I already had enough existential crises to content with.

After picking up everything from the floor and replacing the drawer, she turned back to me and looked at me with a good natured shake of her head. “Teddy, I think it’s only fair you wear something as a mark of your shame.” Retrieving her backpack, she open the front pocket and pulled out a black collar, store tag still attached. She pulled off the tag, then got the silver pentacle necklace from the wooden box. She pulled the pentacle from the chain and opened the split ring on the collar, threading the pendant through. Holding back from fighting her attaching the collar to my neck was much harder than anticipated, there was something deep in my feline brain that screamed for me to bite, kick, and hiss to keep myself from being collared. Luckily, I was able to keep it suppressed to only a few dodging wiggles of my head and pushing her hands away with my paws.

“See? Not so bad,” she said with a laugh as she was finally able to snap the collar in place. “It looks adorable on you.”

I would have to take her word for it, otherwise it felt strange to have something around my neck. I pawed at it a bit to try to rearrange it, but eventually gave up with a sigh, no amount of manipulating the fabric made it feel any better and the pendant felt like it was too heavy. I was certain it barely weighed anything, but all of my senses were hypersensitive. By the time I had finished trying to fight with it, she had disappeared from the room, sounds of clanking ceramic coming from the general direction of the kitchen.

I slunk into the kitchen, my body language still communicating that I felt uncomfortable. She was at the sink letting the water run into a bowl with an empty ramen wrapper next to her, by the smell of it, it was some sort of chili flavor, nothing I would be all the interested in. I watched as she completed her poor man’s feast, then carefully carried her bowl to the living room, sinking into the couch. I hopped up next to her, hating the clinking sound the pendant made against the collar whenever I made sudden movements.

Instead of turning on the TV, she pulled her phone from her pocket and opened an app that I wasn’t familiar with. I wasn’t really familiar with any of them, being a cat during the social media and smart phone revolution had left me horrible out of the loop. Even to the human aspect of myself, modern phones looked like mystical, magic boxes. She scrolled through various pictures, most of them showing different makeup tutorials and people playing with things that looked like balls of brightly colored goop. I could easily understand the makeup tutorials, but the goop truly stumped me, I had no idea what it could be or what it was used for, but it sure seemed like it was incredible popular. She clicked on one of the pictures of someone holding a neon blue ball and goop and it opened a video that showed the person stretching the goop back and forth, letting it fall slowly from their hands, and squishing it in ways to show off the uncomfortably squishy sounds it could make. I honestly had less of an idea of what it was all about than before the video started. With noodles finished, she set her bowl aside and switched off the app, finally breaking the intense contemplation I had been engaged in trying to make any sense of what I was seeing.

A knock at the door, startled me into a fighting stance, jumping off the couch and squaring up at the door. Not noticing my reaction, the girl popped up and trotted to the door, opening it as if she had no doubt in her mind about who it was.