Separating my cat and human brain was obviously becoming harder to do. The first days, even months, after my mistaken transformation, I had experienced no cat like instincts or urges. I had spent that time in my life disheartened and confused, not sure how to adapt to a life on four paws and coated in fur. Thanks to my failure to plan for the worst, when the incident happened, I was alone and had not told anyone where I was going. I was stuck in the middle of a field, my ritual instruments strewn out for anyone or the weather to claim. I had sat, stunned, in the useless pile of my clothing, wondering just what had gone wrong and how long my condition would last. There was a scratching at the back of my mind that told me that I knew exactly what had happened and how much trouble I was in, but to acknowledge that was a terrifying idea. Instead, I continued to sit until the dawn peeked over the horizon, hoping against all that I knew that it was only a temporary condition and that I would return to my human form at any moment. Despite my stubbornness against accepting the reality, once the sun was fully over the horizon, I had no choice but to start to considering what my next moves were going to be.

Unable to use my car, I had a long trek back down the barely used dirt road to the main highway, trying to continue forward despite the constant pull back to go protect my precious ritual instruments. I knew that if I were to have a chance at ever using them again, I would need to get help and quickly. I ran until I had to stop and rest, which was unfortunately not very far given that my stride was a fraction of what it had been as a human. Through very intense effort, I was able to get out of the unpopulated area and back to the city in just under three days, though I was desperate for food and water when I got there. I tried in vain to get the attention of anyone walking down the street, but all that I could get to come out of my mouth was the damnable meowing, which people noticed, but everyone kept walking by, I just looked like some stray cat begging. At least through the begging a few people took pity on me and went to a cafe nearby to get a small cup of water and someone pulled a slice of ham from their sandwich. It was awkward trying to learn to drink like a cat from the cup and it was nauseating considering eating the deli meat directly from the ground, but I was motivated enough by thirst and hunger to get over my trepidation.

I spent the rest of the first day back in the city, carefully navigating crowds and crosswalks to get to my friend, Terry’s apartment. If I had any chance of someone understanding my predicament and know what to do, it was with him. By the time I made it to his apartment building, it was late afternoon and I was exhausted, barely able to summon the energy to drag my paws across the sidewalk to the entrance door. I sat and waited next to the door, tired and thirsty, for my friend to come home. I didn’t have any particular plan in mind when he showed up, part of me hoped that his sensitivity to the paranormal would work on my predicament as well.

As soon as I saw him walking up the sidewalk towards me, I found the strength to jump up and begin running towards him, meowing loudly. Wrinkling his brow in confusion, he looked down to me, taking a step to the side to begin to walk around. I meowed even louder, loud enough to hurt my own ears, but that only caused him to speed up his movement away from me. Running out of hope, I trotted behind him, trying everything I could think of to make a noise that would sound something, anything like human speech. I followed him all the way to the door, which he barely opened enough to wriggle in to, then slammed it shut behind him, frowning through the glass at me. Standing on two legs, I pressed my paws to the door, yowling as loud as I could, loud enough for people across the street to stop and stare. One of those watching, started talking to those around them that someone should call animal control. That was when it began to really sink in that maybe I had no way to let anyone know who I really was. Out of fear and despair, I stopped making a scene and walked away from the apartment building, not sure where I was going or what I was going to do.

For several weeks after that realization, I survived by begging outside of different cafes and restaurants, still unwilling to act like a “real” cat and hunting for myself. It was this wandering begging that eventually led me to spending more and more of my time on the college campus. It seemed that college students were more likely to go out of their way to feed a stray animal, especially if they seemed friendly, if aloof. Thanks to the generosity of the students, I was able to keep fed while I considered my next steps. I was unable to safely go retrieve my ritual items, my car was completely out of the question, and I couldn’t think of a good way to get back to my apartment for anything I had stored there. My best option was to try to complete a ritual to transform myself back, but without any of my notes or supplies, that was a nearly impossible task. It wasn’t that I lacked the knowledge, it was more of a lack of creativity, without any of my “official” ritual equipment I would have to make due. Making due was made all the more difficult by the fact that I had to pick up and move things with my mouth and had no thumbs.

Determined to reverse the ritual, I set out spending the time I had while not begging sitting in a sunny spot and racking my brain for any ideas on what makeshift items I could find or create. The first object I needed to replace was my silver ritual knife, it had been wickedly sharp with a finely polished handle. The point of the knife in the ritual was for “cutting” the ties between the part of the wild power I was to consume, so in theory, any sharp object would do, though the closer I could get to the original, the easier the ritual would be. In addition, I needed replacements for three clear quartz crystals, a cup of red wine, and small incense bowl filled with sage and rosemary, plus a lighter to burn them. Some would be much easier to acquire than others, which posed its own set of problems. A ritual’s success depended on the quality of the materials input to it, so lesser quality items would mean the necessity for an even more precise timing. Obviously I had messed it up before, so I would have to calculate the timing down to the second at the exact right time in the moon’s cycle at the right angle in the sky to have a good chance of reversal.

I felt like my luck was finally turning around when I found a small, dirty pocket knife in the grass of the quad. I dragged it back to the basement window I had found lose and hid it in the bush next to window where it would hopefully go unbothered. At night, when the quad was deserted, I would work on holding the pocket knife between my paws and using my teeth to try to pry up the blade. I would need it exposed for the ritual, so it wouldn’t even matter if I had found it if I couldn’t use it. After a few nights of trying, I was finally able to get just the right angle to get one of my canine teeth into the tiny gap between the tools and slowly pull the blade up. Much to my dismay, the blade was pitifully small and I had owned butter knives that were sharper, but it was all I had.

After my luck with the knife, it seemed to continue and over the next few months I was able to scrounge a forgotten coffee mug, a plastic cup, a set of clear-gem earrings that someone had lost, and a nearly empty, but still usable lighter. I then only lacked the wine and the herbs, though the later was easy enough to remedy thanks to a house near campus that had a potted herb garden on their front steps, the wine was much trickier. On a campus, one would think that alcohol would be relatively easy to come by, and that was true, but none of it was ever wine of any type, it was always cheap beer or hard liquor. With the first impending chance at the ritual approaching, I decided to do the absurd path and try to make my own wine. I had heard that people around the world used to make their own wine by taking juiced fruits in a container, spitting in it, then covering it for a while. It was an absolutely foul idea that made my stomach churn to think about, but I didn’t exactly have the luxury of being picky anymore. I searched the campus for any sort of fruit and eventually came across a lone bush next to the horticulture building that had some type of berry I had never seen before, it was dark red and looked almost like a small blueberry. I had no idea if it was edible or not, but I didn’t need to drink it either way, it just had to technically be a wine to work.

Under the cover of night, I carefully transferred berries a few at a time back to my hiding spot and collected them in the plastic cup. After the second night, I had filled it to the top, so I began the awkward task of sticking my front right paw into the berries as far as I could to squish them. It was difficult considering the berries were relatively hard and didn’t have much juice to speak up, but with enough vigorous jumping up and down and using my new claws as a makeshift blender, I had something that maybe, just maybe, would work. Not knowing if cat spit would work, I drooled over the haphazard mash and clumsily covered the cup with a plastic fast food lid I had found. Unsure if I had just wasted a bunch of time, I pushed it as far back in the bush as I could manage and left it there for weeks, nervously waiting as the time for the ritual got closer and closer. The first night the ritual could be completed I dragged out the cup, the foamy liquid splashing against the sides of the cup. Pulling up the lid, it definitely did smell alcoholic, though also absolutely disgusting, but that didn’t matter, I wasn’t going to drink it anyway.

With everything in place in the middle of the quad, I checked that each item was in an appropriate place in a loose circle then ran to the middle to wait. The moon was in the correct phase as it began to slowly rise, it would be another hour before it was at the correct angle, but I wanted to be ready to start as soon as it was. My stomach dropped as clouds began to roll in and not even ten minutes before the moon would be in position, it was fully obscured and rain began to fall. I sat in the clearing, staring at the objects, not even caring that I was horrifically uncomfortable with being wet. My shot was gone and I didn’t know how long it would be until everything would align perfectly again.

Many more attempts would come and be interrupted, many by weather and the others by my irritating transformation to being unable to halt the whims of my cat brain. Each time I failed, I would have to restart my calculation process and hope that a new, perfect alignment would come soon, but it never did. There was always months or years between times when all the pieces would fall into place exactly as I needed. Now, being kept as a pet, I had access to better equipment which meant the window of opportunity would be easier to come by, though that had it’s own trouble of figuring out how to get all the necessary items outside. It seemed that I had solved one problem only to create another. I was sure that I could escape if I really wanted to, but escaping somehow carrying a bag full of ritualistic items was an absurd notion.