Were to Start

Part 2

Emily and I had found ourselves in a bit of a predicament. How do you change back to human form if you don't really understand how you ended up as a large predatory cat? We could communicate, but were we automatically interpreting our growls, or was it simply telepathy?

We decided to test out the telepathy first. About the last thing we wanted at this time is for a neighbor or a passerby to hear us growling at each other. About that time, the grandfather clock chimed one in the afternoon. 'Damn, that's a lot louder now,' I thought.

'Definitely,' replied Emily

'Solves that question, doesn't it? I know I didn't growl, and I didn't hear you growling, so it's got to be telepathy,' I answered. 'Now we have to work to get back into human form, and neither of us really has a starting point.'

'Five O'clock, any luck?' I asked Emily.

'None, not even a sensation of any kind,' she informed me.

'Crap, what are we going to do?' It wasn't really a question, more of a thought, but she heard it too, letting me know she didn't have any brilliant ideas about our new dilemma.

'At the moment I only have one idea to help us, but I'm not sure it'll work.' I paused, waiting for Emily to reply, after a moment I just forged on. 'I don't know if our telepathy is just between us, or others. I just thought to Leann; Hutchinson Island, 8pm, bring two largest packages of fresh steaks, and have Steve get two DNA swabs from his friend.'

'You better tell her not to freak out about the cats.' That was a very valid point from her, one that could cause a lot of problems without forewarning. 'Oh yeah, and to let themselves in.'

'If you got my previous instructions, further instructions are to let yourselves in, and not to freak out about the cats.' I hope my thoughts made it to my sister, but I'm not sure. She was pretty intelligent, it's why she was the third partner in our law firm. The law offices of Weaver, Weaver, and Stitch wasn't going to make any of us national lawyers, but it's definitely made us well above comfortable. Leann's family law qualifications are what is likely to provide the most help, assuming she'd show up tonight with her husband Steve.

As it neared eight o'clock we got into positions to block the front and back doors. We knew we may have to block Steve and Leann in, at least long enough to get them to understand what was going on. At ten of, we heard them getting out of the car, so I slipped into a side room near the front door, and Emily went to the back of the house. Steve opened the door, and held it for Leann to come in carrying the steaks. My mouth started watering from the scent, and I think Emily was close enough for the same reaction.

'Leann, please open the packages and leave them sitting in the kitchen sink, then make yourselves comfortable in the living room.' Telepathy definitely has its rewards.

"Okay, steaks are in the sink," Leann called out as she and Steve entered the living room. Steve set a bag down on the coffee table, I sure hope it's the DNA kits.

'Alright Emily, they are ready to meet us, even if they don't know it.' my thought was to Emily, but I couldn't rule out Steve and Leann hearing it too.

We stalked into the living room from both directions, and our instructions were followed but just loosely. While they didn't freak out, we could tell that anxiety was gripping them. To our cat senses, it was close to a stench. We ended our stalking by taking a sitting position on either side of them.

'Leann, Steve, point to one of us, and we'll tell you who you are pointing to.' I instructed my sister and brother-in-law. It was funny, because they both pointed at us, 'Steve you are pointing to Emily, and Leann you are pointing to me, Jason.'

"You're Jason?" Leann questioned. "You sound like a woman, I wasn't sure what was going on. Was it some sort of trick, or an angel talking to me. I had no way to describe it to Steve, but you just saying Hutchinson Island is what convinced me to come tonight, and that it wasn't just my imagination."

'That was kind of the point, given I didn't even know if it would work. Did you try to reply?' I asked.

"Goodness NO! I didn't want to think I was losing it, and I had a client at the time." She continued after a brief pause. "Luckily, we were just getting done. Why DO you sound like a woman anyways?"

'Well, that's because I have female anatomy at the moment.' I replied. "Now that you mention it, I didn't pay attention earlier when Emily and I were trying to figure out if we could resume our human forms, but she sounded like a man, and I knew she was male the second I woke up.'

'Yeah, this thing has a mind of its own.' Emily replied. "How do you get it to go down when you are aroused?" It was so out of left field Steve and I burst into laughter instantly, and Leann was giggling.

"Oh, that's just creepy!" Steve commented. "Hearing your laughter, but also your cats growl at the same time is a bit unsettling." Leann was nodding in agreement, still giggling lightly.

'First things first at this point," I started. "We haven't eaten since early this morning on our way home from Miami. Steve, why don't you grab a couple of steaks out of the sink, and start grilling them for you and Leann, leave the rest in the sink. I know I want mine raw, and I know I'm going to eat quite a bit more than usual. I have to assume the same with Emily.' She nodded. 'Leave the backdoor open, we've been stuck in the house, the changes didn't happen until we got home, and we haven't made any headway changing back. Leann, you may want to go outside with Steve while we eat the rest of the steaks.'

"Yeah, I don't want to see you two being carnivorous," she informed us. "Especially since you both have white fur, and that's going to be a mess."

Once we'd all finished eating, I had Steve make sure the coast was clear, literally. I had him open the back gate to the beach, so Emily and I could take care of mother nature. We definitely didn't want someone seeing the big cats marking the beach. Not to mention, seeing a large predatory cat on the beach may make people a bit leery to go out and enjoy themselves when they wanted to.

It was getting very late by the time we'd gotten lists made up of possible problems, solutions to those problems, food, the DNA kits, and renovations to the property. The funniest thing was watching Steve as he was doing the cheek swabs. Knowing who we were, it did little to alleviate his nervousness about putting his hand near our mouths. We got some hair samples from our brushes to give to Steve. Both of them were in baggies for him to take with. Mine were marked "J-J" and Em's were marked "E-L." I'm not sure how we knew our breed, it had to be inherent knowledge.

Another thing that got worked out is names to match our voices. Telepathic or not, the name Jason sounding like a purring female was disconcerting to my sister and her husband. In my sister's many talks with Mom, she had discovered that I would have been named Briana; while she would have been named Anthony if our genders had been flipped at birth. I guess Emily had similar conversations with her mother. She'd have been called Mark.

Something didn't sit right with me about being Briana and Mark. Emily agreed that it wasn't right for either of us. We chose to go with a Latin derivative for both names. I would be Bianca as a cat, and Emily would be Marcos as a cat. The cats may not have developed in South America, but it was where they were born, so it felt right.

The last thing to take care of before they went home was, as strange as this is to say, babysitting or is it pet sitting? Steve and Leann agreed to "look after our house" for a while. Renovations had to be made, and someone would need to be here. We couldn't afford for a contractor to be here without Leann or Steve present. Marcos and I would have to chill out on the second floor while the contractors were adding handicap access to parts of the house.

The following day Steve showed up at nine in the morning, but Leann went into the office. Leann had a lot to do to get things straightened out for us. She had to use her power of attorney for a few items. Steve let us know when he was outside that he had a friend with him. He'd need some help emptying out one of the rooms upstairs. While his friend was in the house, we stayed in our bedroom out of sight. By ten o'clock they'd emptied out one of the rooms, and started laying a lush carpet down in there. Around eleven thirty, he let me know they were leaving, and that he was going to meet his friend that worked in a lab. He wanted to hand over the four samples and leave strict instructions on comparisons, not to mention the tech's observations on the two swabs. I didn't say anything, but I hope he tried to put a rush on it.

When they got back to the house that night, Leann and Steve looked like they'd drop dead if given half a chance. Steve had stopped at a meat market and picked up a side of beef, poor guy had to lug it in by himself. 'Next time, pull your truck into the garage to unload, my jaw can hold a great deal more weight than your arms,' I told him.

"Good idea Bianca."

Another good idea I had was having the contractors show up over the weekend, so Steve and Leann wouldn't have to put in extra hours just to keep an eye on them. Handicap switches on the back gate, and a shallow septic tank, with a manhole in the top of it. Steve ended up covering that with a fake tree stump so it didn't look out of place. The purpose of it was, known only to us four, a place Marcos and I could do our business without having to leave the back gate. Hit the handicap switch to open it, and then again to close it, same with the one on the back gate.

I was so glad they got it all done on Saturday, as Sunday would be all to ourselves. Marcos and I were laying in the room with the new carpet, and I was thinking, 'I need to wake up human.' I guess I was thinking out loud, Marcos heard my thought, he too thought the same thing. We decided that we both needed to be thinking it until sleep overtook us.

Dreams that night were wicked, and a bit rough. I don't normally remember my dreams, what I do remember tends to be fleeting, and soon forgotten. I'm pretty certain I've never remembered more than one dream per night, and if I did remember more than one, it was due to waking up in the middle of the night, and then again in the morning. So it was strange to know that I was remembering more than one dream Saturday night.

The first dream I took as simply symbolic. It was Marcos and I chasing Jason and Emily from the site that we'd been transformed into the cats we now were. In the dream, we had already attained our cat forms. We didn't pursue them any further than the archway, so I have to assume at this point Jason and Emily still exist in some form, though we may never know.

The second dream was Marcos and I standing at the altar Luiz had told us about, that we never actually got around to looking at. We were in a human form, each of us holding the hands of two children that were no more than five years in age. The strange thing about it at the time, Marcos had an Asian Latino appearance, while I looked decidedly Latina.

In the third dream, Marcos and I had found that poaching was going on in our rainforest, this would not do. As the dream progressed, we tracked the poachers, cornered them, and left one alive, though he was certainly not that well off. However, we needed him to stay alive, so he could let others know that poaching wasn't going to be acceptable in our rainforest. A little telepathic nudge, so he knew if he said anything about "who" the protectors were, he'd suffer much more than the disfigurement we left him with.

The last dream I remembered, Luiz was back at the shrine, and telling his clients that it was unwise to touch anything while in the shrine. As he was doing so, some thugs ran up and tried to rob the guide and the tourists. Marcos, myself, and four of our nearly grown cubs came charging out of the shrine, and surrounded the would be robbers, their fear was almost tangible. Once they ran off, we were able to calm Luiz and his clients down. We extended our hospitality to the three of them to enter the shrine, letting Luiz know that he'd been our previous guide when we were Jason and Emily.

As I awoke, I could still smell the male, my mate. The scent had dissipated, but the lingering desire to be mounted and have our cubs was still there.