I have Nine Lives

Chapter 4: Observation

The black-furred cat female tribesman was running at her quickest speed towards the forest in her cat form, she was both looking forward to talking with Felix and also scared at the same time, she didn't know what he could do to her, he looked and felt very wild and foreign to her, his actions puzzled her a lot but her curiosity took the better of her.

Felix was traveling the forest at his own pace as he looked around for food, from time to time he would jump directly down from the trees and kill a horned rabbit by landing on it snapping its bones.

He became stronger and smarter and he started to think about ways on how to kill faster, however, most of the time he was still following his instincts and he didn't have any certain thoughts in his mind besides, needing to eat and sleep. His mind wasn't strong enough to compute any further thoughts yet.

Felix continued to eat and sleep until he was found by the black-furred cat, the cat approached him slowly and Felix looked at her the same way as he did before, he still wasn't sure who she was but since she wasn't a male cat he didn't attack her on the spot, he started to become rather territorial after staying in the forest for a few days.

The cat morphed into her human form and this startled Felix quite a lot, he immediately jumped up in the trees and started running away, but the now humanoid black cat started to chase after him with a speed that was quicker than his by quite a lot!

Felix didn't know what to do as he found himself in the woman's grasp, he tried to scratch her and he did succeed in drawing blood, but the woman frowned as she kept a tight grasp on Felix and she said:

"What's wrong with you, why are you acting like this?"

Felix didn't understand what she said so he still struggled in her grasp, the woman didn't know what to do as Felix continued struggling in her grasp, so she started to pet him, she knew that some of her clansmen had a weak spot on their heads that made them calm down if it was stroked.

Felix started to calm down after he was petted, it reminded him of the times on earth when he was a little kitten and the woman would come to him with milk.

Felix started purring as he closed his eyes, he just had a meal but he still felt hungry, but being pet felt nice, after the woman made sure Felix calmed down she introduced herself:

"My name is Sahee, I'm a new scout of the border cat tribe, do you understand me?"

Felix gave out a meow and Sahee shook her head as she looked down at him, she didn't know what he said at all!

Felix jumped down from her grasp as soon as she let her guard down, but he didn't run away from her anymore, she reminded him of the old lady that gave him dried squid, even though she smelled different to him, his developing brain associated her petting with the other woman's.

Felix started to hop from tree to tree and the woman followed him slowly, she wasn't sure what he wanted to do but she felt like he wanted for her to follow him.

Felix was quite hungry right now and he had a bigger target in mind, he wasn't sure why but he felt like he could take on something stronger when this woman was with him, he looked at her for a little time before he looked down from the tree they now stood in.

A big grey wolf was sunbathing a few meters below the tree, it was enjoying itself at the moment but suddenly his eyes opened as he started to smell the air, he felt that someone was spying on him!

Felix crouched on the tree branch that he sat on and the woman transformed into her cat form, Felix looked behind him and he wasn't sure why the woman from before disappeared and one of his kin appeared but he still felt like he could take on the grey wolf.

Felix didn't drop down from the tree as he watched the grey wolf look around and smell the air from time to time, he even looked up to the trees but he didn't find anything as both Felix and the black cat moved a little bit backward to make themselves invisible due to the heavy foliage.

Felix slowly made his way forward on the tree branch as the wolf let his guard down, he thought that it was just a false alarm.

Bam!

Felix dropped on his head as his claws went directly for his eyes, the black cat followed tacitly from behind as she morphed into her human form and claws grew out of her hands, the claws went directly into the wolf's neck killing it instantly.

Sahee was breathing quickly as she looked at her first kill, the canine clans were a heavy enemy of their feline clans, it would be a great honor if word came out of her victory against such an opponent, but she wouldn't have been able to kill it alone, she looked down at Felix and her eyes widened as she saw him quickly chew through the wolf's heavy and thick body, he was just like a meat-grinding machine as the wolf's meat started to quickly disappear into his seemingly limitless stomach!

Sahee didn't know what to say as she watched him devour the wolf carcass in minutes, most of the tribesmen wouldn't eat this much in weeks!

The cat tribe didn't need to eat much due to their weak constitutions, but from what she could see, Felix ate around the same quantity as the bear tribe did!

Felix finished the wolf in around 5 minutes, the energy from the wolf was higher than the one from the snake, Felix and Sahee were both lucky as they took him by surprise, if the wolf morphed into his humanoid form, there was a high chance of both of them being killed.

Felix started to get sleepy as the energy from the wolf started to travel around his whole body cleansing and strengthening it from the inside to the outside, he slowly swayed until he fell to the ground as he started to sleep soundly, the energy from the wolf was extremely strong to the point that he couldn't even find a safe place before he was knocked out by it, his instincts also told him that Sahee was someone he could trust, so he fell like a sack of potatoes.

Sahee thought there was something wrong with him as she quickly got near him and checked his pulse, but then she realized he was just sleeping, she tried to shake him awake but nothing happened, he was sleeping like a stone, she didn't know why he suddenly went asleep, could the wolf have had a poisonous gene? Most unlikely, grey wolves had almost no chance of developing poisonous genes.

The woman took Felix into her arms and looked around, she gritted her teeth as she started running out of the forest in her human form.

Most of the time, traveling was done into one's animal form when it came to the small and weaker tribes, their smaller animal form would give them an advantage at hiding if anything cropped up during their travels, only those strong enough or daring enough would travel using their humanoid form.

Sahee couldn't drag him around using her small cat form so she had to use her human form to take him back to the tribe.

While Sahee was putting her life in peril to get them to the cat tribe where they would be relatively safe, Felix was dreaming.

A small kitten ran towards an old Japanese woman that was making sounds of "pss, pss, pss", it was a small orange kitten that was quite skinny, the kitten meowed loudly as it looked at the woman, the woman had a small smile on her face as she took a bowl out of the bag that she was carrying with her and a bottle of milk she put the bowl down and then filled it with milk.

Time passed and the woman came with meat and other products for the cat as it grew up, the woman would even come with toys to play with him from time to time, sometimes he would be sad when he was expecting the woman to come and she wouldn't due to the heavy weather.

The kitten grew up into a fat orange tabby cat that liked to laze around, but due to the circumstances when the woman didn't come to feed him, he learned how to hunt and survive on his own.

Felix looked around as he felt something wasn't right, a gigantic red rock was suddenly dropping from the sky, the woman that he knew and liked suddenly grabbed him and kept him safe, he looked up at her pained face as a little bit of blood dripped from her chin, she gritted her teeth as she turned her head a little and looked up, suddenly her eyes started to shine as she used her last strength to throw him...

Darkness, that was what he saw, for the time being, a lot of darkness.

Felix started to have questions, he was the one who saw all of this happening? What were those images, were them his memories?

Due to the heavy influx of energy from the wolf, Felix's brain was rapidly gaining sentience to the point that his brain rivaled an average 18-year-old human, some would think that this meant he wouldn't be smart, but how many 18-year-olds would go through what Felix went up till now and not put up some questions?

Felix felt that something wasn't right with himself, he tried to move but he couldn't, he felt pain through his whole body when he tried to move so he stopped trying, some type of voice in his head was screaming to him to just let it be and wait so he went ahead and did what the voice told him.

The voice was none other than his animal instincts, even though his brain improved, his instincts didn't die out as he started as a normal animal, even though his brain could be considered to be rusty compared to the average being in this new world, atleast he started to think for himself.

Felix woke up groggily after his body didn't ache anymore, as he looked up and saw Sahee's bleeding face, she was struggling to get up as two burly figures were blocking the road ahead of them, it was the two bears from before!

Sahee glared at the both of them as she said with a shaking voice:

"Why are you doing this to me, the treaty between tribes said..."

The bears both gave out a big laugh as they said:

"Sheila, this little cat thinks the treaty applies to their trashy tribe as well, very funny don't you think?"

"Yes Bugi, what a comedian little cat we have on our hands, and look she has an injured comrade in her arms, isn't this a two in one situation?"

Stronger races liked to bully weaker races, it was a world where natural selection prevailed, after all, all of the beings in this world evolved from animals, however, the evolution removed most of their animalistic instincts in favor of giving them intelligence, with the intelligence, came pride, greed, lust and other emotions that weren't that good for the interracial relations.

Sahee gritted her teeth as she tried to get up but the male bear put a hand on her shoulder and a breaking sound could be heard, he looked closely to Felix who was still feigning that he was sleeping and said:

"Wait a little bit, this cat looks familiar, Sheila didn't we see a similar corpse a few days ago? Very strange."

Sheila got a little bit closer as she eyed Felix's body and she said:

"Yes that's right he is very similar but how?"

Before she could say anything else, Felix sprang up from Sahee's embrace, with a quick flick of his claws that were way sharper than before due to the bodily improvement from the strange energy in his body, his claws went directly into Sheila's eyes who was nearer to him due to her wanting to inspect him better.

Sheila growled and shouted in pain as her eyeballs were slashed out and blood started to seep out from her now eyeless holes, she started to attack randomly as a punch hit Bugi who was near her and made him fall to the ground.

Sahee grabbed Felix and she started to run away at high speed, even though her arm was broken her legs were still ok.

Both Sheila and Bugi were extremely disoriented after what happened, so before they could hold their gather their bearings, both Felix and Sahee disappeared on the horizon as they rushed to the cat tribe location.

Bugi got up from the ground as he looked at Sheila with pained eyes, she was blind now!

He growled as he stopped her from rampaging by hugging her and whispering in her ears:

"It's ok Sheila, I will make sure the clan chief will raze the cat tribe to the ground, you understand me!"

Instead of tears, blood came out of her eye holes, she knew that she didn't have much time before she bled to death as Bugi held her close to his body, her pulse became weaker and weaker, Bugi's eyes started to water as he held her close to his body and waited for the inevitable.

After a short while Sheila's pulse stopped forever as her body grew cold and pale, the bear tribe's clansman was dead, killed by a cat tribe clansman!

Bugi hugged her body as he carried it princess-style towards the settlement of the bear tribe to give her a proper burial on her people's land, he muttered to himself with a dark expression as he looked towards the cat tribe's location:

"You will regret this..."

Tears dropped non stop from his eyes as he said this, he thought that he stopped crying but his eyes betrayed him, and remembered a saying 'even a rat would bite once cornered'.

Bugi frowned as he walked back towards the tribe and thought about how they should handle the cat tribe, but it wasn't his place to say anything, only the leader could command the tribe's fighters...

He didn't know if the leader would act if he knew that they were the ones who provoked them first, after all, the bear tribe would only accept fair leaders.

Bugi's emotions were clouding his thoughts, he only wanted revenge for his mate and he didn't think what would happen if two tribes went to war.