*** This short story is in the modern fantasy genre. ***

Cooper And The Cats

(Erotic Version)

The dog was barking again.

Cooper frowned, knowing he'd have to walk all the way across the room to reach the television set and manually turn up the volume. He hated modern TVs, especially ones that had remote controls that went bad after only seven months, or precisely one month after the warranty expired.

Not that it mattered much, the old man knew. The TV's speaker was so small and sounded so tinny that even if he turned the sound to its maximum setting, it still wouldn't drown out the dog's infernal barking.

He cleared the thick phlegm in his throat by grunting and swallowing, then bellowed out, "Will you shaddap!"

Of course, the brown and white mongrel ignored him.

So much for the eight o'clock news, Cooper sighed, standing up on legs that weren't quite so sturdy any more. He shuffled over to the TV. After shutting it off, the man made his way to the front door.

"What's the big idea?" Cooper yelled out through the saggy screen door. "Rambo, what are you barking at, boy?"

The dog, half boxer and half who knew what the hell else, whimpered back in his direction for a few moments. After this, it resumed it riotous chorus.

Since the back of Cooper's yard bordered the incline of a small ravine, there were always raccoons or skunks for the strong-lunged canine to bark at. Or squirrels. Or trees that cast shadows in the moonlight.

"Rambo, enough!"

Whatever it was, Cooper thought, it was bound to keep him and his bothersome neighbors up half the night. He sure didn't want the local sheriff visiting him again, and issuing him another warning for 'Noise Pollution.'

Cooper kicked open the screen door, but since the former handyman had installed a tightly wound spring on it recently, he hadn't quite made it outside before the darn thing slammed into the side of this body. Angrily, Cooper kicked the door a second time, and this time he made it completely out. He grumbled as he ambled down the half a dozen steps. "Guess you're staying inside tonight, boy. That's the only way we're keeping the neighbors off our backs."

Rambo started panting expectantly.

"Guess it is kind of cool out here tonight." Cooper considered the weather as he untied the mutt. "You can sleep on the rug, but I don't want you jumping on the bed, ya hear?"

As soon as the dog was let loose, it urged Cooper to come along with it and investigate whatever it had smelled out there, among the trees.

Cooper, however, had already turned and was heading to the back door.

Rambo yelped and barked and whimpered, hoping something, anything, would convince the old man to follow.

"Nuthin' doin'." Cooper was wise to the dog's tricks. "You can stay out here all night or you can come inside." He held the door open and motioned in. "Now, what's it gonna be? You make up yer mind right now, before all the mosquitoes start comin' in."

Casting one last, longing look into the night, the dog relented and trotted inside.

Before he shut the back door, Cooper thought he heard screeching.

"Sounded like a cat, huh?" He asked out loud. "That what you were barking at, Rambo? Some stupid cat out there? Lord knows, we have enough of them skulkin' around here, what with Mrs. Grant adoptin' all sorts of them from the pound. Hope they ain't out humpin,' otherwise none of us is getting any sleep tonight."

Rambo simply stared back at him and kept wagging its tail.

The next morning, Cooper let the dog out to do its business. As soon as it finished, Rambo galloped to the edge of the yard and started up its infernal yapping.

"What is it this time?" Cooper asked from the steps.

The dog stared into the trees and barked. It made as if it were going to leave without him, then reconsidered and pleaded.

"You're a stubborn ol' bastard, aren't you?" Cooper rubbed his grizzled head. "And I know how you get, too. You won't be giving me a moment's peace until you have your way, are you?"

The dog lowered its head in the direction of the ravine.

"Oh, all right." The old man caved in. "Let's get this over with. The walk'll do good for my heart, anyway." He started trudging through the yard, as fast as his weary legs could manage.

Knowing the old man's pace, Rambo would run ahead a few yards, before coming back to circle the man twice. Tirelessly, the dog kept this up as its master made tiny spurts of progress.

"Wish I had half your energy." Cooper surmised. "Bet I could climb myself a mountain if I did."

Taking his time, the old man carefully made his way down the ravine until he reached the bottom. Sometimes after a hard rain, a small creek would run down the middle of the ravine, but it hadn't come down like that in a good long while. Still, there were plenty of hardy trees and chaparral all over. Their leaves and sticks cluttered up the ground and hid the dips and bumps, effectively making the stroll less than ideal.

Rambo jumped over the creek as if it still had water in it, and waited for Cooper on the other side.

"I'm coming."

The dog trotted off to one direction, barking excitedly and bounding past the shrubs. Finally, it halted and started sniffing something on the ground.

It took Cooper a long minute to reach the spot, and what he came upon made him uneasy. There was a dead cat there, a gray and white creature. Its face and body were lacerated with cuts. "Look's like one of Mrs. Grant's, don't it, boy?"

The dog bolted off again.

Reluctantly, Cooper departed from the grisly scene. "What's got into you, boy?"

He soon found out what. About thirty feet further, he came upon another dead cat. This one had fur colored in black, with an orange tinge to it.

Cooper bent down to investigate. "Looks like it got killed the same way as the last one." The old man noticed the cat's claws were still unsheathed, and bloody. "It must have been some hell of a fight." He hadn't paid attention to the first cat's claws. "Wonder if they were fighting each other."

The dog urged him further.

Soon enough, he came to a small clearing where he discovered three more cats, all fresh kills, all dispatched in the same brutal fashion. Both the cats and the terrain showed signs of a fierce struggle.

"Mighty strange." Cooper commented, glancing at the dog warily. "Now before you start headin' off again, I'm aimin' to go back to the house and get my shotgun. I don't know what's killed off these cats, but they weren't killed for food, that's for sure, and whatever did it might still be out there."

The dog seemed to understand this. It kept close by Cooper's side as he walked back home.

"Couldn't have been kids," He extrapolated. "Maybe a fox, but then he would have eaten at least one of them. Guess a bear could have done it, too. Except I've never seen cats ganging up on anything, not like that." He paused to look up at the sky. "Maybe it was aliens, boy. I heard they've been going after cows and sheep and such. But no, these cats aren't mutilated or nuthin'. They just look like they were on the losin' side of a big battle."

It might have taken him twenty minutes to come back, armed with an old Mossberg 835 and a pocket full of three-inch shells. "Hope this'll do the trick." Cooper was glancing around nervously. "Most I've ever done with this thing is hunt ducks. Anything bigger than that might just get more pissed off than it was last night, so you be ready to bolt on out of here. Don't you try to be no hero, Rambo."

Cooper hoped he wasn't about to run into some Bigfoot or something. He checked the air, glad that the calm breeze wasn't blowing in the direction they were going.

Rambo sniffed around, and suddenly, sat down and stared straight ahead. Just like he'd been trained to a couple of years back.

"Whatever it is, it's up there, huh?" Cooper whispered. He checked the breeze again, confirmed that it hadn't changed, and crept along a line of chaparral until he found a space he could crawl through on his belly. Getting down into the dirt was the tough part. "I'm getting too old for this stuff, boy."

Cooper shuffled his body forward, quietly and expertly, not making a sound that might warn whatever was on the other side. What he saw, at first he simply didn't believe.

He witnessed a small clearing, and some fifteen cats were sitting right there in the middle of it. They were all common house cats, with gray or white or black fur, or a combination thereof. Many of them exhibited the wounds and scars from recent fighting, and they were all facing in the same direction.

What was most bizarre was that all of these cats had their eyes closed and were purring rhythmically. They were bowing and lifting their butts in the air much as prostrated Muslims would when praying.

And the object of their worship was yet another feline. No ordinary cat, this oddly hued specimen had light orange fur, spotted with darker orange and black circles, and was endowed with a long ringed tail. Its head was majestically striped, and its bold green eyes took in the scene with a regal calm that was startling for a mere animal.

Cooper searched his mind for the name of such a magnificent creature, recalling the many wildlife shows he'd watched throughout his life. An ocelot, he recalled, finally.

An ocelot that was being worshipped as a god would, by followers that would wage war and murder their own kind. It was an abomination to everything Cooper had ever believed in. An abomination that he meant to put an end to.

The old man thought to blast that aberration to Kingdom Come. As he lifted his shotgun, ready to pump the shells, he became aware that the ocelot was already aware of him. The cat stood up from its rest, and incredibly, it began to walk toward him on its feline legs, walking just like a human would.

The damned thing grew as it approached him, becoming twice as large, and then twice as large as that. The old man felt his heart speed up, a very bad thing considering his shaky health, but what other choice did his heart have? The goddamned ocelot was as tall as he was now. Its face was almond shaped with large, studying eyes, and it had long whiskers, and pointed ears atop its head.

The old man made a mistake, when his gaze traveled away from the feline face, down its neck and to its chest. The fur there was much lighter, and he saw bulges in it, two of them, still growing with clearly seen, aroused nipples on the end.

"What the hell are you?" He asked, leveling the shotgun at the monster's belly.

Without a care in the world, the now human-shaped ocelot swung it arm out and pushed the weapon's barrel away. It could have taken that shotgun and shot him with it, he figured, as he was too transfixed by its metamorphosis to react.

It spoke to the old man, but of course he had no inkling of what cat language was. All hear heard was gentle rumbles and quick sniffs.

Where the hell was his dog?

The old man took a step back, afraid to turn his head in case the ocelot started up some other trick on him. He scanned left, then right, but Rambo was nowhere to be seen. One of the cats whimpered in an odd way. As the old man examined the cat's fur, he saw that it was the exact same shade as Rambo's. The odd cat was looking at him the same way his dog would.

Impossible, the old man thought, but hardly had he finished having this notion that his dog was gone and a cat had taken its place, when the big feline standing in front of him stretched her arms out and embraced him. It, she, was going to kill him, he feared at first. But she didn't kill him, or at least not yet, as she sniffed at his neck and cheek the way cats usually sniff their food.

Mrs. Grant's pests were always in his yard, sniffing around like that whenever he had Rambo inside the house. The cats made it a point to intrude into the open space behind his house, as if to deliberately taunt his dog. Well, over the last couple of years, the old man had figured out a way to piss them off so they wouldn't return. He'd set out something the cats would like, provoking them to come closer so they could have their little sniffs, but right in the middle of that he'd set some old cheese. The old man would have himself a good laugh, as he watched the cats come up and get a good whiff, and right away make like they were about to throw up.

"Boy, oh, boy, I wish I had some old cheese on me right now." He muttered, as the big feline still held him, sniffing his flesh, and even giving him short, little licks. Yup, she was going to eat him, he figured. She sure was big enough to.

But she didn't eat him, and she didn't kill him. She pulled the shotgun away and let it fall to the ground, absently as if her attention was fully focused on him. The little licks kept getting closer to his mouth, repelling his mind, but he knew how cats behaved. If he tried to run, she'd probably chase him and shove him to the ground. She'd probably play with him until he croaked, or until she got tired of pawing him with her claws, like cats did to mice or squirrels they caught.

The ocelot scented him, but he was also scenting her. She had a smell, a rich and powerful smell that reminded him of musky, sweaty sex. The old man was still trying to understand what that smell meant for him, when the feline's bumpy tongue slipped over his lips, and into his mouth. She didn't kiss him; she probably didn't know how. What she did was poke that little tongue into his mouth, dragging it over his saliva as if it had a taste to it. Those whiskers, that fur on her face, those took some getting used to, but the soft feel of her body, her sensual scent, and even her soft purrs made it tolerable.

"Cat's aren't supposed to be the size of people." The old man murmured, when the feline pulled away to study his face. "I'm not talking about the big hunters, either. I'm talking about cats the size of ocelots."

She spoke again, but the old man was as close to deciphering her meaning as he'd been the first time. He felt her hands caressing his back, over his shirt. The shirt was tucked in, but she must have had something like fingers, as she pulled it out of his pants. Her hands weren't exactly human hands, but they weren't paws, either. They were a sort of cross between the two. The old man knew this because those parts of her went under his shirt, touching his bare skin.

"This ain't normal." He said, with a dry mouth.

The big cat began tugging at his shirt. When it didn't come off right away, she used more force.

"You want it off, that it?" The old man asked. "Well, I don't want you to tear it! I only have a handful of good shirts left!" He broke her hold, wondering if he should make a run for it. But no, he was too old and there were all those dead cats lying around to think about. Maybe those cats were dead because they had disobeyed her.

He pulled his shirt off, revealing his old, leathery skin and his short tufts of gray hair on his chest. "Just so you know, you haven't caught me at my Sunday best."

The ocelot-woman didn't seem to care. She sniffed at his bare shoulder, and at the top part of his chest, before she started licking him again. What was it with these cat-women, anyway? Did they have a thing for an old man's saliva and sweat? It had to be something like that, since cats were always licking their own fur all the time.

If this was an old woman, he probably would have run off and left her standing there. That's how embarrassed the old man was about his aging frame. He'd been healthy once, and strong, but that was a long time ago. The reason he stayed, he figured, was because it wasn't an old woman but an aberration. The feline's non-humanness made their interaction acceptable.

When she licked lower on his chest, around his nipples, he took a chance and touched her furry breasts. They were warm and aroused, he felt, or sense, or scented, or something to that effect. The feline grew more animated and amorous as he touched her body, she purred louder, and mewled while staring into his eyes.

The old man smirked and let out a few chuckles. He'd heard all about what aliens did with people. There was that case in Brazil, where aliens invaded some random guy's house. They drank his beer and watched a soccer match with him. There was another time, but he didn't remember where it happened, where two tall Nordic beauties had seduced another man for an entire night.

He was feeling up a nice set of tits, furry but still nice. When the almond face came in closer, he accepted the short tongue, and kissed her in return. The feline's movements accelerated in accord with her rising excitement. She rubbed her chest against his. She raised her leg against his outer thigh. She brought their hips together, letting him know exactly where she wanted to go next.

"Sorry, but the plumbing doesn't work anymore." The old man said, sheepishly. "It was all the smoking that did me in."

She turned around, rubbing her furry ass against the front of his pants. The old man felt like he was sitting in a strip club with a fistful of twenties. The ringed tail was up and out of the way, brushing against his bare stomach. It wiggled right along with the rest of her.

Maybe she was magical, because he hadn't had a pecker in decades and here she was making him stand up at attention. The old man felt it pushing against his pants, and she knew it was there, as she rubbed her butt right in front of it.

"All right, if I have wood, I might as well use it." The old man resolved, undoing the front of his pants. He was cognizant that the familiar cat, which had once been his familiar dog, was still sitting there watching them. "Rambo, you turn away now. I don't want you seeing any of this. It might traumatize you or something."

Obediently, the familiar cat sidled away to face in another direction.

The old man pulled his pants halfway down his thighs, and sure enough, he had freed Willy, and Willy was revving to get started. He grabbed the feline's sides, pulling her as close as he could get her. She was still gyrating her ass on him. Furry ass or not, he was excited enough to reach between their bodies, holding his erection for the first time in a long time, and aiming it at the weirdest female he'd ever seen. He gasped at their intimate introduction; she mewled.

He would never tell anyone about this, not even his last two drinking buddies. Well, he might tell them if he got drunk enough to become boastful, because he had something to brag about for once in his life. He would say, oh, yeah, them aliens were down there in the creek that time, and I got a hold of one of their women, and I showed her a thing or two! Mars might need women, but these alien girls, they need men, and how!

He could fuck her. If he wanted to, he could simply shut his eyes and pretend he was doing the dirty with a hairy woman, real hairy. Sure, it would be hard to imagine away that long tail that kept sliding across his chest, like a prehensile monkey tail even, and he couldn't ignore the obvious feline purrs she made... Screw it, he thought. He would fuck her and do it knowingly, and he wouldn't pretend he was doing anything else with anybody else.

She was tall, her legs strong enough to take his motions without needing something to hold on to. Her stability made him want to go faster, and he did. He wanted to plunge into this cat-woman from the stars... Wait a minute. Maybe she wasn't from space, but from the Hollow Earth. Maybe she'd drunk radioactive waste and had mutated into the form she had now... Maybe...

"Enough!" The old man grunted. "Just give it to her, because you only get wood like this once in a blue moon! Give it to her so good she'll go back to wherever it is she came from and tell all the other cat-woman about me!"

And he did. He pushed into her fanatically, shaking her furry body from head to toe, while she did her best to stay in the same spot. He got her crying out like a cat in heat... Well, because she was a cat in heat! He squeezed those furry cat-tits and breathed onto the back of her cat-head, until his body tightened up for that memorable split second, and then it was all over for him. He gushed out a river and a half of fluid, huffing away until he went empty. He shook, and she shook, and when the tremors subsided, they were both panting and spent.
She pulled away, taking one last look at him over her shoulder. Then she leapt, she actually leapt, into the air. When she landed, it was on feline legs that propelled her far into the brush and trees. Her cat army fled with her.

"Wham, bam, thank you ma'am, and thank you very much!" The old man grinned. "Ya'll come back now, you hear!" He was grinning as he composed his clothes, but he stopped when he saw his faithful pet lying there, still in cat form. He looked back in the direction his cat lover had gone. "Can I have my dog back?"

No reply was seen or heard.

"Well, shit." The old man grumbled. "Come on, Rambo. Let's go home."

The humiliated former dog whimpered and followed.

The old man was bouncy and happy as he returned to his house. He walked a lot faster than usual. He attributed all of this good feeling to the fact that he hadn't gotten laid in a good while. When he walked inside, he made sure Rambo came in with him.

"I need a shower, boy." He said, shedding clothes all over so he'd end up naked when he got to the bathroom. He didn't care where the clothes landed, as nobody lived with him to complain about it.

The old man was a little dumbstruck, when he took his first look into the mirrored front of the medicine cabinet. He looked ten years younger, at least.

"It's an illusion." He decided. "I'll wake up from this fantastic dream I just had, and everything will be back to normal. You hear that, Rambo? Come morning, you'll be your old self again." This disheartened him a little bit. "And so will I."

After his shower, he fed his pet. Rambo was okay with eating dog kibble, despite that he wasn't a dog anymore.

"It's late." The old man scratched his head. "We must have spent the entire day out there, huh? I could have sworn it was only a couple of hours."

As he made his way to bed, Rambo followed, as if the animal was scared of sleeping alone. The cat jumped on the bed and curled up next to its master.

"Tomorrow, you'll be on the floor again." The old man told it. "I'm only making an exception tonight because I'm dreaming that some witch cast a magic spell on you. You'll see, everything will be right side up again when we get up."

Past midnight, the old man was woken up by a loud, angry mewl. It scared him for a good second, until he remembered that Rambo was no longer a dog that could bark.

"What is it, boy?" The old man asked. "What are you scenting out there?"

The cat did not leave the bed; it would be up to the old man to find out. He went to grab his shotgun, until he remembered he'd left it out there in the woods.

"I've got to remember to go grab it tomorrow." He grumbled, already frowning at the long walk his tired legs would have to go on. He left the bed and ambled his way over to click the light on.

Rambo jumped off the bed. The old man followed it through the house, toward the back door. It stopped just as it had been trained to, sitting up and facing the direction he'd caught the scent coming from.

"Too bad you can't bark anymore." The old man grumbled. "You can annoy the shit out of anything when you get to barking like you do."

He turned on the back light and peered out a window. Out there behind the house, he saw two cat-women instead of one. The orange ocelot was there, ahead of the other. The second cat-woman had darker fur. She looked like a different kind of cat, maybe a lynx or something, but the old man couldn't be sure. He'd have to think about all those animal shows he watched, because he didn't think lynxes had dark fur like that.

"Looks like she brought a friend along." The old man chuckled. "Didn't I tell you, Rambo? Didn't I tell you I was going to give it to her good?"

He unlocked his back door to let them in.