Today was about trust, so I squatted down in human form, eye level with her, and let her smell all over me while I stayed motionless. Her whiskers tickled my face, but I didn’t pull away.
“There’s a squirrel in a tree, watching us. Couple of trees behind you, on your left.” I wiggled the fingers of my right hand. “This side.” My owl knows right from left, but most wolves don’t. I didn’t know if Cheyenne’s cat would or not.
She chuffed, and I chuckled. “I know. Not much meat, but you’ll have fun catching him. He’s a little overweight, so he might not be terribly hard to get. I’ll go inside and bring some chicken out, then I’ll change.”
And I’d trust her cat not to eat the owl. He could fight her from above and inflict damage, but it would be hard to do much from the ground.
Chapter Seven
Cheyenne
The cat had three squirrels laid out on the ground by the time the human man came back with four cold, skinned chickens. Warm squirrel might not have as much meat on the bones, but it was so much better than cold, long-dead chicken.
When the human Cheyenne really wanted to give the cat a treat, she brought home a whole bunch of live chickens and put them in the backyard. Or bunnies, or goats. Goats were good to eat, but not much fun to chase.
I was in the back of the cat’s mind, watching, but I let her do what she wanted. She liked Frost, so I knew she wouldn’t hurt the owl.
I also knew we were going to practice changing in mid-leap and landing as a human. We’d never tried, and I had no idea if we could pull it off, but the cat and I were both in agreement about trying. The owl had impressed us with that trick.
My alter-ego is a Eurasian lynx. Females in the wild usually top out at around forty-five pounds, but I weigh nearly eighty pounds when I first shift, and a good bit more after I’ve eaten. I’m around five feet long. In other words, though a lynx is considered one of the mid-sized cats, I’m larger than some of the big cats. My family says we’re part of the Carpathian subspecies, which basically just means we’re bigger and prettier. Supposedly, that’s also why my cat’s coloring shows in my human hair. That usually happens with the fancy subspecies of shifter, and not the main group.
It’s likely because of her size, but people respect the cat. Wolves respect her. Birds respect her. The only animals that don’t show her respect are the huge cats like lions and tigers, and the largest of the bears. Probably the dragons — I’ve never been around one, but I figure it’s a safe assumption.
But Frost hadn’t smelled scared. He’d trusted us, and when he shifted to owl and stayed on the ground, I understood just how much he trusted us.
I picked one of the squirrels up with my mouth, walked it towards him, dropped it, and went back to my two. He bounced over and tore into it. Those talons were deadly. In a fight to the death, the cat would win almost every time, but probably not before the owl inflicted some damage.
The snowy owl is one of the largest of the owls — sometimes even larger than the great horned owl, and they’re supposedly more vicious. Frost’s wingspan was at least six feet wide, possibly bigger. He was around three feet tall, so he was nearly eye-to-eye while standing in front of the cat.
And speaking of his eyes, I’d expected them to be blue, but they were yellow. The cat didn’t care, but the human in the background wanted to paint them. Supposedly, diurnal owls have yellow eyes, and the ones who hunt at twilight have orange eyes. Snowy owls hunt during the day, not at night.
We polished off the squirrels and everything he’d brought outside, and then the cat followed him into the woods. He situated us at a fallen log so we could look down on the cabin. The cat crawled up under the overhang of the log, and the owl did the same near her tail.
Snowy owls are ground nesters, though they usually pick a spot on a hill, so they can see the surrounding area. That’d surprised me.
The cat was satisfied to laze in the shadow of the log, but the human in the back of the cat’s head grew concerned about