FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The Good Cat

By Nicolaus and Dark Violet

WARNING: Contains themes of Soft Vore and Fatal Vore!

What made a Pokémon... sapient?

Avery's mind worked over the question as he ambled down the forest trail. He stepped over a root, the Persian's pale pads already dusty with the brown dirt of the trail.

It was mid-evening -- his favorite time to venture into the wilderness. The oppressive heat of the Oklahoman daytime still hung in the air, a clinging humidity that only nighttime would bring down. But it was beautiful here. The setting sun shone through the bright, young green-yellow leaves of springtime, casting an undulating spackle of golden light over ferns, flowers and shrubs in a beautiful verdant understory. Songbirds and cicadas called in the distance over the rustle of the wind in the boughs.

And wasn't that part of it? Singing? All bird Pokémon -- Pidgeys, for example -- sang and twittered and chirped. But not all of them talked.

Avery ducked under a branch, peeling away from the main trail and slipping between a couple of bushes. There were tracks here of smaller 'mon, between dead leaves and mossy stones. He deftly stepped around the driest of the piles. The shifting leaves raised the floral, vibrant scents of the undergrowth -- all the plants and animals, and Pokémon, that lived around him.

It had to be talking, right? People debated it endlessly, but that dividing line wasn't a rare choice. The gift of speech separated the Pokémon who counted as people, and the Pokémon that still counted as ... not.

His eyes flicked to a sudden twitch of the upper boughs of a tree, and he stopped, fixing his gaze at it. His still body would be hidden in the dappled sunlight...

It's such an easy line, too. Without it, where would it stop? Were Caterpies sapient? Millipedes? Flowers? No. It would be different if they talked, but they didn't, so...

Wasn't that all there was to it?

He'd reached the same point in his thinking twenty minutes ago, and here he was again, just more worn and tired. And yet the curdling doubt in his gut assailed him as powerfully as ever. He wanted to massage his belly, ease it away, but to move his paws would --

There. Movement, again. He dropped down a few inches from the ground, one paw still half-raised, carefully rolling his slender tail out behind him for balance. A lower branch was moving now. The leafy end waved in a way that couldn't just be a passing breeze.

Avery's ears flicked forwards. He twitched his jowls upwards, taking in the scents around him, the earthy aromas and the spice of adrenaline and trepidation above them. His claws extended, the forest air feeling cool around his digits. One false move would give everything away, but he would never make one; even his breath was merely a whisper beneath the wind.

He narrowed his eyes, trying to close off his thoughts, to focus just on that branch, and the flickering movements behind the leaves. Focus -- the long scar on his cheek was a testament to how important such vigilance was. Focus, now...

Flutter...

The singular Pidgey alighted from the branch and dropped onto the dry leaves of the forest floor. It leaned its round, beige body down and pecked between the underbrush.

Avery's hind legs tensed. He took in a slow, deep breath, his heart racing silently in his chest.

One more swell of nagging doubt rumbled from his belly --

...This was nature. Some wildlife were predators. Some were prey. Wasn't that how it went?

...

He leapt. The Pidgey had a fleeting instant to spread its wings. Then it all came down to Avery's outstretched claws -- and his wide open maw.

~o~o~o~

A glorious dawn shone on Café Plaisir the next morning. The sun was only just rising above the horizon, and all the flat glass windows of the southern facade glinted uniformly in the light. Avery circled around to that side of the building, like he always did after a trip to the woods. It felt right to enter his workplace by the front doors. He felt less like he was skulking.

The Persian strolled in through the front doors just like any other commuting waiter. He smiled to the Lopunny receptionist on the way downstairs, nodded at his Pokémon co-workers in the dorm hallways -- and all the while, his chest was still buzzing. He knew what he'd been up to the night before.The energy of the encounter coursed through his body. No need for a complimentary breakfast from the waiter's lounge today -- Avery couldn't have felt more delightfully sated.

All the same, his time in the staff showers felt inevitably like a cleansing-off of the entire past night. He stood under the spray of hot water, eyes closed, a blanket of calm, watery white-noise surrounding him, becoming a welcoming little island of solitude. As the seconds passed, the residues of the forest drained out of his shampooed fur, all the little scents flowing off him and down the pipes, along with the last little bits of foreign fluff in his paw pads.

He tried not to think about that last bit too hard -- just focusing, instead, on the washing away. Maybe Avery's body had taken a big dose of energy, and maybe it felt good, but there was no pride in that ... thing ... he'd done out there.

It was better to move on. Go back to normal. Do his day's work.

Just as Avery finished the rinse, a familiar, male voice called in from the doorway. "G'mornin', Ave. Have a nice night out?"

The Persian's shoulders tensed, and he had to will them to relax. "Ceylon," he called out as he reared up blindly for the shower knob. The water stopped, and the cold of the room cut through his wet fur. It rather matched the chill that Ceylon had just put through his heart with that line.

He shook himself off, partly to play off his lingering stiffness, partly because he was soaking wet. At least now he could open his eyes.

The Luxray stood as resplendently as ever by the doorway of the shower block. A tall, powerful, beautifully groomed electric lion, all black and blue and yellow -- always tasteful, always debonair. The winning smile on his face. His underside wasn't visible from here.

Avery looked at him for what he realized must be a little too long. He glanced away, but the questions were already swimming around his head again, as they had the past few weeks. Could he be...?

"Here." Ceylon interrupted Avery's thoughts by picking up a white towel and lobbing it straight at him. It opened up midair and landed like a blanket on his entire front half.

"Thanks," intoned Avery dully through the fabric. He stepped off the wet part of the tiles and sat before the larger feline to start drying himself properly. It gave him a good excuse not to look Ceylon in the face while he spoke. "Yes. I had a nice time sleeping under the stars."

"I'd love to go out again with ya. If we could get the chance." Ceylon smiled warmly at him. "I mean, I know, alone time matters. Especially in a place like this. You just know how to make a nature walk feel nice."

Except when you and I go out together, it really is just a nature walk. He managed another glance up at him, and couldn't stop his gaze flitting across the Luxray's body. This fellow cat, this sharp-fanged predator, so friendly and fine of form... and perhaps even with a curve to his own belly? The toothy grins, the indulgence in being so feline. Instincts were instincts, and cats were cats, and so... was he... also...?

He wasn't quite ready yet for that though. A change of topic was in the air all the same, and he smiled back as he worked the towel down his waist. "Surprised to see you up this early," he mused as he continued the nice, practiced motions, getting his fur as clean and dry as could be. "Did you have an early night?"

"Heh! Late night's more like it. I think I got all of two hours of sleep. Customers, y'know? Can't live with 'em, can't live with 'em."

"Is that how the saying goes?" asked Avery as he finished up drying. He tried his best to toss his towel casually into the hamper at the end of the room, so naturally, the towel landed on the edge and slid off onto the floor. Thankfully, nobody but Ceylon was looking as he slunk over there to fix it.

Being around Ceylon did seem to have this comically deflating effect on his feline dignity, though. Maybe it was a good thing.

Out in the corridor, Ceylon said, "It's really heating up outside, isn't it? I was a little worried about you. Heatstroke's nothing to joke about."

"Eh. I'm not worried." Avery fell into step alongside the Luxray as they ambled in the general direction of the stairs.

"You know, I actually get customers now and again asking me to take 'em out into the woods," Ceylon continued, affable as ever. "I just go deep enough that we can't see the treeline, and they think we're in a Safari Zone. But there's -- especially for humans -- such a slim little time of year when they're not too hot and not too cold being outside in the nude. Often as not, they're real messes when we get back."

Avery, despite himself, smirked a little and said, "Dude. Taking customers out there is the dream. I know I'd like it if it happened. Even once."

Their conversation fell into a brief lull. The stairs were coming up.

... Okay. He could do this.

"So..." Avery said, instantly aware how the silence he'd left was a bit too long. "I... actually did see something that made me think."

"Oh, what's that?"

"When I was out in the woods last night. I found a ... I dunno if there's a technical term for it. The empty shell of a Turtwig. I found a Turtwig shell."

This was a half-truth. Avery had seen such a thing in the woods -- about seven months earlier. He didn't want anything he said to Ceylon to be a lie.

"Oh...?" Ceylon said, pausing and glancing back at him with slightly narrowed eyes. What was that? Worry? Concern...? "Something happened to it, then?"

Avery nodded, lowering his head in a feral shrug. "I guess so."

Ceylon turned away, and then let out a sigh. Was that hesitation a little too long? "I suppose... that just happens out there sometimes, doesn't it?"

Avery stared at the back of his head, heart thumping in his ears. "... Yeah, I guess, I just..."

Ceylon's tail bumped into Avery's side as it drifted from side to side. "I wouldn't dwell on it too much, mate. Happens more often than some would like to think, you know?"

Avery's breath quickened. 'I wouldn't dwell on it' -- a dismissal, saying it wasn't a problem. Would that be what he'd say, if someone broached the topic to him? "Yeah, that's true. And after all, it's..."

Ceylon glanced back at him, a slight frown to his red eyes, one eyebrow raised.

Avery stumbled. It's just a Turtwig, was what he wanted to say. He'd been planning to say it! But if he didn't, then...

"It's..." Avery started again, mouth hanging open. "... it's nothing we can do anything about. Right?"

Ceylon tilted his head and nodded. "Yeah. Probably just a wild Skarmory or something, doing what they do." He started up the stairs. "Don't worry your handsome head about it, mate."

Avery nodded with a broad smile, fangs secretly biting into his lips. They climbed back up to Plaisir's ground floor, and headed towards the Main Bar. Their shifts awaited -- a long day of work to keep Avery busy.

Maybe it would quieten the conversation replaying in his mind.

~o~o~o~

It was almost 3 PM when Avery nosed in through the door of his apartment. Where had his energy gone? He'd started the day with so much.

The walk home was part of it. With no car on his license and no nearby stop on the bus route, Avery had to trek on foot through the sweltering heat of daytime all the way back to his low-rise. Just over a mile, along roasting hot sidewalks with no shade against the blistering sun. He had to wear a set of black socks on his feet just to keep his paw pads from getting burned. When he finally arrived, the apartment door felt heavier than normal.

All the same, home was a safe haven. A quiet place, with no noisy neighbors or unexpected antics. He needed it.

Inside the front door was a simple, sparsely-furnished studio apartment. A kitchen filled up the left wall, low surfaces clean, the range coated with a fine layer of dust. Besides that, it was just a couple of clear-and-white plastic storage drawer units, his round bed on the floor, and a coffee table with his laptop. The thick navy-blue curtains were perpetually drawn, leaving the room comfortably dim on his feline eyes. Best of all, the air was cool.

Still better than living in the basement dorms at work, he thought, as he frequently did when he laid eyes on this place.

He took the socks off, almost stumbling on the way, and went about the motions of hydrating and cleaning up in weary silence. Normally, he'd take this time to relax a while -- put a TV show on his laptop, kick back with a low glass of iced tea, just unwind from the day. But not today. He was tired.

Persians weren't like non-Pokémon cats. They didn't sleep that many hours of the day. But right now, Avery was ready to nap for at least a solid hour. He curled up on the bed, tucked his short muzzle in against his tail, and closed his eyes.

Time passed. Minutes.

The fatigue pressed down on him like a weight on his skull. His mind retread the same weary circle -- he was tired, he should sleep, sleep would come soon, and then he could stop being tired, and could avoid the thought. Sleep would come soon...

An agonizing, creeping acceptance eventually settled over him. He couldn't sleep. He'd been ignoring something. Avoiding that thought.

Avery's eyes snapped open. The digital clock on the oven said 3:15. Those little green numbers were taunting him with how little time had passed.

He didn't know what possessed him to get up, to go open his laptop. But the next thing he knew, the Persian had stumbled over to his table, staring at his screen with bleary eyes and typing in a web search for 'pidgey population rates.'

The results at the top of the page weren't very informative. Mostly stuff about the estimated nationwide population, which was high. The search results under that were even more general information. Avery frowned. He tried again with 'pidgey population rates local.'

He was sure he hadn't... y'know... that many.

Again, the results were a mix. The top link was to a news article from six years ago about wild Pidgeys getting caught by human trainers in urban areas. Avery didn't see what he was looking for, which told him more of what he was looking for. Specifically: How quickly did they reproduce in the wild? How well could they bounce back from a population bottleneck?

Maybe it had been weighing on him for a while. Maybe he needed some closure. Just to make sure that everything was okay.

This time, he typed in 'pidgey population rates oklahoma.' The result was --

Something broke in the connection between Avery's eyes and his brain.

He could still see just fine. But the letters on the screen couldn't have been real. They couldn't have been. His eyes dutifully told him that the top result was from a local newspaper, the Sandalwood, from just one month ago. Its title: "Wild Pidgey Population Has Dropped 60 Percent."

But Avery must have been dreaming. He must have fallen asleep in bed after all. This moment was a literal nightmare, and he needed to wake up, because the knot of concern in his gut had just exploded into a blaze of panic. His paw drifted up absently to scratch his cheek, and his claws left icy lines in his hide.

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying just to breathe. Opened them again -- the text was still there.

Maybe it's... no. It's not about me. It can't be. Clinging to that faint thread of hope, Avery took a deep, shuddering breath. He clicked on the article with a trembling paw on the trackpad.

The webpage that opened up was longer than he'd expected. But he read every word with rapt, wide eyes, and ...

No. No, no no. With every word, more of his soul screamed out in horror. The article had some awfully detailed data from a local chapter of a nonprofit, a Pokémon Watchers thing, talking about the population of wild Pidgeys in this one corner of northeastern Oklahoma over time. Once, there had been four hundred and eighty Pidgey nests in this area -- a thriving concentration of them, above all other flying Pokémon. A whole local ecosystem. Now the number was one hundred and ninety.

One hundred and ninety. Avery couldn't think. Over half of the Pidgey nests, gone. But there had to be some other reason, maybe infrastructure -- maybe logging -- civilization destroyed habitats all the time, that had to be contributing to --

The next paragraph tidily snipped off his budding hope. "With no clear case of habitat destruction or pollution, the disturbance in the ecosystem was initially thought by Pokémon Watchers to be caused by an outbreak of disease. However, no infected specimens have appeared ..."

His claws clattered against the trackpad. His paw had started trembling again. This couldn't have been all because of him. There was finding out he'd caused a problem, and there was finding out because people had conducted a study and written a news article about it. 'Surreal' didn't begin to describe how far his mind had just bent out of shape. His lone presence in the woods had to be

But that number. One hundred and ninety. Down from four hundred eighty -- that means a decrease of...

Two hundred and ninety nests. Two hundred and ninety. He slumped back onto his cushion, staring at the wall, but seeing a slideshow of broken branches, ripped leaves, and flying feathers. Two hundred and ninety -- small enough to be concretely real, but bigger than he could picture.

So many Pidgeys.

So many nests, empty, falling apart in quiet trees.

Two hundred and ninety -- was that how many times he'd...? Was it really possible? He struggled to tally up all the times he'd ... done something he normally tried to just never think about. He swallowed back an acrid trace of bile and kept reading.

The people from the article didn't know when the dropoff had started, exactly -- sometime in the last five years. No competing Pokémon species had moved in to displace the Pidgeys, and no known wild predators had moved into the area, according to them. Just as importantly, no Pidgeys had turned up dead or injured. They were all just ... disappearing.

The light in the room darkened as he scrolled to a graphical map of the forests around town, comparing five years ago to now. The first map had a big, expansive scattering of yellow dots into the woods, showing locations of Pidgey nests -- hundreds of them. The second map had a much sparser scattering.

The most hollowed-out spots of all were near Café Plaisir.

Avery had been living in town for three years and working at Plaisir for two. He knew exactly what had happened to those birds. Okay, he conceded in his mind's eye, heart still hammering with panic. Maybe you're a contributing factor.

Because there could have been other things, too. Things that Pokémon Watchers hadn't found. The woods had a lot of predators in them besides him, and Plaisir kept sending folks out into the wilderness at night, crashing around and making things hard. More than that -- these Pokémon might not have been people, but the Pidgeys weren't braindead. They might have just started leaving of their own volition. Scared off, by their runtier numbers going missing over time. Avery knew he'd never threatened any of the evolved Pidgeottos or Pidgeots.

Maybe he was just being egotistical. Assuming it was all about him. Like he could ever have had that much impact on this entire region. He was one Persian. He wasn't like those packs of feral Liepards who came in, bred like crazy and muscled out the competition. He was just a single guy. Not even a properly wild Pokémon!

But still...

He'd seen enough. His vision was swimming. With paws that still just wouldn't stop shaking, Avery exited the article and closed his laptop screen, before he slouched his way back to the bed. The cat collapsed in an ungainly pile and stayed there.

He stared at the wall. His heartbeat thrummed in his ears.

Who are you kidding? You're not just the main reason. You're the only reason.

There was no point quibbling about the exact count. He'd been hunting two or three Pokémon a week for a couple of years. Most of them had been Pidgeys. They were just his favorite. They spoke to his instincts like no other living creature did. And how could he not, when they sated him so well?.

But now this whole group of them, the size of a small town, was going to die out because of him. His choices. His actions.

Then again, he had to be rational here. Probably a few of them had flown off, but if they were talking to each other, figuring out that their numbers were dwindling -- they should've all left by now, right? Or so many that there'd be none left to just find. Did he need further proof that they...

Avery knew he was making excuses by thinking down that path.

He couldn't hide from the truth of what he'd been doing.

His chest ached. His eyes burned. There was no way out of this one. Sure, wild Pokémon weren't people, anyone could see that -- but they were still wildlife. He didn't want to extirpate an entire population of Pidgeys. That was wrong. That was too far.

There was only one answer.

This little habit of his? It was going to have to end.

~o~o~o~

Days passed.

The first day was grueling. Avery basically ran his way through work on autopilot. He smiled at customers, he served drinks and sucked dicks like he always did, but the only thing on his mind was the sheer, crushing weight of what he'd done. The energy he had, the forced sway before his clients, it was all that remained of that last Pidgey -- the guilt ate at his chest.

He wished he could tell Ceylon. He bumped into the Luxray in the waiter's lounge at one point -- they'd met eyes, and Ceylon had just had the biggest, happiest smile on ... and Avery knew that if he spilled the wrong secret, Ceylon might never smile at him again.

No. He had to deal with this himself.

And Avery did. On the way home, he bought groceries. Fresh produce and meat, for maybe the fourth or fifth time since he'd moved in. This was going to be a lifestyle change. He'd make it easy for himself by having a lot of food ready to go. But the whole time, that guilt hung over him like a cloud.

He botched his first attempt at dinner. It was supposed to be a roast chicken breast that would hold him over a while. Something went wrong, he didn't know what -- but the meat came out of the oven unsettlingly tough and gelatinous. Not really edible. All the same, it was his dinner, and it was keeping the Pidgeys safe, so he forced it down.

The hunger crept back in, bit by bit, over the coming few days. He knew its sensation well. A deep, gnawing pit in his stomach, a restless hunger he couldn't satisfy with anything he ate. His second dinner went a lot better, but he barely cared. These roast chicken things tasted lifeless.

One time, in the dead of night, Avery even tried sinking his teeth into an uncooked cut of meat from the fridge. Just hoping for it to feel a little more like the real thing. He ended up spitting repeatedly into the kitchen sink for five minutes, hunched over the counter, illuminated in the light of the open fridge door. His stomach turned as he hacked the last of the lifeless meal out of his mouth. He slept fitfully for the rest of that night.

Day, after day, it continued. But whenever things felt wrong, Avery reminded himself of what he'd discovered in the news. Everything had changed that afternoon. What had once been an embarrassing but private little vice had turned out to be a plague on the whole woods. Avery couldn't go back to being responsible for that kind of destruction.

So he went to work. And he went to work, again and again, dealing with customers and all their needs. And the whole time, that pit in his stomach deepened. He realized he had no more spring in his step, no sway in his hips -- no more spirit to charm his guests with. For the few customers he did get, the compliments became sparse, forced perhaps, no longer anything about enthusiasm and energy. The few he did get felt empty, like pity. Avery desperately hoped it would pass. He didn't know how long he could handle being this shell of himself, a shadow of the cat he once was.

He held out stubbornly. For three days, then five days -- the longest he'd ever gone without a hunt since moving here -- then seven. A full week of nothing. Every morning, he woke up and felt like he was trapped in a cage with no food or water. The sensation, that awful clawing emptiness, was going to be the end of him. But he held on with everything he had.

It was in a staff meeting that it happened.

Nine days had passed since Avery had discovered the article and sworn off his old habit. There they were, gathered around in the waiter's lounge -- all the Pokémon from the morning shift, sitting and sprawling on every bit of furniture they could while they listened to the Ninetales general manager Firenze talking.

And there was Avery, perched on a cushion, sitting upright and trying to keep his tail still. It wasn't working. The damned appendage kept lashing around, advertising his agitation for all to see. Of course that would be the last vestige of his energy. He just hoped his co-workers thought he was bored. The rest of him stayed as stiff as could be.

"... so, in conclusion, I think we can agree that the basement bathrooms should remain off-limits to customers," said Firenze, smooth and confident as ever. "Next up on the agenda, we're deactivating the old payroll system at the end of the month, and I know a few of you still haven't signed up for new accounts yet ..."

That pit in Avery's stomach had hardened into a heavy little ball, like a piece of iron inside him. It weighed him down every day. It reminded him of what he was missing even right now. He was hungry. And there was no escape. Only his own abysmal, self-flagellating guilt.

"... and I need all of you to be on your best behavior," Firenze went on. Had he already changed topics? What hadn't he heard? "The number one priority is always going to be the good of our customers. We're here to serve. Remember, their pleasure is our pleasure."

Avery looked out the window, just by happenstance, looking for something to focus on. Outside was the picnic area, the little raised terrace where they kept their outdoor table seating -- and far, far beyond that, the high leafy treetops of the woods, swaying softly in the faraway wind.

A couple of black shapes leapt from one of the treetops, fluttering in the pale sky...

Something snapped. Outwardly, all that changed was a tiny little flick of his ear. Maybe a faint dilation of his eyes -- he couldn't tell. He... no, he didn't even care if others noticed. Because all of a sudden, the Persian knew what he was doing after work.

He wouldn't just abandon his promise to himself. He didn't need to -- of course he didn't need to! All he needed was to sink into that mode of the hunt again. He'd go for a walk, out there in the main stretch of the woods, and he'd just have a nice little chase after any old thing he found. Hell, even pouncing at a wild Sandslash sounded pretty good right now.

Because Avery had just realized -- he wasn't happy. He wasn't going to be happy. A peaceful, civilized, tidily behaved future stretched out ahead of him, an empty asphalt road lined with hollow facades from here to the faraway end of his life.

The beast inside him was suffering. Lost. About to break apart. He needed to find out how, in any good conscience, to keep it alive.

And he needed it to happen today.

When Firenze dismissed the meeting, Avery beelined downstairs. It was just past midday -- the hottest and brightest time of day outside. He didn't care. His shift was over. His destination was the back garden, and then the woods. He expected a trip through excessive heat, and that was fine.

What he didn't expect was to find Ceylon at the foot of the stairs.

"Hey, kitty," the lion said affably. "Go well with Firenze up there? Get a pay raise?" he grinned, a fang showing.

Avery stumbled to a stop, and forced a faint smile to his face, trying to cover up a slack-jawed stare and yelp. "I... wish! Uh. What are you doing now?"

Ceylon lowered his ears and ambled sideways, making room for Avery to join him on the ground floor. Could he sense the Persian's distress? "I was just on my way up to the lounge, now the meeting's over. You alright?"

"I was just... thinking," Avery began, in the biggest understatement he'd ever made at Plaisir. His mind was already out in the woods, screaming at his body to sprint out the doors and join it. But Ceylon's eyes were locked on him, probing as only a concerned friend could, and Avery had to answer.

Only one thing came to mind.

He asked, "Do you remember that thing I told you about last week? The Turtwig?"

Ceylon's brow furrowed. "Oh. Are you still upset about it? I'm sorry."

"I dunno if 'upset' is the right word. I guess it got me wondering about things." Avery shifted uneasily under Ceylon's gaze, even as he moved away from the stairs for the other waiters to pass him by. He had to get out there! He had to run free, to feel grass and loam under his paws, before the need drove him mad. "I think ..." He swallowed. "I was wondering how we reconcile that kind of concern for their well-being with the fact that wild Pokémon prey on each other."

"Well, you're not the first to fret about it," Ceylon murmured soothingly, padding around to rub his warm, furred side along Avery's as they moved down the corridor together. "They're wild. They don't know better. I guess more to the point, it's not like we can prosecute every predator for following their instincts. But -- I hope you're not losing sleep about it."

Avery breathed in deeply and nodded once. "I was thinking of going for a nature walk today, but I guess there's always the risk of finding... y'know. More mementos." Or creating them, he thought rudely to himself, even though he'd never left any evidence just lying around in his times.

Times that remained in the past. Even still. Even now. He clung to that minute glimmer of pride. Whatever happened in the forest today... it would be chaotic, to be sure, but the main person to get hurt -- if anyone -- would be Avery himself. And he fully didn't care.

"Mm. Unlikely." Ceylon said, shrugging. Did he not know about the Pidgeys? Maybe he hadn't been reading the Sandalwood. "Usually, the predators are smarter about it. They just go for mundane animals." Abruptly, Ceylon smiled and said, "Hey, what if I came with you? Finally go walking together? I'd love to see your favorite sights."

Avery knew that offer had been coming. The weight of the secret on his shoulders was about to crush him. He just smiled back as best he could and shook his head ruefully.

"Maybe next time. I kind of need some quiet after that meeting. But thank you."

"Ahhh, I get it. Meetings are the worst." Ceylon lowered his head and pressed his muzzle affectionately along the Persian's neck -- and it did feel nice. All warm and reassuring with his faintly electric feline scent. "Have fun out there."

"Can do," Avery breathed.

Ceylon turned away, and as he did, something inside Avery sparked. The Beast again - but it wasn't the same cry as before.

"Ceylon, before you go-" Shit, what was he doing!?

The Luxray turned around, eyebrows raised. "Yeah?"

Avery's claws dug into the carpet, cutting through the threads. If you confide in him, he might be able to help you. He's like you, he has to be. You know that. He could stop you from doing something stupid.

"... Have a nice day, okay?"

Ceylon paused a moment longer, and Avery's heartbeat pounded in his ears. Then --

"Thanks, Ave. You too." And he turned around, heading off down the corridor with a swish of the tail.

The next thing Avery knew, he was running. First there was carpet, then stone, then grass and mud and fresh air. He bolted through the gardens and past the hedge maze like never before. His heart leapt in anticipation of that treeline, of the mud and soil and trees and smells. He had to be free! The smothering humidity, the pollen-filled air, the naked glare of the sun -- all that Oklahoman afternoon suffering rolled off in the wind as he raced towards the forest.

He didn't relax until he was deep into the woods, down Deerling trails and under choking bushes, far away from any other non-wild Pokémon and with minutes of running behind him. Only then, when he stopped to catch his breath, did the Persian finally settle back into the familiar surroundings of nature. The sight of waving leaves in the branches above. The feel of the loam under his feet. The smells of fresh earth and flowering plants and verdant trees.

And the multitudinous, overlapping chorus of birdsongs. Oh, he'd missed the birdsongs so much.

Avery wandered the forest. Minutes turned to an hour, and an hour turned into two, as the afternoon turned to evening around him. From time to time, he saw a wild Pokémon doing a poor job hiding itself: a Crobat roosting in the trees at one point, best not disturbed; then a Beautifly fluttering amid the branches; then a Crustle shuffling through the dirt, failing thereby to disguise itself as an unmoving rock. His nose twitched with their scents, picked up the trails of Vikavolt, the excitement of Mightyena. And yet, he couldn't bring himself to try to hunt or attack them. He knew what would happen: the creature would not run, but would fight back immediately, and Avery would end up in a melee.

Which was bad, because no one actually won in a serious melee with a Pokémon. One fighter might get knocked out -- and for most of these creatures, that would be his opponent -- but the other would still end up covered in injuries. Possibly life-threatening, possibly career-ending, possibly just permanently harmful. The scar on Avery's cheek itched every time his mind touched on that thought.

So he wandered, and all the while, the prowling tension gradually rose in his nerves. His claws scratched at the earth. He circled his way deeper into the woods, letting the labyrinth of old-growth tree trunks and wild leafy underbrush overtake him.

Avery wasn't looking for a fight. That was the wrong way to see it. But his body demanded a hunt. Something he could catch, could throw back into the underbrush once his claws had tasted hide. A Rattata would do, or a Caterpie -- he'd caught both before in his time. Those wouldn't be difficult quarries, even if their scents blended better into the forest.

But in the midst of his wandering, as the sun began to set through the trees, Avery stopped.

A scent lingered in the air. The scent.

For a moment, he was still, and he found himself feeling for that flicker of pride in his chest -- before the tidal wave of delight crashed down on it, and all of his doubts melted.

He could have almost cried. A Pidgey was nearby. A real, living Pidgey. And it was close.

Still, Avery hesitated, claws carving furrows into the soil. He knew what he'd read on his laptop. He needed to leave the Pidgeys alone -- even if he wasn't going to properly hunt them, scaring them would worsen the problem. Their population needed to recover, to remain part of the cycle of nature in this forest. And... Ceylon hadn't given him a real answer, had he? No real acceptance or rejection of the idea of preying on wild Pokémon.

That Pidgey scent lingered in his nostrils. Warm, sharply avian, but softly vulnerable.

Avery didn't need to wait for Ceylon's verdict. This moment, out here in the woods, wasn't about that Luxray.

He settled into a deep, cautious prowl, and let himself follow the scent.

It was almost laughably easy. The Pidgey was perched on a low tree branch, pecking at a nut in one of its talons. A stout, grown female specimen, likely approaching the cusp of evolution. Avery approached the creature from behind, down on the ground some eight feet below. Her folded wings and fanned tail were all the Persian could see, except when the creature lifted Her head to listen around.

A grown, healthy wild Pokémon. Not a runt. Not a sickly cast-off. Years of growth had already gone into this Pidgey.

The exact thing a dwindling population needed to recover.

Avery couldn't say no. This was his nature. That business of extirpation, the thing he'd been worried about at home -- that had no place in the woods. What happened now was all between him and this delightful creature. And he wasn't going to kill her, anyway. She wouldn't get too hurt from a hunt.

He approached from the back, firmly downwind, until the line between the Pidgey and himself was almost a 45-degree angle off the ground. The sounds of his brushing through the foliage mixed with the sounds of the wind. Instinct guided him as he chambered his muscles into position, hind legs bunching up as he reared for the inevitable pounce.

A mundane cat his size would have struggled to make the jump. But Avery wasn't mundane. He was a normal-type Pokémon. His aura commanded the realm of sheer power. An eight-foot-high branch was a pleasant hop to him.

He smiled as he let himself go.

For a split second, Avery was weightless. The Pidgey heard him and spread her wings, and her talons left the branch just as his front paws closed around the bird's waist.

They slammed into the grass together, Avery in deft silence, the Pidgey squawking and flapping in reflexive shock. Avery landed with his hefty, spirited prey underneath all four paws, pinned and struggling to escape, and in that moment the last of his self-deception shattered to nothing.

His jaws opened wide, dripping saliva in anticipation. But when he dove down, it wasn't for a killing bite. The Pidgey had just enough time to screech in panic before Avery's maw engulfed her entire head. And down he went, jerking his head forward and forcing the feathered beast deeper inside, one chomping bite after another until his nose had met the leafy dirt, and his throat bulged with his prey's writhing body.

When Avery sat back up, all that remained of the Pidgey were two kicking talons and a few tail feathers sticking out of his lips. He swallowed once with practiced muscles, and those last parts slipped out of view as the Pidgey took the final plunge down his gullet.

The last of the Pidgey's descent was marked by his widened throat clenching back down to normal, from top to bottom, until nothing remained to the world.

It was done. Glorious, heavy fullness washed over Avery's body and soul. The leaden pit in his stomach washed away like sand under the waves, soothed and eased by his prey's writhes and flutters inside him.

Many predators consumed their prey in pieces. But Avery's abilities -- and needs -- encompassed so much more than hunting and pouncing. His way of eating his prey exuded sheer power, too. The Pidgey was a third of his size, and even with her feathers flattened, Avery's belly distended heavily around her form. She was fully conscious and panicked in there, but with Avery's natural defenses, her beak and claws merely tickled as they scraped along the walls of his stomach. If he listened, he could just hear the muffled squawking inside.

The Persian rose up onto his feet, the constantly shifting weight of his meal hanging heavy beneath him. He expected, reasonably, to feel a little guilt -- or a lot of it. He should have felt like he'd just sold his soul.

Instead, he felt like he'd just found it again. Nine days of hollow deprivation had come and gone. Now he was filled. He was complete.

Avery shook himself off contently and started walking, his wild passenger in tow.

It took about twenty minutes' walk for him to return to his favorite spot, a careful mile or so from the treeline by Plaisir. That entire time, Avery's conquest squirmed and fought against him from within, all while his stomach walls growled and trickled with an influx of digestive juices. The sensations prompted a rush of arousal to his loins, and he walked, the barbed, pointed erection between his hind legs pressed and rubbed under the bulge of his own belly.

All the while, Avery's thoughts remained delightfully free of guilt. He felt light, carefree, almost giddy with the excitement of subjecting another Pidgey to his ravening belly's needs. And he'd never minded that his prey's fate was so prolonged inside him -- it was no worse than prey being torn apart piece by piece while still alive, after all. That happened every day. And if wild Persians' jaws were as practiced at opening wide as his, he didn't doubt they'd try consuming their prey like he did.

His only risk was getting too far into his arousal before the proper time. It had been nine days, and Avery's balls ached. He needed this.

Soon, he stood at the edge of a small, open clearing in the trees. A riot of colorful spring flowers sprouted from the grass across the whole area, more than any other clearing in the woods. The golden evening light fell upon the banana yellow of wild bellwort, the pastel blue of shining bluestars, even the striking dark-centered heads of purple coneflowers -- and others still, all coming together in vivacious outpouring of natural beauty. The plethora of life and growth on display was truly unique.

Avery ambled out into the middle of the clearing, surrounded on all sides by the fragrances of flowers in bloom. Slowly, luxuriously, he stretched his feline body out and laid flat on his full, still-moving belly.

This was the real payoff. Not the act of swallowing the Pidgey -- but all the enjoyment that followed. Avery arched his back, raising his hips and pinning the Pidgey's curled-up body against the ground, a motion that shifted the heavy bulge backward against his erect penis. The warm fur of his underbelly rubbed delightfully along the smooth tip and barbed shaft of his needy length, a sensation amplified by the shifting contours of his prey inside. That same shifting galvanized him from within, satisfaction giving way to renewed need with the sliding and scraping of the bird's desperate struggles in his stomach.

Slowly, gradually, he shifted and ground his hips, rubbing his whole length against the underside of his own curving abdomen. This Pidgey's body would sustain him in more ways than one.

It was a joy. As the pressure in Avery's loins grew, as his instinctual masculine motions took on a frenzied edge, all the distracting thoughts of the outside world fell away. This moment belonged to the two of them. Every thrust caused his belly to slosh wetly around its living occupant, turning her form slowly end-over-end even as she fought to escape from Avery's unforgiving walls. Was she upside-down now? Those talons were sliding now along the top of his stomach, and he thought he felt the round curve of her avian back end against his grinding ... but so hidden as she was in that bulge, how could he know?

Maybe the Pidgey noticed what was happening to her. Maybe she didn't. Avery didn't care. Sincerely, more deeply than he could describe, he needed this. His nature demanded this.

Minutes blurred together. The shadows of the setting sun crept languidly out across the clearing until Avery found himself sating his needs in the cool, soft shade. All the while, his arousal grew, and all the while, his prey's struggles ebbed away.

When Avery's climax finally rose up, there was no holding back. He slammed his hips forwards as he ground his belly between them and the ground. His loins jolted him with a hair-raising, earth-shattering tingle from the end of his tail to the tips of his ears. He bit down on his paw to muffle the yowl of pleasure as his cock twitched and spurted its hefty load over the flowers and grass, not to mention his own fur. Every clench meant another press against the Pidgey's bulk inside him, another powerful muscular crush against his prey.

Sparks leapt in his eyes. Avery shuddered, his back half twitching, as the wet strings of cum dripped down his belly. He held his breath, almost like he didn't want a single part of the moment to end -- but eventually he let it out, and gasped, and purred into the cool evening air, as he slipped into the warm, beautiful afterglow of his release.

The evening wasn't over. But in that moment, Avery rolled onto his side and rested there, stroking over his full, heavy gut with a single lazy paw. No regret creeped into his senses in the aftermath of that orgasm. No shame, no guilt.

Finally, he felt like himself again. Finally, he was sated.

He orgasmed twice more that evening, both after the rolling pressure of his stomach had finally squeezed the Pidgey into... well. Submission, he could call it. Each release burned more of his energy, adding to his body's hard work digesting its over-large feathered meal. By the tail end of dusk, when the sky still glowed in the west, Avery was ready to climb into a treetop. The drifting, ambient rustle of branches in the warm night breeze, and the contented growling of his gut working over its food, lulled him to sleep together.

No difficult thoughts kept his eyes open. No bad dreams snapped him awake in the small hours of the morning. That night, resting in the fork between two branches, Avery was exactly where he needed to be.

~o~o~o~

The next morning, Avery strolled out from the treeline with a calm, luxuriant smile on his face. Today was yet another beautiful day, but he saw it with new eyes.

Across the wide open expanse of the back field, Café Plaisir stood waiting for him: the wide green monolith of the hedge maze, then the artful rows of the back garden, then the edifice itself, viewed from behind in the morning light. The sun shone down from the side, casting glints of light on the dewdrops in the grass.

And Avery was glowing. His belly was back to its slender state of emptiness, leaving no visible trace of its enormous offering -- but all through his body, the gift of his prey offered him a joyful superabundance of life. As he walked through the grass, pawpads meeting the cool moist touch of dawn, the Persian was grateful for the energy burning in every step. He could have done anything he wanted right then.

Yes, he'd gone hunting yesterday evening. And yes, that meant the forest had one fewer Pidgey in it now. And no, his supply of prey wouldn't last forever. But Avery walked with his head high, free of regrets, free of self-denial. He knew what he was.

He'd also realized something. Maybe Ceylon was like him... or would at least understand. And maybe he wouldn't. But Avery wasn't in such a desperate hurry to find out anymore. He'd chosen to follow his nature, not another person's approval.

Maybe these things didn't make him a good person. Avery accepted that.

For him, it mattered more to be a good cat.