Finding the Purr Again - Part 1

Story by Riverweasel on SoFurry

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#1 of Finding the Purr Again

After several catastrophic events that leave him homeless and alone, a cheetah must survive both the physical and mental horrors of truly being helpless.


This isn't going to be a series, but rather a story with a definite beginning and end broken up into most likely three or four parts. Thanks for reading and don't hesitate to post comments for me afterwards.

The cheetah shivered in his damp fur, his short coat and ragged trousers hardly enough to combat the chilly wind and foggy night sky. Rasha couldn't count the days anymore, it had become far too many; so many weeks, at least a good few months, since he had last had a home. The sounds in the park had died down long ago, hours before, as all the other furs left for the safety of their apartments, houses or cars before the thunderstorm hit. All Rasha had were trees for cover, the spotted feline desperately trying to avoid the downpour and failing miserably.

His drenched fur lay matted on his skin, trapping not only the cold water, but also the icy air as the late autumn night stole every bit of warmth from the cat's body. At least he wasn't hungry, though, what he had to do to make that a reality almost made him wish he was starving. He had originally come here from Libya, leaving his entire family there, in the hope and dream that he could find a job in the great paradise of America and flourish in its riches. Now, he was just a dirty, broke, homeless alley cat who sold his soul and body for the sustenance needed to keep his lungs expanding and his heart beating.

Rasha was broke, not only in the monetary sense, but in the mental aspect as well. After so many nights hearing the grunts of strangers behind him as they groped his ass and thrust deeper into his rectum, he no longer had any dignity left for himself. There was a stream nearby, so he always cleaned up after it, but he never felt clean, rather he could feel each added layer of muck and degradation ladled onto his body after each episode. Sometimes he even had to fight the urge to throw up afterwards, knowing that wasting any amount of food was as close to a catastrophe as he could imagine at this point.

The irony would have come across as humorous to the cheetah a few months ago, but now, emotion was a distant thought. His stare was as blank as his eyes were dull. Just some odd number of months ago, he had a small house and an interview for a well paying job that looked like a near guaranteed land, but that changed so dramatically that sometimes the cheetah forgot it had been more than just a fantasy.

Leave it to an arson to randomly choose to burn his house down before he had been accepted for home owner's insurance, add in the boss dying from a heart attack the day before his interview and being replaced by an absolute snob who turned his nose up at him the moment he walked in and you get a cat who's in a bad way. Not like that's what got him to this point, no, a few other problems had led him here. Take in his few friends ditching him when he couldn't pay for lunch, and then the final blow of his work visa being revoked after he couldn't find a job and now you got the current scenery- a broken shell of a cat who, in order to avoid being deported back to the country, his homeland, that the American influence had left in disarray, naively disappeared into obscurity and then dug himself a hole too big to climb out of.

Now, he was alone, cold, unknown and unwanted. He kept his fur clean as best he could, but for all the wrong reasons. Clean fur meant he had a better shot at selling his ass for some food, no one wanted to fuck a feline with mud in his fur. Rasha didn't do it because he liked being clean, but rather because his stomach's needs outweighed his heart's torment. The cheetah wondered, though, how much longer this would be the case. Was this what was to become of the rest of his life?

Looking up, he could tell through the slowly clearing fog that it was at most an hour before tonight's patron would arrive. He had been here multiple times before, but Rasha believed it was more for the sake of humiliating the broken cat than for any desire to get off in a warm rump. But he was the only one available for the night and he usually brought a raw steak along, even if he jizzed and urinated on it before he left, standing there to laugh at him as Rasha submissively gagged down each bite.

Staring at the now patchy sky, the cheetah stared at the stars, shedding a rare tear as he wished upon a star that someday, his life might mean more than this. His ears drooped again and his tail drug limply on the ground, as dead as his soul was, as he hugged his arms around his chest, hoping to hold in any body heat that was left in his blood.

"Awwww, is the rain making the kitty cold? Don't worry, Jesse's here to warm your slutty ass up."

Rasha whimpered in fear as the patronizing voice of the thug tiger sounded behind him. He could already tell this was going to be a brutal affair.

"I'm not in the mood for conversation, bitch, so just get on your paws and knees, lift that tail you shouldn't even have up for me, and prepare for the fucking of your life."

The cheetah complied, having no other option in front of him besides hypothermia or exhaustion induced by starvation. Even if he ran, he wouldn't make it very far and every extra step the tiger behind him took to catch him would only make his pain worse. As the thick paws pressed down on his shoulders, he mewled as he felt the rigid maleness grind against his trousers. His own sheath didn't even twitch, there was no pleasure to be had here on his part, but rather only his very life traded for the striped feline's lust.

"My girlfriend broke up with me this afternoon, you know that? Of course you don't, your worthless body doesn't know a damn thing other than how to please cocks. Doesn't matter though, because, since she's a girl, and I don't hit girls. That's why I have you around and you're going to pay for her."

Staring forward numbly, Rasha felt the imposing tiger unbuckle his trousers, sliding them down to his ankles. He shuddered as his balls were exposed to the full extent of the cold, but he quickly forgot about that as he cried out when all ten inches of the barbed cock stabbed into his ass in one swipe.

The rain had ceased by sunrise the next morning, but the sun brought nothing but unwanted exposure to Rasha. The cat lied down underneath a rock outcropping, far from the trails and anyone's wandering gaze, his ass still stinging from last night. His cock was tender as well, the tiger being determined to make sure his slut liked being pissed on. Five times in a row, without anything as much as a ten second recovery period, the cheetah had been forcefully stroked to climax, the little spurts of pleasure so sickeningly sweet that Rasha had been unable to hold back the bile afterwards, completely emptying his stomach of the cursed steak he had eaten afterwards.

Every morning, the voices in his head called out to him, and every morning Rasha hid from them, but they were more persistent with each passing sunrise. They told him life wasn't worth this; that the only way of escape would be through the ultimate stillness and peace of death, and though the cheetah told himself no all the time, he couldn't avoid entertaining the idea, sometimes for hours upon hours, until the sunset, leaving himself uninterrupted visions of the hundreds of ways he could kill himself.

There was jumping off some of the tall rock plateaus onto the craggy rock bed tens of yards below, or he could use all his remaining energy to delve deep into the unexplored woods, leaving him too exhausted to return or hunt as he fell asleep for the final time. He could sharpen a branch and then skewer himself on it. Each vision's end scene played in his head, the imagined escape and release from this world becoming the only alternative to the nightlife which he so desperately hated.

Bile rose in his chest again as pure acid burned his throat as he threw up the liquid onto the rocks beneath him. Rasha heaved with exertion, his body weak from the shattering blows he took last night compounded with the later vomiting up of the only food he had eaten in the last two days. Maybe his stomach was just too abused to digest anything anymore after so much thick cum had sat there. Jesse hadn't just been okay with fucking his ass, but had also wrenched his ears back and force fed the cheetah many rounds of tiger seed before finally letting him go, only to sit back and piss all over his face as he struggled to eat the steak.

He gagged again at that image, mewling in disgust with himself for allowing this to happen to his life. Rasha knew that it was his fault, totally his fault and that he deserved it, Jesse had been sure to convince the cheetah of that fact when they met the first few times and now it was simply a known truth to him. Everything that had happened to him and was now happening to him was his fault; he could have done things differently and avoided this altogether, but he didn't and that was on him. Then suddenly, his attention was brought screaming back to the real world in front of him.

"Hey, dude, are you okay? Did you drink too much last night, you don't look too good."

His sanctum had been invaded, his privacy broken into and in front of him, a mere six feet away, stood a young coyote with a worried look on his face. Rasha didn't care. Screaming in terror and unbridled fury, the cheetah launched himself at the dog, snarling as he barreled into him. Breaking free as they tumbled, Rasha tore off into the woods, determined to leave the canine behind and regain the only possession he had any control over, his privacy and escape from public shame.

Stopping only when his legs would carry him no more than a step further, the cheetah stumbled and then staggered to the ground in complete exhaustion, his legs refusing to work anymore, completely devoid of any energy. He dragged his head on the ground, scouting the area in the hope that the coyote would be gone. Only a few seconds later, his eyes gave out, the eyelids falling shut for what the cheetah both hoped and feared would be the final time. His breathing slowed to almost nothing as his body shut down, each organ beginning to tick down the final few hundred seconds it had left.

The coyote followed the feline's easily tracked scent. Something was definitely wrong; the scent reeked of nothing like alcohol, but rather dried sweat, dirt, and semen. The canine was studying as a medical professional and he could tell immediately that the cat was very malnourished and in very poor health. He pulled out his phone, calling his work hospital and requesting a paramedic team to deploy to his location.

No more than a half mile further down the trail, Dan, the coyote, could see the limp form of the spotted cat that had rushed him just minutes before. The small burst of adrenaline had worn off fast and now all that was left was the exhausted and unconscious figure on the ground, barely breathing. He knew he had only a short time to work, pulling out his small bag of critical emergency equipment he was required to carry with his person at all times.

The shallow breathing was accompanied by a weakening pulse, signs that the cheetah was past his last legs and was slowly going into a coma that would, within a few short hours, lead to death. Sniffing deeply, Dan also noticed the lingering scent of stomach acid that told him the cheetah had purged recently, a sign that his stomach was no longer capable of digesting food. He would have to be fed nutrients intravenously.

Arriving around fifteen minutes later, the extra helpers came in hurriedly, taking in the situation while the coyote performed continuous CPR, keeping the feline's blood flowing with oxygen for his brain and organs. Quickly helping them lay the cat on the stretcher, he joined the other three in carrying him back to the ambulance, where they quickly hooked up the IV's and began to administer to him the desperately needed nutrients.

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To be honest, I never expected to wake up, figuring I'd just disappear with the wind to be carried on forever without any knowledge that I ever existed. Instead, I found myself in a white room underneath white blankets with machines that kept beeping at me and tubes sticking into my arms. I snarled, trying to sit up, but found myself unable to move more than an inch, a strap around my chest effectively holding me down, while I found ones to be around my wrists and ankles as well.

My eyes darted around furiously, taking in as much scenery as they could in this foreign room, trying to place myself. Suddenly, I heard a bustling noise and watched as a white coat clad horse walked into the room, holding a chart and I immediately made the connection.

"I'm at a hospital, aren't I?"

She seemed alarmed at first, turning to me before quickly turning back out the door and yelling down the hallway.

"Somebody get hold of Dr. Harrell! Patient #243 just woke up from his coma."

My what? What did she just say? Coma? Oh god, oh fuck! I could only imagine the bills, the money, and the debt that would pile up. I didn't have any health insurance, I hadn't made a payment to any of them in over half a year...plus whatever time I had spent in this place. Struggling to get up, to get out of this place, I whimpered as fatigue began overtaking me again, sobbing as the energy that I had felt flood my veins wore out again, leaving me taking deep breaths, but no less panicked. The nurse quickly re-entered when she heard me, immediately rushing over to the beeping machines, checking what was most likely my risen blood pressure and pulse.

"Sir, I need you to calm down or else I'm going to be forced to administer more sedatives into your system."

"Where am I?"

"You're at the Judith Medical Center here in Cincinnati."

Cincinnati, Ohio. Okay, so I was over a hundred miles from where I could last remember being. But the horror that gripped me tighter than the rope I had sometimes imagined tight around my neck, holding me in the air as I choked and then died, was the question I had to ask next.

"How long have I been here?"

"Seven months, sir."

Blood drained from my head and I shook. Seven months! Seven months' worth of bills to pay for a stay in a hospital in Cincinnati, but how? Where was I going to get the money for that? More importantly, what the fuck had I missed? That would place the time in the late spring! I felt light headed, the room starting to spin, and I closed my eyes, crying softly to myself and the mare in the room next to me. The last thing I remembered before blacking out again was a warm hand cross over my shackled paw, grasping it tightly, and the words she spoke.

"Everything's going to be okay. It'll be alright."

As if she could possibly know.

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I rushed to put on my scrubs, changing from the haphazard look of a rushed commuter into that of a professional doctor. My time as a residency doctor in training had ended when school broke for the week long Christmas break, but I had spent much of that time taking tests and spending time with the patients in the intensive care unit at the top floor of the hospital. One patient in particular, though, was the main reason why I kept coming back. For seven months, I had hoped I would receive a call like the one I just got twenty minutes ago. Sprinting to the elevator and then changing my mind, I rushed up the stairs, taking two or three at a time until I busted through the fifth floor doorway, briskly walking to the third room on the left, the one that housed the mystery cheetah, patient #243.

Jasmine was in the room with the cat, the subject having fallen back into a state of unconsciousness yet again, taking constant diagnostics. She had been my partner in crime for much of my three years here and we worked as well as two police officers did after decades. The mare stood there rubbing his paw, while giving me a quick wave with her free hand as I walked in.

"Hey, Dan. He just fell back asleep a few minutes ago, but his signs show that he's most definitely still here and out of his coma. As you told me to, I didn't bullshit him when he asked. Needless to say, he didn't take it very well."

"Who would in a situation like that? To him, it could have felt like he'd been out for a mere few minutes only to wake up in the spring after passing out in the fall. How alert was he?"

"Very alert, he looked like he recognized it was a hospital almost immediately and then began asking questions right after I walked back in."

"Well, I'll stay here and wait until he wakes back up. I'm off tomorrow, but you have to be back here in less than seven hours. You need to go home and get some rest, Jasmine."

The mare nodded in agreement.

"I'm just glad he's awake again. Please let me know how he's doing later."

"Of course."

I watched as she walked out, taking one last look at the feline before wishing him and me the best and leaving. Turning my sights back on the cat, I looked for any signs of movement and was well rewarded. I could see his eyes quickly darting around underneath his eyelids, a sure sign that he was dreaming. Happy to finally be able to do this after waiting so long, I sat down next to him and placed my maw next to his ear, letting out the first soft notes of my favorite composer, Mozart, out of my lips.

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I awoke again after running through the last sequence I could remember time and time again in my dreams. The attempted escape, the feeling of dying and then the senselessness of drifting through a world not imprisoned by time and thought, but rather, peace. When I opened my eyes, I was not surprised to still see myself in the chair. I was surprised that when I tried to sit up, my feline body was allowed a full response. The room was empty, but only for a few seconds before another fur walked inside, this time a wolf with blue eyes.

"Hello and good morning to you. I'm sorry about the seeming lack of knowledge, but we weren't able to obtain any identification from you when we found you and no one in the community had a clue who you were. Do you remember your name, feline?"

"Yes. It's Rasha. Rasha Sithain."

"Fantastic! My name is Mr. Trace; I'm going to be Mr. Harrell's assistant for the day while we try to get you back on your paws."

The wolf offered a paw to me, but I just stared at it blankly. My mind tried to work through all the possible meanings of the gesture, but it had been too long since I had been around any civilized furs to remember. My ears dropped in shame and I averted my eyes.

"I...I'm sorry. I don't...know..."

My voice broke off and the floodgates began opening, the pain and knowledge that I was so alone hitting me like a train. I laid there, biting my lip as my dam of protection I had hid behind for so long split apart and I erupted. One paw rested over my own, rubbing it softly, probably the most any doctor could do to console a patient. Tears streamed down my face and I laid on that bed, sobbing for far longer than I could count.

Finally, I began settling back down, the sobs coming less and less often, and then I felt it. Two strong arms encircled my frail back and pulled me into his chest, humming to me. I didn't fight back at all, rather pressing my face into his shoulder, glad of the warmth and protection I felt it provided. I couldn't think back to the last time I was hugged by someone who wasn't using that contact as more leverage to plow into my ass and my cheetah body cherished every second of it now.

I sighed as the arms placed me gently back on my bed, my mind noticing, for the first time, how soft and comfortable they were. Opening my eyes, I gasped, fully expecting the wolf to be moving back, but instead, my eyes caught sight of a very familiar coyote scooting back into one of the swivel chairs.

"Don't I know you from somewhere?"

"That you do. I'm the coyote who nearly scared you to death. Guess it took seven months for you to finally calm back down from it."

The pieces of the puzzle finally arranged themselves into place and my memory aligned itself into a cohesive order. With it came the face of the tiger and I froze, all the warmth leaving me as I saw his image burned into my eyes.

"What about him!?"

"Who's him?"

"That tiger, Jesse."

"You weren't the only one, Rasha. We took a sample from you when we did a full body diagnostics of you after your arrival here. He was connected with four other cases of rape and one of second degree murder. Each count nailed him twenty years in prison. No chance at parole either. You need not worry about that bastard; he will never be leaving that place."

I moaned in relief as the realization that I would never have to deal with him again ran through my brain. The taunting, arrogant jerk was gone.

"Now, I'm going to be frank with you, Mr. Sithain. We've done what we could through electrical stimulation to keep your muscles from completely atrophying and dissolving, but there's an extent to what we can do. The reason you keep feeling so tired so quickly is not because of the immediate after affects of the coma, but rather the damage done over time. You're getting tired this quickly because you are working your muscles far more than they have become used to."

"Yeah, I figured as much..."

I droned off as the thought of how much money this was going to cost me again swam through my head. Besides, as soon as I left the hospital, I'd have no shelter, no food and no company worth having. Honestly, I had little to no idea as for what I could do at this point.

"So, would it be too touchy of a subject to ask you how you got to that day, Mr. Sithain?"

_____________________________________________________________________

His face darkened immediately, his eyes going dark and all sense of communication seemed to dissolve in seconds. I could see the pain contorted on his face as images surely as brutal as the lone one I saw of him that night played over and over again through his head. Placing my hand over his now cold and shivering paw, I tried to comfort him, but all signs told me he was as lost to the real world now as he had been the last seven months.

"Dr. Harrell! We have a serious spike in blood pressure and pulse rate. We need to give him some sedatives or else he could go into cardiac arrest!"

I looked at the forlorn and completely alone feline in front of me and regretted asking that question with all my heart. Now had not been a good time, not when there was so little hope in his life; reliving his dark days would only have convinced him that only more dark days loomed ahead, which was absolutely everything the poor cat didn't need at the moment. The damage was done, however, and now it was up to me to keep it from becoming physically dangerous.

"Give him 200c's of clorazepate and 50c's diazepam over twenty seconds."

Turning back to the miserable cheetah, I brought his limp head to mine and pressed his face into my chest, kissing the top of his head and holding him as the sedative medicine pumped into his body. He would be out for nearly the rest of the day, upon which I would come back with positive news. Progress, not only physically, but mentally, was something Rasha had to have to survive.

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After hours of dreamless sleep, I awoke a bit groggy, the last effects of the sedatives pumped into me still lingering on. Checking the clock, I could tell that it was past ten at night, the silence throughout the room broken only by the occasional beep of the machines keeping a constant tab on his heart rate. I wondered if anyone was around, my legs itching to move around some. Then my eyes caught sight of a note on one of the metal sides to his bed.

Out to get you some real food, or at least something that you'll enjoy eating. After seven months of nothing but pre-digested nutrients being pumped into your bloodstream, it will take a slow process to get your stomach back into action, but I came up with a few good ways. I'll be back no later than ten-thirty.

Laying my spotted head against the soft pillow, I let out a sigh, the strain of even reading that note leaving a noticeable tiredness in my eyes. Hoping it was just the sedatives playing with my mind, I took the time to stretch out each one of my muscles, starting with my toes and working my way up and then back out through my fingers. I lifted the blanket off of me and took a look at myself. I nearly sobbed at the sight. My pelt looked miserable, dull and dead and it seemed to cover nothing but bones, the idea of any muscle existing anywhere seemed a fantasy.

A few minutes later, I saw the coyote making his way back into the room, humming softly to himself as he put a bag on a nearby table. My nose immediately tracked the scent, finding the smell of actual food as intoxicating as a few bottles of liquor. With saliva filling every corner of my mouth, I groaned in anticipation, my tongue working in circles around my jaw, preparing itself for the inevitable burst of flavor.

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The sight of the cheetah in such an excited state brought a smile of my own to my face, but I had to wonder what face he might make when he saw the broth. I had tried to add as much flavor to it as I could without endangering his stomach, but I wasn't a graduate of a culinary arts school. Bringing a chair over to the feline's bed, I pulled out a straw and placed it in the bowl.

"Have at it cat, but don't get too greedy. If you start feeling full, let me know. The capacity of your stomach decreased a good fifty percent while you were in your coma, so you'll find yourself stuffed a lot faster. Don't worry though, because that's one of the quickest organs to recover. We start now and in a few short days, you'll be eating through broth and pudding and jello like a champion."

"When do I get to start eating meat again?"

"That'll take a few weeks as the intestines and the rest of your digestive and excretory systems have to catch up as well as your diaphragm. If we introduce meats and high carbs into your diet too soon, you'll end up having an intestinal blockage due to the fact that your diaphragm simply isn't strong enough to induce shitting yet. That'll all come with time. Do understand, Mr. Si...you mind if I just call you Rasha? My name's Dan."

I offered my paw to him, but again the cheetah just stared at me for a second or two before the redness came back to his cheeks again.

"I don't remember what to do."

Nodding in understanding, I brought my other paw to my first one and grasped hold of it, shaking it as if I was introducing myself to myself. A light bulb turned on in the feline's head and he reached out his own, weakly gripping mine.

"By all means, please do."

Conversation drug on for a few minutes longer before fatigue set in on the cat. He made it through half of the broth, smiling and sighing with each suck, but I was surprised to find that he wasn't purring considering how happy he looked. Maybe he was just too tired. Tucking the dozing cheetah back under the blanket, I turned out the light, spending a few more minutes humming into his ear before heading back to my empty house. Perhaps I spent so much time around him more because I wanted company than just me doing my job.