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An excerpt from the autobiography "The Feral Cub"

Chapter 2

Most child psychologists could have predicted the problems I had integrating back into normal society, but of course we didn't have any of those around when they tried to reintroduce my brothers and myself, the "feral cubs", into polite society. We were adopted to different families, perhaps the idea being that taking us away from all forms of familiarity would force us to assimilate. Again most child psychologists could have told you the opposite would happen, and they'd be mostly right.

From what I've learned my brothers had a harder time trying to relearn everything they knew of the world. They were never too big on civilized society, but then again civilized society wasn't too big on them either, so their fates were more or less sealed. I tried though. I don't pretend to say it was a conscious effort, I wasn't making some choice to better myself. I was always the smallest so I simply went along with what others told me to do. This coincidence managed to be the thing that saved myself from sharing a cage with my brothers for the rest of my natural life.

The family I was placed with were these two Jaguars in their mid thirties. Either she couldn't have cubs or he wasn't able to seal the deal, but they didn't have any kids of their own. They are what I have come to see as my parents, so I've never really wanted to find out exactly why they couldn't have kids, I just know they couldn't. They also had that spark of fixing the world about them, wanting to save the feral cub and introduce him back into society. Modern day Jean Marc Gaspard Itards I suppose. That and if I acted up, well if a jaguar ever cuffed the back of your head to scold you, you'd remember the lesson for the rest of your life. I had a tendency to be a slow learner I guess.

It wasn't simple or easy for me to adjust. Not two days after being adopted I was nearly put into a mental ward. Cubs bite, it's what they do. Usually it's not bad, we predators sometimes draw blood but like fleas or getting stuck up somewhere high while climbing it's just what you expect with cubs. Of course most cubs weren't raised by a psychotic mother that taught them how to hunt anthro prey creatures for food. My god, the look on that little Gazelle's face when I bit into his throat. Just like mom had shown my brothers and I a dozen times. It took three other kids to pry me off, nearly crushed his windpipe I'd imagine. He bled all over the place. On his shirt, on his shoes, on me, the grass, the soccer ball. Oh he lived, kind of the reason why I'm typing this free and not from a cage. The funny thing is though, at first I thought the adults were mad at me because I didn't kill him. It just didn't register with me that what I had done was bad. After all, he was prey out in the open away from his herd, and my mother always said those are the best targets.

So they put a muzzle on me and throw me in the back of a police car in front of all of my brand new friends. Alright, I'll admit they probably wouldn't have remained my friends after I nearly killed their goalie, but I was young and it still hurt. So now everyone acts surprised that with no attempts to integrate me into normal society I do exactly what I was raised to do. You'd think not a one of these police or cub services officers had actually taken a single psychology class in their lives.

One of them had though, or maybe it took the entire group of them to realize I wasn't like my mother, just raised by her. I had to go to these mandatory classes all day long. Basically it was them trying to deprogram everything I had been raised to know and start fresh. They'd show me pictures of gazelle and goat children and I'd have to say they were friends and not food. I had to explain why they weren't food, but I didn't fucking know why. I knew the reasons they had told me they weren't, so I would just parrot those right back and they seemed pleased their methods were working.

They had wanted to have me read some books on togetherness and kindness, but being twelve and unable to read a letter they instead had me watch these stupid preschool TV shows starring puppets. I think I understand why people who reach adulthood illiterate never try to learn. The shit they have for you to learn is clearly aimed for kittens and it just makes you feel even more worthless and inept as you fail to read those.

So I'm not allowed any new friends, I have to attend classes all day long where I struggle to read books written for cubs half my age, and watch TV shows meant for those just as young, and when I go home I can't go outside because everyone thinks I'll murder the neighbor's baby or pet. The last one was probably a reasonable fear, but as you can guess I was the most miserable child on the planet. Sometimes I wondered if I bit my instructor just as hard as I could on the throat if they'd take me out of those horrid classes and just put me in a cage already, The chances were though that they'd just keep me muzzled and never let me go home, so it wasn't worth the risk to my cub mind.

These classes continued on for several months. Every day it was workshops and videos, discussing my feelings and telling them what they wanted to hear to try and speed up what felt like an endless monotonous march. Once I had the basics of the alphabet down they made me write short sentences like "Do not bite bunny." or "Deer feel pain too." I still didn't fully believe that. Now of course seems ludicrous, but at the time prey creatures were so obviously different from myself that the idea they didn't feel pain despite screaming and thrashing as you bit and choked them made sense.

Eventually they stepped it up and introduced me to a squirrel about my age. Through a thick plexiglass divided room. You could tell they had built this setup specifically for me as the furniture in the room had been awkwardly moved to make room for the screen and its frame. It should have dawned on me I was on display like a feral in a zoo, but I was so fucking happy just to see someone my age I could talk to it never dawned on me. His name was Stephen, and Stephen must have had some pretty fucked up parents to sign him up to be the guinea pig to test out the feral child who had nearly strangled someone to death with his teeth. Stephen was a red squirrel, stereotypically so. Thin framed, bushy tail; that twitching cheek that you just wanted to squeeze till the circulation cut off just to stop the movement. I guess they hadn't told him why I was behind plexiglass as we hit it off almost immediately. That seems to be the difference between boys and girls no matter the species. Put two boys in a room and they'll be friends within the hour. Put two girls in a room and one of them will be walking out with a "reputation" before the door shuts.

Maybe the training went faster, or maybe I just didn't notice how long I was stuck there now that I had a friend. A few months later the classes ended and they deemed me "sane." Well, either that or not a threat to other children anymore. Stephen would now come over to my house to hang out. The neighborhood children still didn't trust me so every day was myself playing alone in the back yard until Stephen would visit. Only then would I have the courage to leave my yard and go explore the neighborhood. The neighborhood was set back away from any busy intersections. It was still within the city limits, but it wasn't one of those crammed cookie cutter residential neighborhoods where everyone's yard ended at the fence to the next person's small backyard. There were woods all around us and the houses were spaced out so you could easily run between two houses to go exploring without either neighbor being the wiser.

Stephen, refusing to break away from stereotype, was always climbing trees, where as I mostly sat on the ground and watched him. He could climb, I could run, neither of our two abilities met very often. We'd humor each other though so we'd have something to do together. I'd run backwards next to him while he ran as fast as he could forward when we raced, and he'd find knocked over trees I could more or less walk diagonally up and call it climbing. Both compromises left one of us bored and the other one frustrated, but we were young and friends so this is just what we did.

One day though Stephen decided he was going to teach me to climb properly. Ignoring all of the physical problems with my paws and feet, he insisted that he turn me into Tarzan, though it was more along the lines of George trying to teach Lennie how to whittle an egg shell. After dozens of times trying and falling, Stephen decided the best way of getting me up the tree was to help pull me up.

Branch after branch this wiry little squirrel hauled me up as I scratched and knocked tree bark loose trying to get a grip, certain at any moment a tree branch would finally give way. Unfortunately that day, one did.

I froze with terror for a moment as I felt my foot slip and heard the crack, then went into a full panic. We were about twenty feet up, and the only thing keeping me in the air was Stephen's grip. When the branch snapped though the tree swayed, and his grip loosened. I was still panicking, flailing. I grabbed for his wrist but my fingers missed. My claws didn't. Cheetah claws don't retract, it's an adaptation to help us run. When I reached for his hand I slit Stephen's wrist down to the bone; tendons and all were sliced. I fell, hit most of the branches, then slammed down on my feet and sprained both ankles on the spot. Stephen just stood at the top of the tree staring at his wrist.

It started raining, well, I felt liquid hitting me. His vein was pouring blood like a broken fuel line, and it was all raining down. He tried to climb down, shock making him not realize his hand no longer worked. He fell, caught himself as squirrels do. Then he just stood in place. I tried to get up, that didn't work; I just started screaming for help. When he fell out of the tree I assume now he was just about dead. He didn't try to brace himself, just pitched forward and slammed into the dirt head first right next to me. Loud pop and he's staring at me with half lidded eyes while his body is pointing the other way.

Two things terrified me, and I'm ashamed it wasn't just the first. First, I was terrified I had just lost the only friend I had ever had in the world and second was I was sure not a single fucking person would ever believe I didn't do this to him on purpose.