Work Text:
I am Jones.
I am a hunter. I am the only cat on this ship. It is a big empty ship with no prey for me to hunt. I come from a long line of hunters. My mother and father hunted and their mother and father hunted and their mother and father hunted. Lots of hunters.
I am bored a lot.
I hunt but there is no prey on this ship. Sometimes I sleep, for long times in the sleeping boxes with the humans (they are not prey, they are predators but not predators of me). I can tell because when I wake the smell of time has changed and the ship is older and the pretend-human smells like the ship instead of other humans.
I have just woken up from the sleeping box. I sleep with a human each time. All the other humans are moving and talking. Then they are making food and it is not hunted food, it comes out of little boxes. Humans do not hunt their food. I do not hunt my food either but that is because there is no prey to hunt. But there is food for me and it is put up on the table for me and I eat it. This is social eating and it is something humans do. They are loud and talking and try to touch me and I tolerate this.
The pretend-human also eats.
Then there is talking. Humans are always talking and yelling and talking. Some of the humans leave in the small ship. I am left behind with the pretend-human. The pretend-human does not interact with me when we are alone, only when the humans are also present does the pretend-human try to touch me.
I don’t like the pretend-human. It is a predator and could be a predator of me. I hiss at it when it walks past but it does not notice.
When the humans return there is more talking and yelling and talking. They have been outside the ship. I am curious, I can smell things on them. Outside-ship smells: dirt, many types of dirt, outside-air, weather, temperature, creatures, different-ship smells, dead creatures, nests, prey-creatures.
My humans have been out hunting and one of them smells like the prey-creatures. He is asleep. He has caught a prey-creature and it is on his face and he has not let go of it even in sleep. I am impressed, this human is a strong hunter. They prey-creature is still alive. I think maybe he was brought it back to the ship to teach the other humans how to hunt.
I sit on his chest to wait for him to wake, but the pretend-human removes me from the room. I scratch it. I hiss at it.
I am removed.
I hunt outside the room. I can smell the prey-creature.
The humans depart quickly. I can still smell the prey-creature. I slip between human legs and enter the room. Pretend-human is still there. I do not want it to catch me again so I go up.
There is a new hole in the floor. It goes down, down, down. I will explore it later.
Pretend-human leaves to join the humans and I am alone.
The prey-creature is twitching and I am watching it. It is escaping the sleeping human’s mouth!
I jump down and I catch the prey-creature by the base of its tail. It has no neck to turn around and bite me with. No neck for me to grab in my mouth and snap. It has many legs and they wiggle. I hold on with my mouth and my claws and I kick at its soft underside. It wiggles. I kick it. It wiggles. I kick it. It stops wiggling.
I hear the humans returning.
I go up.
They are talking and yelling and talking. Then they are looking. They are hunting. They are hunting for the prey-creature that the sleeping-human brought back for them to learn to hunt on.
I feel regret. In my excitement I have taken human kill from them.
I tighten my grip. It wiggles.
I drop the prey-creature on a human. She is loud and jumping back and surprised. Not a good reaction to the prey-creature. Meant to grab and catch and snap the neck. I hiss at her and she stops the yelling.
The humans are attempting to catch the prey-creature. They are tentative. They dart in and out like kittens. I have never had kittens, but I have memories when I was kitten and my sibling-kittens would dart in and out. They were poor hunters. I would dart in and catch and that is why I am on ship.
They have realised it is dead prey-creature and stop darting, start investigating. They are so tentative.
It is dead.
I am bored.
I jump down on a human and they jump back, yelling. They are easily scared. I am teaching them awareness. (It is fun when they do that. I will do that again later).
I am satisfied, I will leave them with the sleeping human to tell him how bad they were at hunting. Maybe he will catch another and bring it to them.
I rest.
The hunter human is awake and the other humans are celebrating his catch. They are eating. I am also eating. The hunter human smells odd, like he is becoming prey instead of predator. It is confusing and I clean myself.
Then the hunter is choking on his food and the humans are talking and yelling and talking and then they are fighting the hunter. I get space. I hiss. I pin my ears. I watch.
There is thick blood-scent on the air. The hunter is wounded and then there is a prey-creature. My tail is lashing. A different prey-creature but it is shaped like prey and makes noises like prey and then it flees like prey. The hunter human is dead I think, but there is prey-creature on the ship again and it is fast and small.
I am hunting for it.
The humans are also hunting for it. The bloodlust has reached them at last and they are creeping and stalking. They cannot hunt naturally, they need special human tools to find it and to hunt for it. They are not very good, they are following me. But that is for the best, as I am following the prey-creature.
I can see it ahead. I am stalking. And then there is a human hand and I hiss and the human yells! I hear them say the word for me, the “cat!”. They were hunting the wrong prey as I am not prey.
Now they are hunting me. They say my name, they make the pspspsps noise. They say “kittykitty” and make pretend-meows at me.
I ignore them. I am hunting. The prey-creature is ahead of me. It is in the dark climbing place and I can fit but the humans cannot. I will catch it for them and bring it back for them to practice hunting on.
I can smell it. I can see it. The prey-creature. It is long. It has no legs. It has lots of neck. (The best spot to bite prey-creature is high on neck behind head). I am getting closer and closer. I leap and I grab it and it is wiggling and screaming and I get a grip on it but then its skin starts to rip and then the skin comes off and I am falling with the prey-creature skin.
The prey-creature has legs now and it flees with them, because it is prey. I want to chase it but I have fallen in the water. I am wet. I need to get clean. I cannot hunt properly when I am wet.
A human is here. He picks up the skin.
I jump over to him. There is no prey-creature in there anymore, I tell him this with a meow. but the human is yelling and does not hear, because he did not notice me and is not observant. So he is yelling at me (it is fun to see them jump).
I am back to hunting. It is a different colour now, a harder to spot colour, camouflage, because it is prey. It is tricky prey and it is getting bigger and it is still prey. I hunt and I hunt and I hunt.
I have cornered it, I can feel it in my whiskers. It is still and quiet, but it breathes and makes the air move and I can smell it. It is bigger now, I am considering how to catch it. Trapped prey-creatures can bite back.
Then a clumsy human doing clumsy hunting is between us, and he interrupts me, thinks I am the prey! I pin ears, I hiss, I fluff my fur. I am NOT prey. He understands and jumps back. The prey-creature is behind him and he does not notice because he does not have whiskers to sense the air with and he has a bad nose and cannot smell it.
It is quiet behind him.
I threat display at it. I do a big hiss with all my teeth and fur to tell it that it may be bigger, but I am predator and it is prey and I will catch it when it least expects it. The prey-creature is still cornered and it threat displays back at me. It has no ears to flatten, no fur to make big, no eyes to stare. But it has a long tail it lashes and it can open its mouths and show me its fangs and hiss at me.
It is big now, bigger than human. But I remember when it was small and weak, I remember where its weak points are.
I am not afraid.
The clumsy human is afraid, instead of doing a threat display back to make the prey-creature run, he is acting like clumsy prey.
They prey-creature is a human-predator. I watch how it kills. It plays with him, it is not quick, it uses its mouth and its claws and its tails. There are lots of humans for it to hunt on this ship, so it can play. I only have one prey-creature to hunt so I cannot play.
When the human is quiet and dead, the prey-creature looks at me. I threat display at it again, to warn it that I am NOT prey and I am prey-creature-predator. It hisses back and then it runs away, like prey.
More humans are here and they are talking and yelling and talking over dead clumsy-human. I meow at them to hunt and they start calling for me, so I leave and return to hunting. The prey-creature is also hunting and it is more successful than me because humans are clumsy and it as a predator of humans.
I wonder who will feed me when they are gone.
I will feed myself. I will catch the prey-creature and I will consume it. It is big and will feed me for a long time.
There is one human following, more pspspspspsps and kittykitty and fake-meows. I am a better hunter than her, I can make my collar quiet so it does not jingle. The prey-creature is not in this room so I am going to leave, but she picks me up and puts me in a box.
It has been a long time since I was in a box.
I am mad. I am angry.
I meow at her to let me out, that I cannot hunt when I am in the box. But she does not take me out of the box.
Then I am being shaken and jostled in the box! The human is running with me. I can smell through the box and prey-creature is getting closer. She is running and she is hunting. She is very loud and not that good at finding the prey-creature. That is why I was hunting.
She finds where it was, not where it is.
It is easy to find where it was, the last humans are dead but the prey-creature is not here.
Then human is running again and I am being shaken and jostled again!
I meow. I tell her I am mad and angry and she is shaking me.
The ship is also mad and angry, it is beeping. And there is loud speaking voice of the unseen-human. The ship is being dark and bright with the lights and then human is putting my box down. Then human is running away from the prey-creature. Running away like prey does and I am reconsidering if I am not also a human-predator as I want to chase her and bite her.
This is why I was hunting. It is my job. Humans are bad at hunting.
She has left me in the box.
The prey-creature is outside the box. It is mocking me.
I hiss at it.
I tell it that if I were not in this box, I would catch it and kill it. I would snap its neck and disembowel its insides.
It is threatened and the prey-creature leaves again. It runs away like prey. Then also the human is back and she is picking up my box and running the wrong direction, running away from the prey-creature.
I am angry! I am mad! We should catch the prey-creature!
This is my only human and so she must be my favourite human, but I do not think she can be my favourite human because she has put me in a box and stopped me from hunting.
She takes me to part of ship I have never been. It smells clean. It smells unused. It has sleeping boxes and shiny squares and lots of places to explore.
I am out of the box and I am meowing at her, telling her how mad I am. (But I let her hold me, because it feels good. Humans are soft and warm).
I am smelling as she holds me. I can smell. I can smell the prey creature and the smell is strong. She is putting me into the sleeping box and I am telling her no. They prey-creature is here, we can catch it! She does not understand. I hiss and growl and I put my claws into her pelt, but she puts me in the sleeping box and closes the lid.
I look at her. I hiss her warnings.
She should let me hunt before she puts me in the sleeping box. She is near the prey-creature and she does not know. I tell her, there it is! Catch it! Kill it! It is unaware! But she does not understand and then they prey-creature is being a human-predator and my human is being prey and hiding.
Humans are much better at being prey than predators.
I watch human as she is prey. The human-predator-prey-creature is not very good at finding her. She is putting on different pelts I have not seen humans in before. And then she is making the ship spit and attack the human-predator and make it prey-creature.
Then she attacks it properly, like a cat. She attacks it with a mechanical claw and it falls into the dark sky beyond the door.
It is a good attack. It is not the best method, as she has no body to present to me, but for her first fight it is a good attempt. She has defeated and wounded the prey. It is outside now in the dark sky and it is wounded. It may die or we may hunt it again.
She is opening the sleeping box and pulls me out. She is holding me, it feels good. I think she is telling me about her hunt, and then she is grooming me and I accept the respect. I will teach her how to hunt properly. My mother and father hunted and their mother and father hunted and their mother and father hunted. Lots of hunters I have come from and lots of hunters I will make one day. I will start with this human and teach her how to be a prey-creature hunter and not a human-predator prey.
I am sleepy now. This time, the sleeping box is okay as the human goes in first and I join her like other sleeping boxes. This is good, this is right.
After successful hunt is sleep.