“That wasn’t catnip,” Dorothy thought, looking again at the strange package her friend had sent by special courier. It looked almost like glitter, but Furmidable, the grey Chartreux cat she was catsitting, and who was normally very calm, dove into it like a starving child into a pool of candy.
It was too late to take any of it back so she read her friend’s letter again, “…a special catnip-like mix…” the note read. It didn’t say anything about giving it to the cat though. Maybe she should have read the whole thing before giving half the contents of the package to the formerly mild and sociable cat. Because Furmidable seemed a little more rambunctious than usual. Though she’d only been catsitting for a few days the two of them had quickly become close friends. Dorothy was almost regretting the thought of having to give Furmidable back to Angeline.
“Meow,” Furmbidable cried, tracing a figure eight between her legs while looking up at the package of sparkling catnip.
“No, the letter only says catnip-like, let me finish reading before I give you any more,” she told the cat and was quickly ignored. She went back to reading the letter but fierce meows from Furmidable grew distracting as she clawed at the cardboard scratching toy on which Dorothy had poured the catnip-like powder. “What’s wrong with you now?”
Furmidable just meowed and frowned. If Dorothy didn’t know any better she’d think he’d gotten an ice cream headache.
“Aww, poor baby, let me finish reading this letter…” But Furmidable meowed louder than she’d ever heard a cat meow, and it scared her nearly off the chair in the kitchen where she’d sat down.
“What’s wrong baby, what’s wrong!”
Furmidable was pawing at her head, struggling backward as if trying to get away from the headache caused by the sparkling powder.
“Oh God, I’ve poisoned you!” Dorothy shrieked as she ran across the room to pick up Furmidable, ready to find her car keys and race to the veterinarian’s office before they closed, but Furmidable calmed down as soon as she was in her arms. “That’s it baby, everything’s going to be… What’s wrong with your hair?”
“Meow,” Furmidable said as if it was perfectly normal for a cat to have a unicorn horn sticking out of the middle of their forehead. She was licking one paw clean of the remaining glitter, her head shifting from side to side with the unfamiliar weight of the new addition.
“Oh my,” was all Dorothy could think to say. “That definitely wasn’t catnip.”
Dorothy set Furmidable down on the soft carpet but she had a hard time walking with the horn. It must have been heavy from the way she wobbled and hung her head forward. She was no longer the graceful grey cat she had been only minutes before, but even in her clumsy, lopsided walk she headed straight for the scratching toy still covered with a hint of the catnip-like glitter.
“Oh no you don’t,” Dorothy said, snatching it away as Furmidable reached out with a massive paw, and stomped down on the carpet with a hoof.
“What the…”
And then, one by one the rest of her paws changed to large hooves. On the tiny cat, it would have been amusing if it wasn’t so scary.
“What’s happening to you?!”
“Meow,” Furmidable cried, backing away from her own unfamiliar body. Stomping and knocking over the small table by the front door which startled her more.
A cat with hooves crashing around your house in a panic is awful, but adding a sharp horn to the top of their head and it could be downright dangerous.
Dorothy jumped back out of the now spastic cat trying to run away from itself and grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch. With one quick movement, she was able to get the blanket over the wild cat and snuggly wrap her up, leaving her face exposed like she was swaddling a baby.
“Whoa there my little meowing unicorn,” Dorothy said smiling, but Furmidable looked less amused by the situation. With her free hand she grabbed her cell phone, “Let’s just call the number on the back of the package and see what they have to say, okay? I’m sure everything is going to be all right.”
Furmidable looked away as if she was already bored with the conversation.
“You gave unicorn dust to a cat?!” The voice bellowed after Dorothy explained what had happened. “I’m sending over a specialist. They should be there momentarily.”
“To treat the cat?” Dorothy asked.
“No, to get rid of the abomination. Whatever you do, do not leave the house.”
“Oh no,” Dorothy said and hung up the phone. “I didn’t give them my address, they won’t be able to find us Furmidable.”
But Furmidable didn’t seem so sure, she was struggling to get free of the blanket as if they had already arrived to take her away. And there was a noise coming from outside the front door…
Through the window, Dorothy could see a swirl of black and blue energy forming on the sidewalk just outside the white picket fence at the edge of her yard. But that wasn’t the only odd thing she saw. There was also a large and scary-looking crow on the corner fence post who was looking back and forth between her in the window and the swirling vortex of energy.
She also noticed a stone gargoyle she didn’t remember her neighbor having. It seemed to be looking straight at the portal as well, until it turned it’s head to look in her direction.
From the center of the portal stepped three very old, angry men in robes who looked as if they had just stepped out of a blizzard. They were covered in frost and a dusting of snow which quickly seemed to melt in the early summer heat.
“They’re going to have to take both of us,” Dorothy said, backing away from the window and unwrapping Furmidable. “How do you fight wizards?”
“Meow,” said Furmidable, grateful to be free but still clumsy as ever.
“That’s it, meowgic,” Dorothy said grabbing for the package of glittery, catnip-like unicorn dust. Don’t think about it, she thought to herself, dumping the remaining contents into her mouth.
The taste was quite unexpected. Both sweet and making her want to gag from the hint of manure flavor… like pop-rock candy someone had dropped in an old barn.
Se gagged on the sparkling dust as tried to chew it and dropped the nearly empty envelope on the floor where Furmidable quickly pounced on the remaining contents. When Furmidable looked back up Dorothy was in front of the mirror in the hall, watching her skin turn rainbow shades of a variety of colors. And not just her skin. Her teeth were switching from blue to green to red, yellow and purple.
Outside the warlocks checked their scroll, getting their bearings in the unfamiliar neighborhood. One of them motioned towards the neighbor’s gargoyle pointing at Dorothy’s front door and the trio walked through the white picket fence as if it wasn’t even there.
Before they can knock, or walk right through like they did the fence, the front door exploded off its hinges, covering the old wizards in a shower of splinters.
Furmidable was now a horse-sized cat with a very colorful Dorothy riding her down the walkway. Quickly galloping through the wizards, like they were unsteady bowling pins facing an oversized ball.
The body of a horse, the fur, head, and whiskers of a cat, and the magical horn of the Unicorn Cat.
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UnicornCatThis is one of several short cat stories for the Starry Reader, an e-reader similar to Amazon Kindle, but which allows users to tokenize short stories on the Stellar network.