Page 4 of The Griffin, the Tiger, and Their House Cat Omega

Suddenly, I was the guardian of a four-year-old who had just lost not one but both of her parents. She was strong, resilient, and so smart. But none of those things could take away the devastation that was losing your parents at her age. Some mornings she’d come downstairs talking to “Mommy” only to remember that Mommy was no longer there.

People treated her differently, like she was glass that could shatter. Even eight months after the accident, it hadn’t let up. They meant well, but it made it so much more difficult for Flora to move on. It wasn’t fair to her. And it wasn’t done out of cruelty. Quite the contrary, but that didn’t change the impact it made on her daily life.

Memories of her parents were everywhere. We went to a streak meeting, and she sobbed uncontrollably when the popcorn machine came out because last time her mom ran it. Similar memories were around every corner—another thing I had no control of.

And then there were the “do-gooders,” including two different mated pairs who tried to take her from me because she “needed two parents,” instead of one uncle taking care of her.

Staying in the streak was too much for Flora and too much for me. Something had to give. So I did what I thought was best.

I applied for all the jobs in my field that I could find. I didn’t worry about money or benefits or status. If it wasn’t a community where I could see her being happy, then I wasn’t interested.

Because this—being here with her, living this way—just wasn’t working.

She deserved better.

And I was going to give it to her.

Chapter Three

Matthew

San Diego was paradise. I’d lived here for five years and never regretted the move across the country, although it had been a little scary at first. The clowder where I grew up had been a comfortable place to be a child, but far too insular for my taste as an adult.

I never even met another kind of shifter and, until I was about twelve, only knew they existed from the grown-up conversations I happened to overhear. Same thing about humans—how awful it must be to have no special skills. We lived in Florida, in an isolated area about a half hour from the nearest town. Kits were home-schooled, and a trip to that little burg for grocery shopping happened every month or so. Trips only adults went on, keeping us isolated and “safe.” I dreamed of meeting other kinds of shifters and sharing what it was like to be different from one another.

I dreamed of finding my mate.

Not that the clowder wasn’t nice. I had friends and family, and our education was good, as far as it went. Most of those I grew up with stayed there, mating another house cat and settling in to raise a family and work in one of the small businesses we ran. The internet had been a boon for groups like ours, allowing us to create and sell artisanal items. Nobody got rich, but our parents made enough for our family’s needs and to allow us to remain in our safe, little corner of the world.

I never even wondered what we were being kept safe from until I reached my majority and was pressed to decide what job I wanted to take up in the clowder. For most, it was a no brainer but for me?

We had leatherworkers, silversmiths, potters, and even some fine artists, but I had no skills in any of those arenas. I’d tried as part of our high-school internships. And that left some oddball jobs like groundkeeper—meaning someone to keep the jungle-like foliage hacked back so we could see alligators who waddled up from the river that crossed our land—or vegetable and fruit garden tenders. I didn’t like those, either.

So, I had to make the hard call. Staying and either stumbling through doing something I was bad at or something I hated were not an option or fair to anyone else. So, I kissed my parents goodbye and set off to make my own life. The only thing I knew was I did not want to go somewhere with a very cold winter. I had no experience of it, but my cat and I both felt that would be a bad fit for us. We didn’t even like Florida winters with the temperature in our area never getting anything worse than the rare light frost.

Finding a new home meant traveling across the Southern states and into the Southwest in search of a home, a job, and someplace I fit. And it meant a whole lot of culture shock. Did I mention I’d never met any other kind of shifter? Or a human? The talk I’ve eavesdropped on as a child had hinted at a less-than friendly relationship with the shifters and humans in town, but I always assumed it was personal. We were a small group, even, to my understanding, including those in town. So, I tried to find more information where I could. I did have a tablet and access to the local library and began to use the novels I found there to try to learn about the outside world.

I might have done better with nonfiction, but while there were mountains of story about famous humans, shifters did not seem to enter that genre. So my knowledge might have been, no, for sure was, pretty fictional.

As I traveled, I met a few wolves and big cats and even, in Texas, an Aardvark, and I quickly learned the value of notblurting out what I was. They made jokes about sitting on someone’s lap or chasing mice or, worse, expressed pity that I was a house cat.

And no matter how my cat seemed aloof and disinterested in their opinions, I hated them for how they treated him. In fact, after being vulnerable and shifting at the request of a lion shifter who asked to see my cat, and his awful laughter, I kept my fluffy side for private moments. I was not exposing him to their derision. Bastards!

It sometimes struck me as funny, but not funny ha ha that they could be so judgmental. What made them better than us? Size? It wasn’t attitude because my cat had one bigger than all outdoors and considered himself the equal of anyone. As well he should.

When I finally arrived in San Diego, I knew I’d found my new home and decided to do my best to blend into the human world. Because of our size, I could shift in my living room anytime and go out into the yard without having to figure out how to open a full-size door. First thing I did was install a cat door for my convenience.

All those big guys had to figure out where they could shift and not be seen. A wolf in the suburbs would have the humans up in arms. And I’d heard of a mountain lion being trapped just a few blocks from me and moved several hundred miles away. I couldn’t be sure, but from the look in the animal’s eyes as it peered out of the giant “cat carrier,” I was pretty sure they had captured my neighbor and he was going to have to find a way home after release.

If he hadn’t been such a jerk to me after peering over the fence and learning my secret, I’d have been more sympathetic.

My favorite part of my new city was access to so much reading. The library down the street and no fewer than three bookstores within a mile. It had been so much a part of myyouth, a way out of the tiny world my clowder inhabited, and reading was still my favorite thing to do.

At Barnes and Noble, there was a whole section devoted to supernatural lovers. Paranormal people who readers could dream of meeting in real life. There were quite a variety of shifters along with vampires, witches, wizards, mythical creatures of all kinds. But the largest number of volumes—the books that occupied the end cap display, consisted of wolf shifters, lions, and other apex predators. All of whom seemed to have fated mates.

I’d given up on that idea a long time ago.

Humans seemed to be fascinated by these predators and their love lives, but I didn’t care at all about that. Many didn’t even know we were real. And those at work certainly didn’t know I was more than the one part of me that showed up every day in business casual to visit new clients and sell our restaurant supply products. For a guy who had never met anyone outside his clowder for the first eighteen years of his life, I was excellent at connecting with strangers. Even earning me “Salesman of the Year” twice.

---