I want to do things. I don't just want to shift and play around with yarn. I want to stand out in the rain at night under the stars. I want to feel the power of cat flowing pure and strong through me like it is now. I love this. This is me.
I don't want to be useless. I want to bare my teeth and show off my muzzle. I want to talk—confident, cocky, shy-grinning—about the phantom whiskers that sprout from my cheeks. I want to run. I want to show myself to the world because I exist. I want them to know me, or at least to look up.
I want them to see me for who I am. I want to talk to them. I want to be free. I want to sit down with someone who understands and tell them for hours about how this feels. I want to rip off this small nose and wear a muzzle. I want to feel the long sinuous tail. I want to tell someone.
Hey, there's a leopard inside me.
I want to run, right now, in the freezing cold wearing these black clothes because I am not human. I am not angsty. I am not depressed. I am not social. Those are human feelings and inside I am not human. I'm tight, my nerves are jangling because I need to get out of this house right now and be a cat. I want to meow so that everyone can hear.
I want to run forever, not caring how far I go and if I'm ever going to find my way back. I want to glance at the stars and go swift-footed across this blank black street and make sounds. I want to sleep beneath the moon. I want to run. I want to feel the cold fresh air ripple through this golden fur of mine while I race down to the forest, bare paws churning on rocky ground with my tail moving in a self-created wind. I want to know the scent of my goddess and feel her silence reflected in my eyes. I want to breathe real air that hasn't been puffed out of a tube and mixed with the smell of people and metal and wet concrete and rotten leaves. I want to breathe air that's icy and a little like stone.
Someday I'll have a house with wooden floors and open space and skylights and houseplants and it will be mine.
I want to swing in the other direction.
What am I doing here with a pillow and a twist of yarn? I don't want this. Not right now. There are times to be cozy. There are times when I get rid of the housecat mode. I can feel the tail and the whiskers blowing in this human, stuffy wind.
I'm going outside to stand under the stars.
I think I need a break.