Unnatural Creatures

Wolf stood up against the wall on his hind legs and rang the doorbell with his front right paw.

“Oh! Maybe that’s somebody now. The neighbors said they’d— Come, Officer, and let’s see—Oh!”

At the same moment Wolf barked politely, the toddler yelled “Mamma!” and his thin and worn-looking young mother let out a scream—half delight at finding her child and half terror of this large gray canine shape that loomed behind him. She snatched up the infant protectively and turned to the large man in uniform. “Officer! Look! That big dreadful thing! It stole my Robby!”

“No,” Robby protested firmly. “Nice woof-woof.”

The officer laughed. “The lad’s probably right, ma’am. It is a nice woof-woof. Found your boy wandering around and helped him home. You haven’t maybe got a bone for him?”

“Let that big, nasty brute into my home? Never! Come on, Robby.”

“Want my nice woof-woof.”

“I’ll woof-woof you, staying out till all hours and giving your father and me the fright of our lives. Just wait till your father sees you, young man; he’ll— Oh, good night, Officer!”

And she shut the door on the yowls of Robby.

The policeman patted Wolf’s head. “Never mind about the bone, Rover. She didn’t so much as offer me a glass of beer, either. My, you’re a husky specimen, aren’t you, boy?

“Look almost like a wolf. Who do you belong to, and what are you doing wandering about alone? Huh?” He turned on his flash and bent over to look at the nonexistent collar.

He straightened up and whistled. “No license. Rover, that’s bad. You know what I ought to do? I ought to turn you in. If you weren’t a hero that just got cheated out of his bone, I’d— Hell, I ought to do it, anyway. Laws are laws, even for heroes. Come on, Rover. We’re going for a walk.”

Wolf thought quickly. The pound was the last place on earth he wanted to wind up. Even Ozzy would never think of looking for him there. Nobody’d claim him, nobody’d say Absarka! and in the end a dose of chloroform…He wrenched loose from the officer’s grasp on his hair and with one prodigious leap cleared the yard, landed on the sidewalk, and started hell for leather up the street. But the instant he was out of the officer’s sight he stopped dead and slipped behind a hedge.

He scented the policeman’s approach even before he heard it. The man was running with the lumbering haste of two hundred pounds. But opposite the hedge, he too stopped. For a moment Wolf wondered if his ruse had failed; but the officer had paused only to scratch his head and mutter, “Say! There’s something screwy here. Who rang that doorbell? The kid couldn’t reach it, and the dog— Oh, well,” he concluded. “Nuts,” and seemed to find in that monosyllabic summation the solution to all his problems.

As his footsteps and smell died away, Wolf became aware of another scent. He had only just identified it as cat when someone said, “You’re were, aren’t you?”

Wolf started up, lips drawn back and muscles tense. There was nothing human in sight, but someone had spoken to him. Unthinkingly, he tried to say, “Where are you?” but all that came out was a growl.

“Right behind you. Here in the shadows. You can scent me, can’t you?”

“But you’re a cat,” Wolf thought in his snarls. “And you’re talking.”

“Of course. But I’m not talking human language. It’s just your brain that takes it that way. If you had your human body, you’d think I was just going meowrr. But you are were, aren’t you?”

“How do you…why do you think so?”

“Because you didn’t try to jump me, as any normal dog would have. And besides, unless Confucius taught me all wrong, you’re a wolf, not a dog; and we don’t have wolves around here unless they’re were.”

“How do you know all this? Are you—”

“Oh, no. I’m just a cat. But I used to live next door to a werechow named Confucius. He taught me things.”

Wolf was amazed. “You mean he was a man who changed to chow and stayed that way? Lived as a pet?”

“Certainly. This was back at the worst of the depression. He said a dog was more apt to be fed and looked after than a man. I thought it was a smart idea.”

“But how terrible! Could a man so debase himself as—”

“Men don’t debase themselves. They debase each other. That’s the way of most weres. Some change to keep from being debased, others to do a little more effective debasing. Which are you?”

“Why, you see, I—”

“Sh! Look. This is going to be fun. Holdup.”

Wolf peered around the hedge. A well-dressed, middle-aged man was walking along briskly, apparently enjoying a night constitutional. Behind him moved a thin, silent figure. Even as Wolf watched, the figure caught up with him and whispered harshly, “Up with ’em, buddy!”

The quiet pomposity of the stroller melted away. He was ashen and aspen as the figure slipped a hand around into his breast pocket and removed an impressive wallet.

And what, thought Wolf, was the good of his fine, vigorous body if it merely crouched behind hedges as a spectator? In one fine bound, to the shocked amazement of the were-wise cat, he had crossed the hedge and landed with his forepaws full in the figure’s face. It went over backward with him on top, and then there came a loud noise, a flash of light, and a frightful sharp smell. For a moment Wolf felt an acute pang in his shoulder, like the jab of a long needle, and then the pain was gone.

But his momentary recoil had been enough to let the figure get to its feet. “Missed you, huh?” it muttered. “Let’s see how you like a slug in the belly, you interfering—” and he applied an epithet that would have been a purely literal description if Wolf had not been were.

There were three quick shots in succession even as Wolf sprang. For a second he experienced the most acute stomachache of his life. Then he landed again. The figure’s head hit the concrete sidewalk and he was still.

Lights were leaping into brightness everywhere. Among all the confused noises, Wolf could hear the shrill complaints of Robby’s mother, and among all the compounded smells, he could distinguish the scent of the policeman who had wanted to impound him. That meant getting the hell out, and quick.

The city meant trouble, Wolf decided as he loped off. He could endure loneliness while he practiced his wolfry, until he had Gloria. Though just as a precaution he must arrange with Ozzy about a plausible-looking collar, and—