Author's Note: This idea was suggested by Landb on SpaceBattles, and I simply couldn't resist writing it.

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Only a Cat of a Different Coat

A Ser Pounce SI

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I am not a cat person.

That doesn't mean I hate cats, necessarily. I just never really saw the appeal in having to clean up hairballs, scoop out a litter box, and dispose of the remnants of the cat's murder sprees. Yeah, cats are vicious and filthy little buggers.

It's just my luck that I woke up in the body of one.

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When I opened my eyes, I immediately knew something was off.

The colors around me were muted, just a tad darker than I was used to, but everything was so much sharper in my sight. Weird...

I guess that made my disorientation even worse when I realized where I was. I looked around and saw a richly-decorated room I didn't recognize, almost like some sort of Medieval or Renaissance-styled hotel room with stone walls and tapestries. The furniture was expertly carved, with elaborate designs of animals and plants worked into the wood. The bed I'd apparently been placed in was silky soft with red curtains elaborately embroidered with gold-colored thread on all sides, although they'd been tied against the bed posts.

... Now that I paused to think about it, for some reason everything looked much bigger than I was used to. Like, much bigger, like it'd been built for people at least ten times the normal height. What the fuck?

I rolled off my back and froze.

I wasn't wearing clothes. I was covered in thick black fur. As if that wasn't enough, I wasn't even shaped like a human. I had paws. I had a fucking tail.

My voice croaked in pure disbelief and all that came out was, "Mreow?"

Oh my fucking god, I was a cat. I was a fucking cat!

The resulting howl probably woke up everyone within three square miles.

"Aah! Ser Pounce, what is it?!"

I whipped my head toward the young, boyish voice to see a chubby blond kid who couldn't be older than six emerge from the covers with wide eyes and an alarmed expression. I wasn't in the mood for strangers, especially strangers that had probably done this to me in the first place. The rational part of me suggested that it was highly unlikely that a six-year-old child had any part in an experiment that got me stuck in a cat's body. The rest of me beat my rational part bloody and duct taped his mouth shut before shoving him in a closet somewhere in the back of my mind.

I hissed at the kid, feeling every little hair stand on end with my fear and anger. I registered the way he flinched back in shock and hurt, but I sure as hell wasn't feeling sorry. He wasn't stuck in a cat's body! I could probably claw his eyes out at that very moment and feel nothing but satisfaction.

At the moment, however, I just wanted to be left alone. I jumped off the bed which was around five times my body height off the ground with barely a second's thought (which, if anyone cared, would have left me a smear on the ground if I'd tried that as a human) and I hid under the bed.

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One day and a hairball later (those things are fucking disgusting, by the way, and they smell holy shit) Tommen, as I'd overheard his name was, managed to coax me out from under the bed with some fish. I didn't know what kind it was, and I didn't care. I was hungry, and apparently being stuck in a cat made me perfectly okay with eating the fish raw.

I'm not talking sushi-raw, I'm talking raw raw, like you could half-expect it to start swimming away if you put it back in the water. The cat part of me apparently loved it that way. That was another strange thing about my new situation—while I'd been robbed of my speech, I could still think like a human, still rationalize, and apparently I had the same capacity for memory and problem-solving as I did before whatever fucked up surgery landed me in this body. But now I had new instincts as well.

There were the obvious changes with my enhanced senses, having much better night vision, better hearing, a better sense of smell (I was really ticked off with this one because for whatever reason the air always smelled vaguely of shit, although it was at least partially masked by perfume and burned incense), but then there was also an innate knowledge that shouldn't have come so naturally.

I somehow knew how to move on four legs even better than I'd once moved on two, somehow knew how to jump up on things that were many times my height. I knew how to climb, how to stalk, and how to fight with my claws and teeth. It seemed I had all the skills of a cat with none of the actual experience.

But those were all thoughts for later. For now, fish.

I stared the big one in the eye. When I was a human I'd never really bothered to look up the different species of fish, but I had a very vague understanding of them. This one was big and red in a way that vaguely reminded me of Alaskan Salmon, but it was shaped all wrong for that. I'd say it was about two-and-a-half feet long, but my sense of depth perception seemed to have run off with my human body and I hadn't yet really learned to judge a creature's size with the same effectiveness in a cat's body.

I wondered if it was a herring or whatever, and less than a second later my aching stomach convinced me I didn't give a shit what kind of a fish it was. Fish was fish, and even better, it was fresh fish.

I dug in and immediately began noisily ripping into the dead animal, sharp claws and rough pads holding it in place while my teeth made quick work of the tough, armor-like scales. I felt a hand cautiously pet the top of my head, but I ignored it. I was way too damn hungry.

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Either the surgeons who'd screwed me over by somehow transferring my brain (not to mention shrinking without damaging, which was impressive to an impossible degree) into a cat's body had sold me to a very well-funded and very elaborate recreation of Game of Thrones, or my entire situation was so much worse than I thought it was.

Yeah, I'd known my name was supposed to be Ser Pounce, and yeah, I found out my supposed owner's name was Tommen, but I'd been a bit more preoccupied with the fact that I was a fucking cat to put two and two together.

I was kind of bored after just hiding under the bed for a day before I finally broke down and let the kid feed me. I guess I was more of an outdoor cat? Or maybe it was the result of staying in an enclosed space for too long? I dunno. But regardless, I stayed put. I was in an unfamiliar environment in a completely unfamiliar body with absolutely no way to explain the current situation, so taking action really didn't seem like a good idea at the time.

Tommen took matters into his own hands, though, and scooped me up in his chubby arms right after I finished eating the fish. I protested with a small yowl before I saw the oddly determined look in his eyes, then settled for shifting around in his hold to get a more comfortable position as he took me out of the room.

I could've attacked him and possibly scarred him for life, but I chose not to. The thing was Tommen wasn't a bad kid, really, even if my suspicions of him working with or enabling the sick fucks who'd done this to me still lingered. I mean, he fed me when I was hungry, cleaned up after me (which hadn't been easy, with me taking swipes at everyone who dared put their body parts under the bed). He even knew when I wanted him to fuck off and leave me alone, which I could tell he clearly hadn't wanted to do but made himself do anyway.

Even if it was incredibly degrading to be treated as the animal I looked like, I definitely could have had a worse owner.

The hallways were wide and decorated in the same medieval styles as the bedroom, with elaborate tapestries tacked onto stone walls, and silk curtains draped over windows of a truly stunning view. An entire city was sprawled out below. I gagged, feeling like another hairball was coming up. Holy shit, that stench. It was wafting through the open windows in the hallway like there was no tomorrow. I immediately struggled in Tommen's arm and tried to bolt back to his room. At least that room only had a small window sealed off with glass!

But my struggles were to no avail. Tommen only tightened his grip and scolded me in a way that would have been adorable if I wasn't still reeling from my nostrils being overwhelmed with the stench of a truly massive shithole. I think I might have actually blacked out from the smell, because the next thing I knew I was sitting in Tommen's lap, my nose still smarting from that awful experience.

Tommen, in turn, was sitting at a table, and while I couldn't see over the edge in my current position I could see a the skirt-covered legs of a girl just a bit smaller than Tommen sitting to his left, and a large, fat man to Tommen's right at the head of the table dressed in black trousers and what I assumed would continue to be a gold-colored shirt the rest of the way up. Across from Tommen was a woman who was wearing a red dress of some sort that looked unnecessarily fancy with red and gold patterns that I didn't bother to really look at. Next to her sat what I assumed was a boy, older or taller than Tommen (probably both) with crisp gold pants and a similarly colored shirt.

What was it with these people and gold? Didn't they ever get sick of the color?

The table was mostly silent except for sounds of eating utensils hitting the plates and the occasional chewing I heard from Tommen and the girl next to us. And of course, the fat man to our right, who chewed and belched like there was no tomorrow. I waited there, not wanting to draw the attention of these people. I barely liked Tommen—I sure as hell wasn't going to get involved with the kid's family who had probably been the ones to buy me in the first place.

"Perhaps, my love, you've had enough wine for today?" It was the woman across from us, speaking with reproach and poorly-concealed scorn. Jeez, how much had the fat man been drinking to make his wife sound that mad?

I nearly jumped straight off of Tommen's lap in pure surprise when the table shook without warning, and the plates and cups all clanged together. I watched as purple liquid—wine—began dripping through from the top of the table where it had probably been spilled.

The fat man stood up so quickly that his chair fell over behind him. "Ser Barristan!" I heard him snap, and wait, what? Being named Ser Pounce and being owned by a blond kid named Tommen was unnerving enough, but this was really freaking me out. "I will finish my meals in my chambers. Arrange it!" Fat man (he wasn't Robert until he was proven to be Robert, dammit!) stormed away, and the meal was left in an even worse awkward silence than before.

And who are you, the human said,
to dare treat me this way?
Well, I'm a cruel and petty god,
and you are just my prey.
I've shamelessly taken your soul,
and used it for a game.
A game of wars and thrones, mortal,
Victory you must claim.
Impossible, that's what you cried,
You demanded to leave.
Yet, you're still here, stuck in a cat,
You've not a chance to flee.
Yet, you're still here, stuck in a cat,
You've not a chance to flee.