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Meet Catamount

A Savage the tiger vore story

By Strega

"There he is," Ratbat said.

Savage lay stretched out on the concrete factory floor nearby, his nose nearly touching the same window the were-rat pointed through. More than twenty feet away his tail-tip, which had been still for hours of stakeout, twitched. Savage nodded, and muscles began to stir beneath his striped pelt. Two tons of tiger roused himself from near slumber - it'd been Ratbat's turn on watch - and peered interestedly through the cracked glass.

Graffiti covered the walls and sections of the concrete floor were so crumbled that Savage had to place his massive paws with care lest he fall right through. The disused factory was littered with ruined machinery, wiring stripped and sold by the homeless and desperate. Nothing had been built here in twenty years; it was just another decaying building in this decayed part of the city.

But across the street was an apartment building recently converted into condominiums. Not everyone had given up on the city, even here in the meat packing district.

"He climbs well," Savage rumbled. Ten yards away a figure in mottled gray clothing scaled the freshly painted brick wall with little effort. Savage's eyes, each half the size of a man's head and equipped like all cats' with a reflective coating behind the retina, gathered the dim light efficiently; he did not need the night vision goggles his were-rat friend wore.

"Like a cat," Ratbat said with a grin, and Savage flicked an ear at the obvious joke. Across from their window the cat-man climbed, claws visibly unsheathing and hooking into cracks in the brickwork. His lengthy tail flicked back and forth to help him maintain his balance as he climbed, almost as useful as another arm. Its black tip reminded Savage of a cougar.

"Best not to let him get into one of the condos," Savage growled, and steely muscles bunched beneath his stripey hide. Ratbat nodded and made sure the long straight-bladed sword strapped vertically on his back was tight in its sheath.

Catamount was six feet below the balcony when the window behind him exploded. An enormous shape came at him through the cloud of glass and he instantly let go his grip. Normally he'd have sprung backward from the wall, trusting his feline reflexes and were-cat durability to protect him from the resulting fall, but that glimpse had included a gaping fang-filled maw and he wisely decided not to leap into that.

The hurtling shape turned out to be as agile as it was big. He heard it hit the brick wall above him with a three-beat sound, three heavy but padded feet, and he glanced up just in time to see the fourth paw sweep down to cuff him. It was a huge tiger - without a doubt Savage, feral protector of the slaughterhouse district - and though the claws-retracted toes barely grazed him it still sent him into the sidewalk below too fast to land on his feet.

He landed on his back so hard the concrete cracked beneath him, dust and fragments spraying into the air. It would have crippled a normal man, but stunned as he was he rolled to the side. He got out from under the shadow on the pavement an instant before the massive tiger landed neatly on all fours right where he'd been a second before. Glass was raining down from the shattered factory window as he flipped back onto his feet, narrowly evading another swipe from a paw the size of a manhole cover.

Catamount was tough, strong, fast and smart - smart enough to not face superbeings if he could help it. Discretion was definitely the better part of given that Savage outmassed him twenty to one and found anything shy of antitank ordinance an annoyance rather than a threat. As he came back on his feet he plucked gas capsules from his harness. Tear gas and smoke wouldn't stop Savage, but a good noseful would give the tiger something to think about besides chasing him down. Catamount sprang backward as Savage pounced, the big cat landing in the cloud as the capsules shattered on the pavement.

The tiger disappeared into the smoke with an irritated yowl and Catamount spun away to run. He caught a whiff of the gas himself and his eyes burned, so he only saw the next attack coming as a blur. This time it was a smaller, quicker adversary, and though he dodged his enemy skilfully followed along and Catamount caught a kick in already cracked ribs that knocked the breath of him. He barely blocked two follow-up punches and then ducked as another kick whistled over his head, grazing one ear. Whoever it was had nearly his own strength and speed, and he was five times as strong as a fit man. He threw a punch of his own and grazed something before finally blinking the tears out of his eyes.

It was a ratman - not a man in a rat costume, an actual humanoid rat -- in gray urban camouflage much like his own. Panels of body armor stood out beneath the cloth and overlapping plates even protected the rodent's naked tail. Catamount threw another kick as the rat finished the spinning move that'd sent that foot whizzing past his ears.

His opponent knew what he was doing. The kick connected but the rat dissipated the impact by completing the spin and letting the force slide off his hip. It took silver or massive damage to slow a Were down, and just as his cracked bones and bruised muscle were regenerating, any scratches he'd given the rat were inconsequential.

"Ratbat, right?" Catamount growled, and the rat smiled.

"Nice to meet you, kitty," Ratbat said, and snapped a kick at Catamount's knee. Catamount replied by firing that foot up at the rat's face only to have it blocked by an armored wrist guard. An instant later he was fending off a furious series of blows that hurt even when he blocked. Catamount had six inches of height and thirty or so pounds on the rat but didn't fight super-powered opponents often. The same obviously couldn't be said for Ratbat, who gave him all he could handle without even drawing the sword strapped to his back.

Normally he'd have tried grappling, using his greater size and strength (and hopefully skill, given how much time the rat must spend practicing his fisticuffs) but he had to get out of there before Savage recovered and pounded him into the ground like a tent stake. He took a chance and threw a punch at the rat's face, connecting at the cost of taking an identical strike. Either blow would have put a human in the hospital and both were similarly ineffective. The combatants took a step back each and circled, Catamount to reach an alley away from the streetlight and the rat to block him. All they had to show for the exchange was a rapidly healing cut where one of his claws had gashed the rat's temple.

"This is pointless," Catamount said, and blocked a kick. "And not t any of your business."

"Crime is our business," the rat said with a grin and fired off another reverse kick. Spinning attacks generated a lot of power but the rat had used the same kick twice in thirty seconds. Catamount smiled, ducked, and came up off the ground with an uppercut sure to put the rat down. The rat's kick missed, but that was all that went right. There was a blur of motion, something slammed into the side of his head, and then everything went black.

A rocking motion woke him. Stars swam through his vision as he blinked awake and realized he was draped across Savage's shoulders just in front of the saddle the tiger wore.

"Now hold on there," said a cheerful ratty voice as Catamount began to squirm. He realized at once that he was naked, or as naked as a were-cougar can get, and that his wrists and ankles were bound with something too strong to snap. Even his upper arms were strapped to his sides. Though his head injury was nearly healed - he could feel even the blood matting the fur disappearing as he regenerated - it took only the pressure of the were-rat's hand on his lower back to keep him firmly in place. Savage did not need even to interrupt his walk. They were in one of the innumerable trash-filled alleys, presumably on their way to meet the cops.

To his surprise the giant cat did not continue toward the better-lit street ahead. Instead Savage pushed a rusty steel door open with his forehead. Ratbat had to duck as they entered what must be an abandoned factory. Old, ruined machinery, rotting mattresses from squatters and bits of trash littered the place. Any smell of oil or electricity was long gone, replaced by the ammonia scent of urine and a reek of decay that penetrated even his gas-shocked nose.

Ratbat pushed him off onto one of the mattresses and Catamount yanked at his bindings as he hit, aware it was good a chance as he'd get to escape. Whatever the black rubbery material was, though, it was simply too strong to break. It was stuck fast to his fur; maybe if he assumed his human form...?

Savage put a stop to that thought by planting a huge paw on his chest and applying just enough force to muffle his wriggling. "Catamount, I presume," the big cat said in a rumbly voice so deep the puma felt it in his chest. Ratbat slid out of the saddle, grinning like an idiot.

Catamount saw the flanged weight strapped to the end of the rat's tail and realized what had happened. He'd ducked and the weight, slung out by the centrifugal motion of the spinning kick, had caved in the side of his head like a medieval flail. The weight was the same color as the rat's tail armor and he'd simply not noticed it in the stress of combat.

"All right, you have me," Catamount growled. Ratbat must have strapped his arms to his sides while he was out, and about all he could do to escape at this point was bite Savage's toes. That seemed like a bad idea with ten-inch canine fangs two feet from his face. Though he had seen himself a thousand times in the mirror, there was something about seeing a yard-wide tiger face from this close that reminded you that big cats are predators. Catamount lay nice and still.

"You wouldn't believe how boring stakeouts are," Ratbat said conversationally. The were-rat plopped himself down on an overturned trash can. "We've been trying to catch you in the act for weeks."

"Two nights in this old factory alone," Savage rumbled. The barely visible whites of his eyes we pinker than before, presumably due to the tear gas. "The place stinks."

Both of them were looking him over, Ratbat craning his neck from his seat and Savage sniffing at Catamount's chest and legs. At no point did the heavy paw move even a fraction. Catamount was, as his name suggested, a puma-man; the parts of him that his clothing left exposed were brown and furry, with some white on his chops, chin and belly. From ears to pawpads he was a humanoid mountain lion. A were-mountain lion, in this case.

"I feel for you," Catamount snarled. "Go ahead and call the cops, it won't be the first time."

"True enough," Ratbat said. He rose from his seat and approached with still another of the black straps in his hand. "Now I can put this on your muzzle or you can try to bite me. If you do Savage will thump you and -then- I will put it on. What'll be it be?"

"Fine," Catamount said sourly, and let his snout be bound shut. Like the other straps this one adhered to his pelt, and the rat was smart enough to tug it tight despite the cougar's effort to keep his mouth slightly open.

"I'd love to spar with you sometime," the were-rat said. "We're pretty evenly matched. Shame about you being on the wrong side."

Catamount shrugged.

"You're a were-cougar, right?" Ratbat said. They'd had a good look at him now and it seemed pointless to deny it.

"My mother was too," he mumbled through a closed muzzle. "I inherited it, but it didn't start to show until I was a teenager. My prom was awkward. I was pretty peeved, considering she never told me it might happen."

Ratbat flicked an ear. "I didn't even make it into high school before there was what I'll call an awkward incident. I was bitten by what I thought was a rabid rat when I was ten. Rabies shots hurt like hell but it turns out they don't do a thing for therianthropy." He looked Catamount over again. "At least you're, well, a handsome cat. Most people don't like us rats on two legs any more than they do on four."

"So where are the cops?" Catamount asked. He only then realized that the doors they'd entered by were shut. Shouldn't they have left them open for the police?

"Well, here's the thing," the rat said. "When the cops told us about your little crime spree they said you're actually quite a rich man when you aren't wearing fur. Something about your dad's business, rich young man with too much time on his hands, yadda yadda."

"You go meekly when they catch you, only for your lawyers to bail you out. Circumstantial evidence, never any witnesses, your supposed love of climbing buildings...odd but not illegal. They never seem to catch you with a bag full of loot. And then there's the Keane act...."

"Section seven, paragraph nine," Savage rumbled. "You shelter under the law that gives us vigilantes our bit of leeway. Makes us all look bad, really." The tiger, who'd stood silent since sniffing him all over, once again looked him over in a most disconcerting way. A flip of the giant cat's paw and the tiger was sniffing him where his nose couldn't reach before.

"Hold on, big guy," Ratbat said, and pulled something out of Catamount's tailfur. "Oh, just a lockpick. Carry on."

"What did you expect to find?" It was uncomfortable and embarrassing being manhandled by the big cat. He was naked, and he'd be even more naked if he turned back to human, so he didn't. Bad enough to sprawl here on the smelly mattress with his fur on.

"You'd be surprised," the tiger rumbled. "Knives. Guns. Some things I don't like to remember."

"You think I am going to blow myself up? What am I, a suicide cat?" He was getting used to the band around his muzzle and could talk almost normally through it now.

"You're a Were, you'd probably survive," Ratbat said. "Which is why were are here."

"You see," Savage rumbled as he held Catamount between his forepaws, "We do not think turning you over to the police is an effective deterrent. Your very expensive lawyers have gotten you out of charges like this four or five times now. No doubt they would maintain you were just climbing that wall for exercise. The lockpicks, the gas - what would they say? For your hobbies and for self defense? Or you'd bribe the person whose apartment you robbed, or one of the too many crooked cops, and you'd be back on the street tomorrow."

There was something genuinely unnerving about the way the tiger was looking at him. Catamount's tail began to fluff up. "You can't just kill me. Someone must have seen you capture me, and when the police find my body -"

"Body?" Ratbat said with that same creepy cheerfulness. "What body?"

"What does that mean?" Catamount yowled, but as he watched Savage's sandpaper-rough tongue make a circuit of the big cat's chops he knew.

"Bye, kitty," the grinning rat said, and Catamount stared into a terrible vista of fangs, salivating tongue and ridged palate as the tiger pulled him into his jaws. He tried to pull away, knowing the tiger could take his head off with one snap and not sure even a Were could recover from that, but Savage was far stronger and engulfed his head and shoulders effortlessly. Thankfully the massive fangs didn't crunch down, but what happened was perhaps even worse; Savage stuffed him into wide-open jaws until Catamount's head slid into the mucus-slick depths of the tiger's gullet.

He screamed, but the sound just sank into the flesh enfolding his face. His neck followed his face into the slippery folds of tiger throat, and suddenly he remembered the video that had played over and over on the news two years back. Savage, or what turned out to a clone of the big cat, had confronted a police officer in the course of robbing a jewelry store. The cop had pumped bullet after bullet into the cat's tough hide until abruptly, with just a a lunge and a single snap of his jaws the tiger had swallowed the man whole. Later, the story went, after the superhero clones were defeated, the various heroes decided they didn't want to have to worry about the mindless clones somehow recovering and causing trouble. Luckily, they'd had what amounted to a four-legged people-disposal on hand.

Catamount screamed again, gagging on the thick layer of mucus that coated the bigger cat's gullet. Fangs scraped through fur and a broad, drooling tongue wetted him down for easier eating. Savage was swallowing him whole with no apparent difficulty; held between the massive paws, every kick and wriggle Catamount tried just shoved more of him into the tiger's throat. Of course Savage was swallowing him whole! What better way to rid himself of both an annoyance and the resulting evidence?

He squirmed in the slick tube of flesh, but though he unsheathed his claws to the limit the tips just slipped through the slime coating the walls Fangs scraped over his hips as the tiger reached the halfway point. His fur was matted with mucus now, slick and wet, and he tried to free his wrists from the binding strap. No good; it stuck to him firmly and even had he wanted to tear his own pelt off to get free he didn't have the leverage with his hands behind his back. He kicked, but Savage didn't even bother to trap his feet beneath a paw. He was completely at the big cat's mercy and it looked like the big cat wasn't in a merciful mood.

There was a heave of motion as Savage tossed his head, bolting Catamount's rump down into his throat. The wet flesh surrounding him throbbed with the tiger's pulse, the barely excited heartbeat resonating through his own body. Savage seemed hardly aroused at all by the prospect of his meal; perhaps he ate people often enough that the feel of a struggling body disappearing down his throat had lost any luster. To him, it seemed, Catamount was not so much a person as two hundred pounds of meat, bone and fur: calories on the hoof.

Another snap of the jaws and his knees slipped between the rows of fangs and to the back of the tiger's mouth. Finally the great jaws shut, each of his padded feet protruding from a different corner of Savage's mouth. Catamount kicked one last time as the tiger's throat muscles squeezed tight around him, then with a single great contraction of his gullet Savage swallowed him alive. His despairing whimper was lost in the creak and gurgle of wet flesh as he slithered down into the waiting stomach. His footclaws, not as restrained as the ones on his bound hands, dug briefly into the rough surface of the tongue, but it did not stop the tiger from gulping him down. His fluffed-up tail slipped past the tiger's fangs after the rest, a mere afterthought. As always, where Catamount went his tail followed. It just followed him down a less pleasant path this time.

Catamount roared and struggled as the stomach expanded to accommodate him, but still the throat pushed him in. When the sphincter sealed behind him he was curled up neatly in the tiger's belly, pelt already soaking through with the copious volumes of digestive enzymes. Thick layers of slick muscus coated the muscular walls, keeping him from getting any traction even with fully unsheathed footclaws. Every part of him not covered with fur - eyes, nose, anus, and the opening of his sheath - burned already as the caustic juices ate at the flesh. He could feel the skin regenerating almost, but not quite as fast as it dissolved; Savage's stomach acids were too powerful. The pain spread as the juices soaked through his fur. Despite his ability to heal himself he was being digested alive.

He squirmed and kicked in a panicked attempt to discomfit the tiger into regurgitating him, but Savage did not so much as twitch in response. The tiger's belly was thickly muscled and unnatually tough, seemingly a vessel designed with struggling prey in mind. Instead, pressure came up from below as the the tiger settled down on a now mildly fattened gut.

There was one last, desperate expedient, one he would have used earlier save that he would never resort to it willingly. He had never been in a situation this bad, this inevitably fatal barring that last resort. Catamount let slip the reins on his beast nature.

Like most Weres, he had three forms. Human, cat-man and full cat. It was also the nature of some Weres that their feral form was unnaturally large compared to a normal beast of their kind. Ratbat could become a normal-sized rat or one the size of a man; his fellow hero and Were-raccoon Technocoon could become a raccoon five times the mass of a normal one. Still no bigger than. A big man, but a giant of a raccoon.

The difference in scale was not as drastic with Catamount, but as he snarled and struggled and changed he grew until a powerful feral cat the size of the largest lion lay in Savage's gut. Two hundred pounds of sapient catman became six hundred of rage-driven, desperate cat, thrashing and clawing.

Catamount had always feared his beast form and unlike Ratbat, among others, he had little control over its actions. Ever since the incident at the prom, which had cost a good chunk of his father's fortune to cover up, he'd never assumed that shape again.

Though his consciousness was dim and bestial now he felt the struggle, cat against cat. It was a brief and futile one. Powerful and angry as feral Catamount was, he lay in the belly of a predator far larger and tougher still. Even were his limbs not bound - and even his greater strength could not snap them - he was not the first or the largest cat to lie unwillingly in Savage's stomach. All his transformation accomplished was to make the bulge in the tiger's midsection bigger, and the resulting burp louder. In the end the outcome was the same.

What little air had gone down with Catamount left as Savage belched, and now he sucked in stomach acid when he struggled to take a breath. He was being digested from the inside and out, faster than his Were body could repair itself.

Eventually his flesh and pelt dissolved away enough for Catamount to slip free of his bonds...but by then he was in no condition to even attempt it. It take a lot to kill a Were, barring silver or magic. Bathing in great quantities of stomach acid while tied up and unable to escape could do it, it turned out.

Savage, of course, already knew this, and he was not surprised when the struggle beneath his pelt weakened. Engineered partially as a body disposal, he had fine control over his stomach acids. He could digest even metal or stone, though those provided little in the way of calories. Flesh, even tough regenerating wereflesh, was not much of a challenge. He'd produced more than enough acid to reduce Catamount to soup before the were-cougar even reached his stomach. Even the sudden swelling in his middle as Catamount changed forms only drew an amused glance from both tiger and rat. They well knew the powers of therianthropes. Barring the tiger swallowing a were-elephant or werewhale, assuming such existed, his belly was more than roomy enough.

"No," Savage said as Ratbat began to strip out of his armored costume. While there were times he enjoyed disposing of violent criminals, Savage at other times viewed such meals as an unfortunate necessity and, perhaps, an occasional time-saving measure. If for some reason he had to eat someone, that was less time wasted hunting and more for patrolling the city.

Ratbat saw things differently. An ardent vorarephile, the were-rat had a bulge in his camouflage pants and was already leaning forward to stick his head in Savage's mouth.

"We don't know what would happen with two Weres in my belly at the same time," the tiger rumbled, and turned his head so Ratbat would know he wouldn't be going in there just now. "Your powers are both magic-based. You might cancel each other out or end up as one being, somehow."

"Aw," said the rat, but he sat back on the garbage can. Savage pretended not to notice as a furless hand stole down into the rat's pants. Together, one more excited than the other, they watched the last struggles beneath Savage's striped pelt weaken and finally stop.

Catamount swam back out of a pit of unconsciousness. He'd been...asleep? No, more than that. What had happened to him?

As he sucked in a first shuddering breath a torrent of cold water washed over him. He blinked awake, and found himself lying on a steel grate, covered with mud the water had only partly washed away. No, not mud. The smell gave it away. He was covered in shit.

A second wash of water sluiced over him as he looked up, wide-eyed. Savage loomed over him, a 55-gallon drum held in his jaws. As Catamount lay dripping he looked around: he was in a little walled yard with a few weeds. Ratbat sat on a pile of stones to one side, clad now in dark blue overalls.

"You stink," the were-rat said with a grin, and Savage spat out the barrel. Catamount sat up, touching his own fur wonderingly. He'd been sure he was smothering, dissolving. Yet here he was alive, if still slimy with dung that hadn't washed off.

Catamount sat on the grill, water still dripping from his fur. He felt fine, physically at least. Finally he climbed to his feet. "What...what happened to me?"

And then he remembered. Catamount covered his face with his hands as the memory came flooding back. The great cat's jaws sliding over his body, fangs scraping his knees, the last gulp. Acid eating him from all around, trapped, dissolving alive. His Were nature kept him alive in that hell far longer than a weaker creature, but eventually he had succumbed. And, more; he remembered more.

A Were is a magical creature, vulnerable to permanent death only from age or particular sorts of injuries. The thoroughly non-magical giant tiger was incapable of killing him permanently. He had broken down in Savage's belly, dissolved like any other chunk of meat and bone, but still he had clung to life. Changing to his larger form and letting the beast loose had only made the process a little slower. There was more meat to digest, after all.

And he remembered it. As his body, reduced to mush, powdered bone and a soup of nutrients had made its way through Savage's guts, he had somehow retained a spark of consciousness. Part of him was still in Savage now, absorbed as nutrients to fuel the great cat's mighty body. Through the small intestine, losing perhaps twenty percent of himself to feed the cat. Onward the unusable detritus had gone, making its way bit by bit into the large intestine. A big cat's digestive system is 'short and simple', he remembered. Soon enough all the unusable bits of him had accumulated in Savage's colon with other things the cat's body no longer needed.

Even then he'd been aware, at least a little. When the big cat squatted and relaxed one muscle while tensing another, something of Catamount had felt the long tube of used food that used to be him extrude from Savage's body. Warm and semi-solid the mass of ex-Catamount had somehow realized it was now able to resume its normal form and begun to regenerate.

And so he lay on the grate, curled in a fetal ball and stinking of tiger shit. Tiger shit he'd been, a few minutes before. He looked up, pupils shrunk to pinpoints, into the face of the cat he had fed.

The great cat twitched his long white whiskers amusedly. "From my previous experience with Weres," he rumbled, and Ratbat smiled again, "I know what you can recover from almost anything. Including being digested by a tiger. You digest, right enough, but when the remains leave my body you grow back out of the shit. You are durable, you therianthropes."

Savage turned his head to look at his own flank. "I do not know how you do it. The mechanics of magic are a mystery to me. But I know I can eat you, use you as food. Some of you is still in me, as nutrients and muscle and fat. Some of you I pissed down the drain. Yet, here you are."

Catamount sat there shocked, remembering it all. "You...you did eat me."

Savage flicked an ear and continued. "It is occasionally difficult to feed myself, here in the city. Stray dogs, cats, rats, scraps from the meat packing plant. Dogs from the dog pound that would otherwise be burned. These things I eat, but sometimes I still go hungry. Sometimes I do not feed for days." He rose from his seated position, massive, predatory, whiskers a-bristle and chops now wrinkled to expose steel-hard fangs.

"If you come back to my part of the city. If you steal again from the people I protect. That night I will not go hungry. Afterward you will reconstitute yourself and this time you will not be in a clean little yard surrounded by familiar faces. You will wake in the sewer, or perhaps have to explain yourself to the waste management men at the treatment plant."

Catamount blinked, a vision of his remains percolating through the tiger's guts filling his head. He didn't like thinking about out going through there once, much less a second time. He knew he wouldn't sleep well for weeks to come, remembering the caustic cauldron of Savage's stomach, his feral self's doomed struggle and the horrible half-aware passage through the tiger's innards.

He nodded shakily and said the only thing that came to mind. "Yes, sir. You won't see me again." And with that he staggered out of the yard, stinking and naked.

"I suppose I could have let him wash himself," Savage rumbled, and turned his head a fraction to eye the barrel of soapy water nearby. The were-cougar had been so traumatized he hadn't noticed it or the pile of towels, and Savage had been so caught up in the moment he forgot to mention it.

"That's all right," Ratbat said as climbed out of the overalls. "I'm sure we'll have a use for it at some point."

Savage smiled, the whisker-flick only his friends knew was a grin, and this time when the rat put his hand on his muzzle he did not turn away. Instead, he yawned.