The next day, Dora found my catnip packet and tossed it around the cabin for me to chase. I liked hearing her tinkling laughter. Griselda taught her some little spells so she could find her way back to the cottage easily and it was with that invitation to return that she finally left to go back to the village.

I was sorry to see Dora go. I meowed in distress as we watched her head into the forest, the light dappled across her small form.

“I don’t like seeing her leave either, Shadow,” Griselda confessed. “But she can only come in her own time. She’s still very young. Come, I have a feeling we will have more company soon. I’d like to have plenty of meat.”

I meowed at her.

“You want to be big again, don’t you? Okay, but this time I’m going with you and we’re going to bring home a nice large deer. I’ll change you when we get closer,” she explained as we left the cottage. Leonore fluttered along with us and I hopped over tree roots and padded close to our witch.

This time, when she made the ball of light, I didn’t flinch and it burst over me in a wave. I landed on my large paws and stretched my long, powerful muscles.

“I'm going to entice them to us, you pick one to down and I’ll help,” Griselda told me in a soft voice. I settled down in a dark patch muscles quivering ready for the sudden spring. The witch moved her hands around again, muttering in a singing sort of way. Then, she too stepped back into the shadows.

Before long, a thunder of small hooves grew louder. A herd of deer charged past our spot and before I forgot why we were here, I zoned in on one in particular and pounced on it, closing my jaws around it’s neck.

It fell and was struggling to breathe. Griselda sent a light beam into it and it stopped moving.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Good work, Shadow,” she said, coming around to the kill. I had the urge to growl at her before I tamped it down and let go of its neck. I licked at the blood oozing from the hide where I’d bitten. Griselda cut the deer open and began pulling out the innards. She smiled at me while tossing me some delicious organs which I fell in to eat right away as my stomach was achingly empty. There was enough that I didn’t mind Leonore fluttering down to have a taste.

When she finished, she muttered a short cleaning spell to remove the blood from her hands.

“Drag it home, will you?” she asked, starting to head back to her cottage. When Leonore and I were done eating, I grabbed the carcass by the neck and dragged it back.

Griselda was waiting with a rope which she looped around the hind legs and hung it up next to her house on a hook that seemed for the purpose. She muttered some spells on the thing and then went into her garden to pick herbs, vegetables and mushrooms for our dinner.

I thought we would eat venison that evening, but she didn’t touch the deer after she’d hung it up. I didn’t complain, though, because the stews she made were always very good and she would add a sprinkling of catnip on mine.

While dinner cooked, Griselda went to the snake’s cage and began tapping on a top edge of it. I watched as the snake uncoiled itself and slithered up her arm. She grabbed a coil in her hand and carried him to her table where she had some glass containers and some ingredients ground up in her mortar.

“Easy does it, Reg. I’ll need some venom from you today,” she cooed at the thing which didn’t even blink. She petted it and it turned it’s head away from her toward her hand. “Thank you, dear,” she said, muttering some words I couldn’t understand under her breath. She placed his open jaw against a glass jar and some clear liquid began to ooze from his fangs.

“That's plenty. Thank you,” she said and let him go. She waved her free hand and muttered a few more incantations over him. “You want to go back to your spot?” she asked, but he slithered off of her arm and onto her bed. Coiling up on one side of it and placing his head so he could look about the room at us. I found it a little disconcerting as he’d never left his shelf before.

“Don't worry, Shadow. He won’t hurt us. He’ll sometimes go out for a romp. Probably not now it’s getting cooler. There’s plenty of room on the bed and he likes to cuddle for warmth, too!”