Free Children of Bast by Frederick Fuller

was fed regularly, slept anytime and anywhere I wanted, got brushed and pampered. I was a house amait, a pet.
    But I always had the urge to be something more. Talking to my maama never helped; she was either passed out from drinking too much nibiit or just not interested. So I dreamed. I pretended to be a sleek jungle amait stalking prey. Ned and Harriet watched TV shows that showed our magnificent cousins in jungles running down animals, killing them and eating them. I wanted to be a lion or tiger.
    Sometimes I’d act like a clown, jumping around with my tail arched and my faraawi puffed out in mock attack. I’d charge Ned or Harriet in the hallway and go after them sideways, then dart away in a flash when they tried to get me. Honestly, I didn’t know what I wanted to be, but I knew I wanted to be something more than I was. Escaping gave me opportunity, but I was totally stupid about how to do it. I didn’t have goals, just dreams.
    Wanting to do something was okay, but you have to take steps to do it. I couldn’t lay around waiting for it, whatever it was, to come to me or have it brought to me by someone else. But that’s how I’d lived, spoiled rotten. I wasn’t an amait. I was some idea of an amait that Ned and Harriet wanted me to be.
    The worst thing was, I began to see myself as they saw me: soft, flabby, compliant and docile, like my maama and sister. After Adele said they might be fixed, I shuddered to think that I could have been fixed, too. I needed a goal. I needed to make a decision about my future and stick to it, no matter what. From what I learned about lions and tigers on TV, to be a real amait was to be a killer.
    ~ ~ ~ ~
    I looked at Chubby. “Following you and Adele around wasn’t any good because all you guys were teaching me was how to scrounge. You don’t kill to eat; you nose around in garbage until you find something prepared.”
    Chubby bristled. “Hey, when you get to be my age, hunting’s not easy. I get food where I can and the easiest way. Why do it the hard way, especially when you don’t have much energy?” He looked away from me and I could tell he was angry with where I was taking this.
    “You’re like a house amait depending on bašar for survival.”
    “Wait just a minute, Whippersnapper. I depend on me, Chubby, the aged patriarch of this clowder. I will never be a pet, getting handouts, even though it might be cushy. You’re still captured in your mind.”
    “Yeah, you’re right, Chubby. That lonely mollie bašar whose food you gobble like a kilaab is nothing, right? Huh? What did you say? Can’t hear you.” I laughed but saw Chubby rise and start to puff up, and eye me with that cold stare he was famous for.
    “Settle down Chubby. I saw you gobble it down. I gobbled it, too. What it says is, we too often convince ourselves to depend on bašar for everything we need, even here on the street. They’re push-overs and we know it, and we use them, and lose what we are, amai, born hunters and killers.”
    “You’re carrying this too far,” He began to pace. “I don’t depend on it, okay? I can still hunt. I’m a damned good hunter. Ask anyone here. Chubby can take a mouse or rat like it was struck by lightning. But why? It’s right here for the taking. Doesn’t make me weak. Just makes me . . . lazy, okay?”
    “Chubby, I watched amai, including me and Adele, grubbing around in bašar garbage, and it makes me really sad. We’re built to kill, not crawl around in their leftovers, getting filthy and reeking from their slop. Our heads are like wedges to break through weeds and stuff with ease. We can flatten our bodies and slither like snakes toward prey; our teeth are little needles, and our raspy tongues can lap meat from bones like water. With eyes that see in the dark and with razor claws that renew themselves, we are made to hunt and kill.”
    “Have it your way,” He laid down and became a ball of faraawi again, continued to stare at me. “All I’m