“Oooer! Shiny!”
A large, four-armed, black Panthermorph suddenly appears in front of you, prodding at a grenade in your bandolier with an extended claw. You warily back away, taking note of just how long and sharp the claw is - and that his paws are nearly the size of your head.
Suddenly he rears back onto his hind legs, towering over you, his eyes a glimmering green as he grins toothily down at you; you find yourself fervently hoping he's not hungry.
“Look what I can do!” he chortles, snatching grenades out of your bandolier and juggling them in all four arms as he dances away, breaking into a caterwauled rendition of “The Tigger Song.”
As he dances off, apparently lost in his new game, you notice that he is wearing a kilt. Further, with his tail held high he is obviously wearing it in true Scot's fashion.
You decide to move on, letting him keep the grenades. There's nothing you want to see here.
.
.
As you depart, NotAgain quietly smiles to himself, slips the grenades into his pack and leaps back up onto a tree-branch to sprawl lazily in the sun and wait for his wife, Rihta.
Any-one who knew him well would tell you that NotAgain - or Not, as he prefers to be called - has a true, kittymorph soul. Not the snuggle-happy house-kitty type, but a lone hunter. A Panthermorph soul, in fact.
This has been reflected in the many changes Horatio has inflicted upon him; in the past he has been a house-cat, a dead cat and a glass kitty amongst other forms. He wouldn't be surprised at all if at some stage he becomes a catastrophe or a pussy-willow.
However, he hasn't always been this way.
He came to the Island as a mild, miserable man. A Systems Analyst who hated working behind a desk and spent all his spare time locked in his garden shed, working with wood.
Not doesn't remember this, though. . . except perhaps in a subconscious way. For he has never, ever become a "hairless monkey"1) since his first DK.
Oddly enough, he does remember most of his re-incarnations by Horatio, rarely suffering from Drive Amnesia. And the multiple, often mutually incompatible backgrounds that have gone along with them.
In one of these “past lives” his mother was a Pot of Petunias and his Uncle was a whale.2) His mother is now planted in the Common Ground and his Uncle, well. . . you know that lake in the middle of the island?
His companion of choice is, of course, his wife Rihta. Shortly after their marriage she slung a sackful of Attack Hedgehogs into his natter as a prank.
Being an old softie, he quickly found more suitable homes for them. More suitable than a sack in the hat of a cat, anyway. Except for one; Snappy. Not & Snappy have a love/hate relationship. Snappy loves hanging off the tip of Not's tail… by his teeth and Not hates it when he does that.
Nevertheless the two have stuck it out for quite some time. Long enough, in fact, for Snappy to find a mate - Nibbles, an escapee from Crazy Audrey's cat baskets. And for the two of them to set up a nest in Not's hat and rear a family.
“It's really very simple,” he explains. “You see. . . Oooer! Shiny!”
As he gambols off after a stray piece of foil blowing in the breeze, you shake your head and wonder Why, oh why did I bother hanging around? I knew there was nothing I wanted to see. . .3)