Frank woke me up at 3 am to write this. I tried to ignore him, but he
has perfected the art of mind-melding (and yowling) to a point where I
can't help myself, I must obey his every whim.

______________________________

Let's see, where were we... Oh, yes, Nikki had entered my life. Every
day, we would play and play and play while the hoomin was away, and
every night Nikki would come and suck my tummy while I washed and
groomed her. I was glad when she stopped sucking me, though, because
those litle teeth were getting to be pretty big, and she *would* knead
my tummy with her claws out. However, we still slept cuddled up
together, as we still do on occasion. After al, the little mite was
lonely for her mummy, and she said she also missed the big horses that
where around when she was born.

The following summer, I couldn't wait to show Nikki the island. But when
the hoomin finally took us there, Nikki didn't want to play among the
trees or enjoy the sun on the warm, smooth cliffs. No, she would go off
for hours on end and I didn't even know where she was. I remembered my
first summer there, and how I had gone exploring every day, and I
understood that she was doing the same. I wished she'd have taken me for
her guide, though. I felt protective of the little mite. However, she
had suddenly turned into this tough, independent, no-nonsense jungle
cat. When had that happened? And how? I didn't teach her any of that stuff!

Then one day, Nikki brought home something small and furry, and started
to eat it. I was utterly disgusted. Ebery well-bred city cat knows that
food comes in little tins, and that is why you need hoomins with their
opposablöe thumbs - to open said tins and dish out the food for you. But
Nikki was eating this *wild* thing! Between bites, she told me this was
real cat food, and that she had missed this all the time while we were
in the city. Her mother had taught her how to catch and kill these
things, and had also let her and her siblings eat of them.

I can't tell you all how appalling this was to me. Just disgusting. But
even worse, Nikki then took it upon herself to teach *me* to catch these
vile things! She would bring home a live one (the hoomin calls them
'voles'), let it free under my nose, and then sit back and purr to
encourage me. Well, at first I would have none of it! Once she brought a
mouthful of grass with the vole, and when she set it down in front of
me, the vole ran away but I ate some of the grass, just to be polite.

I tried to tell Nikki that I wasn't interested in her desigusting voles,
  but she kept on bringing them. Then she took her lessons outside.
Whenever I was out enjoying myself, lounging in the sun, there she would
come running with one of those things in her mouth and start to
demonstrate how to kill it. Well, to make a long story short <hoomin
snort>, several summers went before I finally agreed to try, just to get
Nikki off my back so I could have some peace and quiet.

So one day, I actually managed to kill one of those things. It was a
small one, and the hoomin's sister scoffed and said it had probably
committed suicide by throwing itself in front of me, but I didn't mind.
I was quite proud to have taken down my first vole, and what's best, the
hoomin was very proud of me, too. Somehow, it even tasted better when it
was my very own kill. And voles tasted better than the flies I had
hunted before.

After that, I used to go hunting every now and then for recreation, it
was never the wholesale slaughter that Nikki carries out each summer. I
don't know how there can be any voles left on the island at the rate
she's going. Somehow, she's managed to keep a bit of that wildcat in her
for all these years, though she has mellowed quite a bit since her youth.