It starts. In 1995 but it could have been sometime early 1996. My mom dreams of giving birth to a kitten while she is pregnant with me. That could be one of the hormone induced dreams that pregnant people seem to experience or it could mean something more. Given the context, I am including it.
I get older. My childhood is missing big chunks. I can't even begin to recall it aside from a few memories. I never outgrew being an animal, being a feline, when the others did.
At age 12, I started really taking notice of my felinity. Why I reacted to things the way I did. Why I felt & thought like I did. Guided by familiarity with the species & the Warriors series by Erin Hunter, I concluded that I was a domestic cat. Something was off but I didn't know what exactly.
I found the therian community at the age of 15 after a long time of no internet access. I knew I was feline before the community but somewhere along the way, I lost sight of myself & my inherent felinity.
Played at being a wolf online (and tried to play at being a wolf offline). Joining benign therian packs. Joining dangerous therian cults. Messing myself up. Each experience, pack & cult alike, ended on a sour note that was all my own and no one else's.
Offline, I couldn't be anything other than a feline of some kind. A roaring, hissing, snarling mess at times. Reaching out to grab and slash with claws that don't exist. Threatening to use fangs & bite force that also don't exist in a human body. The next moment? A calm kitty. A weird blend of calmness & wrath.
At 22 years old, I left the community as a whole. After a while, I realized my felinity is very real. No matter how much I played at not being feline, wrote it off as being something else, and so on...it came through with no forethought from me while playing at wolf was full of planning.
I did research. I questioned myself relentlessly. Jaguar. "Yes, this is what I am". Orange-brown fur and dark rosettes with central spots (though I see my fur as black in my dreams for whatever reason). Stocky, strong build. Hunting methods. Killing methods. Prey. Vocalizations I often feel like making but don't because human vocal cords kinda suck & I'll just sound silly.
The lack of fear that comes with being an apex predator but also the caution that comes with being solitary. One wrong move for a solitary big cat & it's curtains. There's no one else to care for you out there.
That territorial feel when you encounter another jaguar person who feels genuine to you. You'll try your best to tolerate them because you may be jaguars but you're still humans and humans are social animals who do like to relate to others.
Being homesick for the Amazon rainforest, a place I have never even been to. Tearing up at pictures of Home while my heart aches softly. Feeling the sensation of a feline body over the human one when listening to soundscapes. Feeling that sensation while outside, getting lost in my senses. Just letting myself exist mindfully.
I am human. I am jaguar. I am both. I am in the middle.