TThe dark entrance of the cave loomed high as Stuart winded himself down and sniffed the air, tentative and cautious. No sign of the Beast, the cougar must have gone off to terrorise the forest creatures or perhaps to get some food for Snowbell. Stuart grimley gritted his buck teeth and landed on the hard stone overlooking the entire forest turning briefly to survey the view. It really was wonderful from up here, all green trees and beautiful glittering specks of river flowing out through the canopy and even far out the other side of the woods. “Once the Beast is done with” Stuart decided “I'll come back here for a photo.”
The mouse was in no rush of course, as confident and brazen in the face of danger as always, things always worked out for him and his feline brother one way or another. Despite his diminutive size this mouse had taken on falcons and cats and foxes galore, sure this cougar was the most intimidating creature he had faced but she would be far from the last.
And, Stuart thought with a thick set grimace as he walked past the arch of the cave entrance and into her den, she had been stupid enough to go for his family. The mouse was nothing if not committed to protecting and helping his family and friends, the Beast had broken that line and she would pay for it in time. But first he had to rescue Snowbell.
Truth be told he was a little alarmed by the glaring silence that faced him as he blinked his tiny eyes to adjust to the darkness within, the only light was the shining of the summer sun outside that became dimmer the further he went inside. Stuart’s round ears craned around, expecting to hear the sounds of his adoptive brother complaining or crying out for help but nothing greeted him, eerie. But Stuart quickly pushed those negative thoughts out of his head, most likely Snowbell was merely sleeping or had gone quiet when he realised that the Beast wasn’t present to hear him plead for his life and beg for his usual comforts of a warm bed and a nice saucer of creamy milk. No doubt that for Snowbell that was the largest crime this cougar had committed, not the kidnapping or the intention of devouring him, but the sheer fact that she had the audacity to pull him out of his cosy, pampered lifestyle. Well anyway, he would soon be back there once Stuart had him safely out of his dank, dark hovel.
Now that his eyes were adjusting to the light Stuart was able to better see the den around him and the sight wasn’t a pleasant one by any means. The mouse shuddering as he laid eyes upon discarded and half chewed bones no doubt belonging to the previous meals of this carnivorous feline, the thick stench of her draped over every inch of the cave and almost choking Stuart as he stepped over the animal remains, every instinct telling him that this was no place for a mouse to be travelling through.
Stuart Little ignored these ancient feelings and pressed on, his foot sinking now into damp water as he approached what he presumed was the Beast’s main living area. Here the smell was thicker and the bones less prevalent, the remains seemingly laid out at the front of the cave both to warn and to scare anybody who would dare to enter.
Instead there was a much cosier resting place laid out, complete with rocks pushed up into a pile and a mattress laid out on top like one a human might sleep on. Stuart presumed that this was stolen from a camp site long ago and he could only hope that the humans who owned it once had not succumbed to the same fate as the many strewn about the cave floor.
“Snowbell” Stuart whispered and then, hearing no reply, raised his voice two octaves “Snowbell? Are you there buddy? I'm here to get you out.”
Still no reply, now Stuart began to worry in earnest. “H-hey....Snowbell?” he tried again weakly “c’mon buddy, the Beast isn’t here anymore.”
Stuart small eyes peered around for a sign, any sign, of his beloved feline brother and spotted the rim of a hole at the far end of the cave and with a sniff he could confirm that beneath the cougar stink was the much more welcome smell of Snowbell. “Buddy? Are you in there?”
Soft mouse paws clinked on the stone floor as he made his way over taking care not to take a step too far and fall in, he peered down and saw nothing. It was much too dark and even his rodent eyes usually used to peering into such dark places couldn’t see anything. He decided he would have to climb down and hope for the best, hope that what awaited him at the bottom was his full and conscious brother and not a bloated corpse or the picked bones of a formerly fluffy Persian.
Spreading out his rope he called down one last time to assure whatever was down there that he was friendly. “it’s alright snow I'll be there in a mi-WHA!”
He turned around to hook his rope onto a nearby rock and walked right into the harsh, clawed fur of a curled up and eager paw, the mouse crying out in fright as he realised what was going on and tried to scramble away only for the paw to shift forward and curl up around him. Hot and smelly, heavy set it squished into Stuart’s form, the mouse struggling for air now and dropping his rope, the piece of cloth bashing off the side of the hole and falling into darkness.
“Such a clever mouse, but not clever enough”
It was her, Stuart peering up to shiver and look at the source of that voice, snarling face of the Beast staring back at him with amused, almost bored eyes. “I knew you’d come” she continued and pulled him backwards and away from the hole, Stuart wincing as the stones of the floor cut into him, the mouse refusing to cry out and give this creature the satisfaction of hearing him defeated. He knew it was over, but the very least he could do was give Snowbell a chance to escape.
The paw flipped around and Stuart was laid out across the furry palm, staring up at the sharp teeth of this beast that spelled his oncoming doom, at the small droplet forming on the side of her mouth and....and...
and her belly.
He saw it now as his eyes panned down and grew wide, the formerly quite trim organ now heavy with the weight of a most meaty creature. The sac hung low, bulging out in the oddest places with what looked like feet and, closer to the chest, an angular muzzle that silently imprinted on the gurgling sac that wrapped around it. The Cougar’s stomach already hard at work digesting Stuart’s beloved brother.
“He stopped moving just before you came in” The Beast grinned down at the shocked, paralysed creature in her paw, Stuart unable to form thoughts let alone full words. Breathlessly gasping out small, forced breaths as he stared at Snowbell’s final resting place. He had been too late, the cougar had already eaten Snowbell and had been lying in wait to reunite the two of them since. All Stuart could do was hold back sobs and await his own fate as a delicious, squirming dessert.
“Y-You monster!”
“Beast” she corrected him without even a thought, the once bored expression on her face morphing into one of casual interest “at least that’s what the creatures of the forest call me before I put them away for good. It’s not so bad really once you get used to it, being eaten, almost like having a nice, hot bath that’ll never end.”
It was so casual, so cruelly stated as a matter of fact when Stuart was staring at his feline brother’s melting corpse hidden behind a thick layer of fur and muscle. He could see the rippling of the gurgling, rolling organ, hear the faint sounds of the bones settling out of place and smell him upon her breath. God, he could smell him....the cat’s sweet scent now sour and corrupted, leaching off the wafts of hot air that shot out every-time she opened her mouth. Stuart couldn’t help it, hot tears coming to his face as he determined to make this beast pay in whatever way he could.
“You ate my brother!” he roared and rolled around in her palm with teeth bared, his claws and buck teeth sinking right into the leftmost pad, the cougar wincing as hot pain shot through her but she didn’t clench her fist and crush him as would have been easy. Instead she reached another paw around to clutch at her belly, pushing inward to feel Snowbell’s fat form within disintegrate even more at her touch as a hot ball of gas surrounding the creature’s form rolled itself up and shot out of her jaws.
*BBBBURAAAPP*
Snowbell’s last, damning cry to the outside world came out in the form of a hot belch that flowed out through those rippling jaws to wrap around Stuart Little in a hot stink. Like a green cloud it shifted itself around him for the entire duration of that monstrous release, the mouse freezing and then dragging a paw to his nose to block out the horrid stench. It was the smell of Snowbell that he had previously sensed on her breath but now it was so much more caustic, the sourness of digestion staining every bit of avid sweetness that once belonged to the beloved feline, the smell of his demise and Stuart’s own failure heavy in this cloud of smelly memory.
He tried to run, tried to roll off the palm and fly back home to George and the rest of the Little’s but before he could the belch tapered down and a final, visible bulge formed in the throat of the Beast. Stuart looked up, thinking that another wave of this death stench was upon him but instead the Cougar stopped, her eyes went wide with surprise. Her belly having given up quite a bit more than the array of gas it would seem as after a retch, and another much smaller burp, up came a piece of corrupted and half melted leather arranged in a circle with a small metal ball attached to the middle. The Beast spat it up into her mouth then, realising what it was before Stuart did, curled her maw into a teasing grin and let it fall to the floor. The accessory falling upon her palm around Stuart, the mouse sitting in the half digested remains of what was once his brother’s collar.
Struggling to recover from both the shock of losing Snowbell and that powerful super belch that had been unleashed upon him, his eyes ringing from the heat, nose stuffed full of the smell of his feline brother’s death song. “y...y-you...” he groaned and reached out a hand to steady himself, touching the metal piece on the end off the melting piece of sour leather, formerly a bell. Snowbell had an awful habit of chasing birds in the garden and so the Little’s had long ago bought him a beautifully blue piece of leather with a small, yellow bell attached to prevent any avian accidents.
Now Snowbell was dead, digesting inside a mountain lion’s hot stomach as she wiped her maw to rid herself of the aftertaste of that same collar, the pet accessory sitting on her palm steaming and wet. A lasting trophy, an indigestible item for what had turned out to be a very digestible cat.
“I was expecting a hairball if I'm being honest” the cougar continued as if nothing had happened, as if she hadn’t just assaulted the mouse with her ringing, smelly breath, dominated him with a belch “he was certainly a furry one. Never had one of those white ones before, was like eating a rug at times.”
Smacking her chops in memory she lowered her face to look the defeated, panting rodent dead in the eyes taking note of his cute features, the blue and yellow scout’s uniform that he had carefully ironed and laid out just for today, a day that he assumed would include him returning home to a hero’s welcome but would instead finish up with a mouse supper and a very happy and full cougar. He was certainly appetising, a pet true and true with a nicely fed stomach and beautiful, formerly pristine white fur until her belch had rudely stained him a vaguely green colour.
Brother.....Interesting, the Beast pondered this for a moment having assumed that this mouse was merely another pet or perhaps even just a friend. Housecat’s had a habit of forming strange friendships out here, usually one’s that ended with both of them in her gurgling belly. But a mouse and a cat, brothers? The Beast had never heard of such a thing and it amused her greatly, the great predator caring little for how upsetting it must have been for her to belch the cat’s stink upon this little character. “He was mouth watering you know....”
Stuart stared back with hatred, unable to do anything but cringe as her teeth drew close to his form.
“Yes. From the moment I first smelled him on the air I knew he would be special. Cats are such rare treats for me you see, and I do love when I can my paws upon a nice juicy one. I can’t recall ever sharing time with one as juicy as him, all that elegantly layered pet fat wrapped around him like he was some sort of little piggy.”
A rough tongue curled out of its hiding spot and ran across Stuart’s front, covering his upper half in thick, gooey cougar drool that dripped off him and fell upon the hard cave floor. He tried to wriggle away but that just made the saliva laden attack worse, the cougar letting out a soft purr of affection at his scrumptious array of flavours.
“Very tasty. Not quite as delicious as he was though, when I wrapped my jaws around his unconscious neck and dragged him up here I could get hints of it and I assure you it was difficult for me not to just drag him into a bush and crack him open there. But I persisted, knowing that a housepet like him would be much better served being devoured up here in the privacy of my own home, alive and whole.”
The mouse’s eyes widened and the cougar had to chuckle, she wasn’t cruel by any means, this was merely a fact of life for her but of course a little prey like this would never understand any better than Snowbell had. She had to eat, and to eat she had to kill. If that was how nature had ruled then so be it, The Beast had long decided that she would enjoy the process to its fullest extent. Teasing was merely the beginning of her fun.
“Yes, I swallowed him alive. A little trick I learned long ago as a cub, cuts down upon the waste and makes sure that you take every single bit of goodness from your prey. All that fat, of which your...brother was full of, all that energy, all that luxurious fur. Everything in him, and you, shall be given back to me. And above all else eating prey like that is more enjoyable, that cat was a great example of why.”
The cougar lifted a hind paw to kick at her belly, Stuart watching as the bulges disappeared and a spine tingling crack echoed throughout the room, the cougar apparently having broken something of her prey’s most likely the hip bone or perhaps a foot. Side to side the gorged organ sloshed and bubbled, heavy with cat.
“All the kicking you see, he wriggled up a storm in there and in my mouth. It was begging all the way here and then the moment I dropped him on my cave floor *noooomph*I snatched him up and began to swallow. didn’t understand a word after that, it was all muffled cries and half gurgled sobs....”
Anger pierced through Stuart and he made to bite her again but this time the Beast prepared, flicking her wrist around to curl around his tail and drag the mouse upwards, hanging upside down by his tail as he wriggled and whimpered in furious sorrow. The cougar’s words stung as she told of how Snowbell had succumbed to her predatory whims, hot sobs coming from Stuart as he thought of just how much he’d messed this one up, Snowbell was melting away only metres away and the mouse would soon join him. He couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been.
“have to give it to him though for a cat he lasted quite a long time, almost an hour I'd say, crying and sobbing all the way through while my belly worked away at him. Cat’s usually only last twenty or thirty minutes, I guess maybe it was the hope of being saved that kept him going? Fat lot of good that did the fat kitty....he stopped wriggling just before I smelled you coming, one last kick and a snort and that was it for poor little Snowbell. What a thickly layered, luxuriously furred and eager wriggler he turned out to be. Pathetic, but delicious....I hope you’ll be similar.”
And with that the cougar finally, mercifully lifted the mouse up and dangled him above her open jaws, Stuart whimpering as he peered into the thick darkness below, the entrance smelling strongly of Snowbell and the mouse briefly getting a glimpse of those fluffy white paws framed by those teeth, giving one last wave to the outside world as they descended to join their master in his digestive fate. Stuart wildly in her grip finally finding his voice again, all too late to make any sort of difference.
“Hey wait, we can tal-”
The words were cut off as the cougar let go and Stuart cartwheeled through the air as a screaming, white blur that was quickly slurped up into her jaws with a short hop and a definite snap of cougar maw. The dark dampness of the cave now replaced by the darker, hotter dampness of the Beast’s maw, Stuart’s tail sticking out of her mouth as she landed back on the cave floor and closed her eyes in ecstasy.
He was delicious. Not as good as Snowbell sure but a lot leaner, more athletic in build and beefier in his flavours, tongue soaking the rodent’s scout uniform and sucking at his pecks to get the full palette of what he promised. “Mmmm” The cougar grinned for the second time that day, before slurping his pink tail like a piece of errant spaghetti “scrumptiouth.”
It was a lot less pleasant for Stuart naturally, the small mouse framed now by sharp cougar teeth that threatened to chomp him up if he slid into the wrong spots while that tongue flicked him around the maw as if he were a piece of furry candy. And really in a way he was, just a savoury little dessert for the Beast to mull over as the capstone for what had been a very successful hunt. “Mppphhh!” he cried out as he was wrapped up in rough tongue and pushed into the cheek, forming a visible imprint on the outside “lehhhmeoupph”
But the Beast had no such intentions, quickly shifting Stuart between her two molars and playfully pushing down on his soft, tender form without even breaking the skin. Intent on keeping this creature alive for as long as she could. He was such a treat, a delicious mouse for her to slurp up and devour and he had been so confident too, Stuart’s scent previously carefree and adventurous although it was marred by digested cat and the ravages that the cougar had inflicted upon him. She had eaten his brother, devoured the beloved Snowbell whole and melted him nice and slow beneath thick belly flesh while the cat kicked and cried out for help that would never come. Then she had had eaten the mouse himself, little more than an afterthought, a loose end to be gobbled up and digested.
The sloshing, tossing of the mouse stopped for a moment and Stuart Little, soaked to the bone in cougar drool, panted as he lay sprawled out upon the female’s tongue. “P-pleas…” he murmured out but no answer came except for the soft gluck of a gullet shifting downward to send him on his final journey.
The cougar lifted her jaws and the sound echoed out around the cave, Stuart’s soft body shifting back and then slipping down the back of her esophagus and disappearing from view. The proud, accomplished mouse now little more than bulge sliding down the Beast’s neck. This giant predator had no knowledge of the mouse’s famous exploits or his heroic adventures, to him she just a mouse with a strange connection to a cat and both of them now rested in her happy, still gurgling belly. “Ahhhhh” she sighed when Stuart was finally done for good, eyes closing a little as she felt the scrambling inside and briefly took notice of that warped, half digested collar still laying near her covered in digestive juices and smelling horrid.
“Huh, Pathetic” she grinned and with a flick of her paws sent the last physical remnant of Snowbell that still belonged to the outside world tumbling into the abyss of a deep dark hole where it hit the bottom and snapped. One of many cat collars that she had collected over the years and tossed away, never to be seen again.
---
Warning: Graphic digestion ahead
The first thing to hit Stuart as he slipped into the dank chamber of the belly was the smell.
It was pitch dark in here, unlike the cave and even the maw with not a shred of light for him to parse anything ahead, so every other sense that Stuart had was unfortunately heightened. And of course the smell was the worst part. The mouse reaching up a hand to cover his nose as he slipped into the hot, sludge filled belly and was met with a chorus of stink. Almost a hundred scents of long dead animals hit his nose, cats, dogs, skunks, rabbits, beavers and other rodents greeted him, welcoming him to the fold. He could recognise Snowbell’s, the newest and as such the strongest smell here, that sweet pampered scent now marred with the horridness of his brother’s horrible, melting demise.
He gagged and scrambled forward, reaching into his pocket for a flashlight and finding that it was indeed still there. The poor mouse had no thought of what he would see when he flicked the on switch, intent on simply finding some small solace in light, in not digesting in darkness while the thick smells and heavy gurgles of a shifting belly echoed around him.
But off course once the belly was illuminated Stuart was struck dumb, realising now that the mound had slipped onto wasn’t a natural part of the belly, it was too pink with specks of white fur still stuck to it…
Oh no, oh no no no no
Unable to help himself the mouse climbed down off the slick, slimy surface with bits of it coming off in his hands, settling on a small crevice of the belly and peering down below at a broth filled with the near skeletal remains of the bottom half of his brother. Chunky bits of melting meat and half digested bone frothing about in the stew, the mouse slowly craning his head and flashlight upwards to see the most horrific sight of his life.
While everything below Snowbell’s chest had been reduced to a slushy mass of cracked bone, sizzling meat and bits of slimy fur by this point everything above was a lot more intact, Stuart realising with a cracked sob that indeed the part he had found himself upon was the top of Snowbell’s now fureless head, the cat’s body stripped almost entirely of its luxurious white fur, pink and slimy, melting in the hot pit of the Cougar’s stomach.
And the face
The face was the worst part of all. Pink, slimy and half caved in from the right hand side, one eye still peering straight ahead clear and unseeing, the muzzle curled back with the teeth stained green, exposed and locked forever in a horrific grimace to show Snowbell’s slimy, slow and painful demise.
Stuart let out a cracked sob as his body began to sting and the clothes slipped off him in tatters, he was next. In no time at all he would up like Snowbell, a pink piece of half melted meat decaying in her belly.
Outside the cougar chuckled, and calmly saddled off to overlook her forest kingdom. To ponder who she would hunt down for breakfast in the morning.
The end.
