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standing there in my bedroom, staring down at a gray-black cat that less than two minutes earlier had been my friend, Tobias.

CHAPTER 8
     
    I hope I’m asleep,” I muttered. “I really do.”
    You’re
not
asleep.
    “Is that you?” I demanded of the cat.
    Can you hear me?Tobias sounded surprised. Although “sounded” wasn’t quite the right word.
    “Yes,” I said cautiously.
    I did not know I could send thoughts like this,Tobias said.Just like the Andalite.
    “I guess it only works when you’re … morphed.”
    I am talking to a cat! I realized. And I thought
Tobias
was crazy?
    I wondered if Tobias had heard my thought. I concentrated.
Tobias, can you hear me?
    He didn’t respond.
    “I just thought something at you. Did you hear me?” I asked.
    No. I don’t think it works that way. You have to be morphed first. Hey, watch this.
    Suddenly Tobias leaped through the air. He pounced precisely on an autographed baseball that was lying in the corner. Maybe a four-foot jump.
    That is so excellent! Hey, pull a string for me to chase.
    “Pull a string? Why?”
    Because it’s so fun!
    I dug in my desk drawer and found a length of string left over from a birthday gift. I’m not exactly big on keeping my room clean. The string was from a birthday two years ago.
    “How’s this?” I drew the string slowly across the floor, a foot or more from Tobias’s nose. He settled back on his haunches and began wiggling his hindquarters. He pounced! He landed on the string, grabbed it in his sharp teeth, rolled over, and began ripping at the string like it was the only thing on Earth that mattered.
    I tried pulling the string away, but he pounced again.
    Yes! Got it!
    “Tobias, what are you doing?”
    Pull it faster! I see it! I got it!>
    “Tobias, what are you doing?” I shouted. “You’re playing with a string!”
    Suddenly he stopped. His tail twitched. He looked up at me with those cold cat eyes, but I’m sure I saw a look of confusion there.
    I … I don’t know,he admitted.It’s like … like I’m
me,
but I’m also Dude. I want to chase strings, and, oh man, if only there was a real, live mouse around! I’d really love to track it. To follow it so quietly. To listen to its heartbeat. To hear its scratchy little feet. I’d wait till just the right moment, and then a perfect pounce through the air, claws stretched out …He extended his claws to demonstrate.
    “Tobias, I think we’re learning something here,” I said. Amazing, how quickly I was becoming used to the idea of talking to a cat.
    What? What are we learning?
    “I think you aren’t
just
Tobias. You really
are
a cat. I mean, you have all the same instincts. You want to do the things a cat wants to do.”
    Yes. I can feel it. It’s like I’m two different animals melded into one. I can think like a person
and
like a cat.
    “You’d better change back,” I said.
    He nodded his cat head up and down. Very weird to see, I can tell you—a cat nodding yes in a thoughtful, normal way.
    You’re right.
    The change back to human form was at least as strange as the change to cat. The fur disappeared, leaving bare patches of pink skin behind. A nose grew out of the flat cat face. The tail was sucked up like a snake going up a vacuum cleaner.
    Tobias stood there, looking embarrassed. He quickly pulled on his clothes. “Maybe with some practice we can figure out how to change back
into
our clothes.”
    “We?”
    He smiled his gentle smile again. “Don’t you get it yet, Jake? If
I
can do it, so can you.”
    I shook my head. “I don’t think so, Tobias.”
    Suddenly he grew angry. He grabbed me by both my shoulders and actually shook me. “Don’t you understand, Jake? It’s all true.
All
of it.”
    I pushed him away. I didn’t want to hear it.
    But he kept after me. “Jake, it’s
all
true. The Andalite gave us these powers for a reason.”
    “Fine,” I snapped.
“You
use them.”
    “I will,” he said. “But we’ll need you, Jake. You most