Bear the Cat

Alright, so I've been on animal kick lately, but to some, the odd NPC is actually fun.

So Bear the Cat lives at the Traveling Tramp Inn, a fixture of the inn as long as anyone can remember.  He's a grey and black stripped tabby cat with a mind of his own.  He wants what ever you are eating, sleeps where ever he likes and chases everything from mice to familiars if not watched carefully.

Every inn needs a cat so no one ever pays him much attention, other then to share some of their meal or pet him if he so demands.  Even Derk and his family see as just part of the background when he hasn't gotten out of hand lately.  But there is a reason Derk has this particular cat in his life.  Sure, the stables has its fair share of barn cats, but this is the only cat Derk will let in the inn.  And there is a reason.

Bear isn't really a cat.  Oh, he looks like a cat, but in truth he's a druid who just can't remember who he is.  When Derk was a hired guard with Crusher, before he settled down, he ran with a lot of people, including a Druid named Black Bear, or Bear for short.  Derk liked the man who could blend in with the woods and often listened to him speak of certain spots of wilderness with fondness.  Because Bear like transform alot he often smelled of predators and the horses wouldn't carry him so he'd transform into a cat to sleep in one of the wagons as the group travelled from one point to another, able to transform back into his fighting self in a blink of eye.

But the battle which convinced Derk to retire caused Bear to be hit by a curse which locked him in his current form, a cat.  Derk has tried to have the curse removed many times, but mages and priests alike can't undo it.  Some wonder if Bear has just come to like his cat form and refuses to return to human form.  In the mean time, Derk and his family will take care of the special cat and hope Derk's friend returns to his former self some day.