Fear. Sheer, overwhelming panic driving out any sense of human or feline identity. It was the bark of a dog. It was near. Timothy ran. He scrambled up a tree, the instinct providing him the ability to move the way a cat would. The physical change had completed. Anyone looking would have seen a cat up a tree.
The barking moved away, and Timothy started to think again. The amulet! He had left it! Contrasting with the panic with which Timothy had climbed the tree, he moved slowly and carefully down and returned to where the change had originally taken place.
It was gone! Unless he could find it again, he would be stuck as a cat forever! And then something that had been at the edge of Timothy's awareness came to the center, something that added the perfect capstone to the disaster. If Timothy couldn't find the amulet, he wouldn't be stuck as a cat forever.
She would.