If anyone screamed, Molly and I were just far enough away that even our ears couldn't tell what it was. That probably meant that the scream, yell, or whatever came from in Columbia Falls. Molly and I wouldn't get any more information on that until the next morning. And at the present time, the yell wasn't the first thing on our minds. For the moment our focus was on the cheer that Tabby's victory brought. It was a real end to the legislation that Beauregard had forced through when Molly and I first moved to Columbia Falls.
Enraged that Molly wouldn't be his enforcer by actively hunting wolves and bears that lived on or near his ranch, Beauregard had brought the full force of the negative fears of Animal-People to try and either force us to play by his rules or leave. The city council went along out of fear. They knew that if Molly and I were controlled by our "animal side's" instincts, we would be extremely dangerous. Molly, a 390 pound tigress, and me, a 555 pound tiger could easily overpower even the strongest people when it came to contest of strength. High powered firearms would be needed to put us down if we ever became a threat. We weren't and never would be, but the city council didn't have concrete proof of that, and at that time, the movement of Animal People out the cages Changes had put them in for the Animatrix Fun House had just begun. And without the full explanation yet to be given by Leon, then Leona, the fears that Beauregard played to were in the front of the minds of the people at that time.
But because Molly had been working at the school, then as Mrs. Fitzpatrick's aide, Beauregard also felt he needed to instigate trouble there. Molly and I would probably never know what was said between them, but Beauregard did find allies in Bill Williams and Wayne Hireman. They then proceeded to enact school policies that increased the workload for Mrs. Fitzpatrick and restricted what Molly could do. The initial move had been to try to fire Molly outright, under the claims that Molly had either threatened to maul or roared at several kids. The move was helped by parents who had joined R.A.M. for whatever reason. The move failed, and Hireman and Williams settled into what amounted to a bureaucratic siege. They made Mrs. Fitzpatrick fill out extensive written reports on Molly's activities in the school, and made it school policy that she could never go beyond an aide's position, regardless of her education. Their hope was probably for Mrs. Fitzpatrick to become tired of the paperwork and dismiss Molly to make her job easier.
Their efforts failed and soon began to fall apart. Molly and I never attacked anyone or their livestock. Molly did have two hunting seasons under her "belt" and I had one, but the animals attacked were deer species. The same thing that the human hunters in Columbia Falls largely hunted. But what would bring about the real "eye-opening" to the people of Columbia Falls was the downfall and "criminalization" of RAM. Dissatisfied with the legal efforts to get rid of Molly and I, Beauregard hired a small street gang to attack and kill Leona and destroy her lab, which Beauregard likely thought to be the source of the Animal-People "problem" despite the fact that at the time Leona was not producing more of the Animatrix Serum. At the time, she was focused on finding a cure for it. The attack wounded her and Jackson, then her parole officer.
Following their attempted assassination of Leona and the near destruction of her lab, the gang returned to Columbia Falls. And during their return to Montana, their leader took a dose of the Animatrix Serum with the DNA of a Pit Bull Terrier, and then spread it around through sexual relations with his girlfriend and through this turned his whole gang into Pit Bull People. Some of that allowed Officer Barnes and I to track them down and make the arrest on the gang members. They eventually outed Beauregard as the one who hired them largely agreed to cooperate. Their girlfriends left Columbia Falls for destinations unknown to Officer Barnes and I, while the gang members were driven back to Illinois to stand trial. Officer Barnes and I used their information to get a search warrant for Beauregard's ranch. We carried it out and did find evidence. Sensing that he was going to be caught, Beauregard tried to kill me and/or Officer Barnes directly. His trial and arrest broke the back of RAM. It outed Beauregard's ideas as racist and the support for his political pushes began to disappear.
The arrest of Beauregard didn't remove the laws that the city council had passed for him, but between it and the fact that Molly and I hadn't attacked anyone's cattle or any person... the support for it began to back away. R.A.M.'s decline had gone so far that it had essentially disappeared and some of its members began to turn on each other. And with the support for Beauregard's machinations gone, or at least fading away, people began to learn more about Molly and I. More then just what they had been told. Progress in this area was strong enough that when Molly saved Megan Jenkins from a starving and young Mountain Lion, the city council reexamined Beauregard's laws and repealed them. And that left only one theater of action that Beauregard had as a tool for his own ambitions... the school. Hireman and Williams again tried to fire Molly for spreading tiger DNA around, even though Megan needed the transfusion and there was no compatible donor present. Tabby and the PTA, and probably the members of the School Board that were becoming frustrated with Hireman's "fire Molly" campaign ended up putting a stop to that. At the end of that meeting, Williams was fired as the Elementary School Principal with Mrs. Fitzpatrick taking his place. Molly was then promoted to Mrs. Fitzpatrick's spot and would earn official certification as a teacher with her time as an aide counting as student teaching.
And that lead to the final battle with R.A.M. related matters. Williams did go nuts and bombed the police station and attacked the school he had looked after, but his actions weren't the real battle. Williams' actions were merely a continuation of the racist and criminal tendencies that had come out of R.A.M. and were viewed as wrong by nearly everyone could see them. The real battle was in the election which had now ended. Hireman pulled all sorts of stunts to try and get himself reelected while Tabby clearly and repeatedly stated that Hireman's actions were part of the problem. And now, Hireman had lost. His term ended at 11:59 PM on December 31. On January 1, Tabitha Choir would be the new Columbia Falls School District Superintendent. On top of it, the "destruction" of the School Board that Hireman likely tried to engineer with his last real "attack" didn't happen either. Which meant that even if Tabby's inexperience in leadership was a factor, she would have the support around her to at least do a decent job.
Though as Molly and I followed the news, the possibilities of failure were the farthest things from our mind. Tabby's victory gave us the hope for a good future. It would ease the work Mrs. Fitzpatrick had to do, it would show everyone that people didn't need to respond violently to things that were different, and most importantly... it would allow everyone to move forward.
The news did run minor updates here and there on the status of the national elections. Which were heated and close. Both Obama and Romney scored victories of some sort in the race. Congress largely reverted back to Democratic control as the Tea Party representatives in the House that were elected in 2010 under "Obama is a Kenyan Socialist" platforms lost and those in the Senate that had backed them that were up for reelection also lost. But the real focus of the national election was the Presidency, and there, since Romney, a political moderate, was the Republican candidate, things remained close.
"We ought to congratulate Tabby," Molly commented as the news shifted into its weather segment.
"I'm sure she knows," I replied.
"I know... but it'd be the friendly thing to do," Molly answered, "She and Dave are our friends."
I slowly nodded. Leaving the television on, in case they had any further updates on what was going on with the Presidential election, Molly and I moved upstairs to where our phone was. When there, Molly was the one to pick up the phone and began to dial a number. It was Tabby who answered on the other end of the line.
"Tabitha Choir, speaking," I heard Tabby's voice say clearly, "Whom may I ask is calling?"
"This is Molly and George calling," Molly replied, "we wanted to be the first to call and tell you congratulations."
"You've been following the news?" Tabby asked back.
"Yes," Molly answered, "Who hasn't?"
There was a brief silence before Molly spoke again.
"And the good news is that you won!" Molly continued, "You won! You won! Congratulations!"
"Congratulations!" I echoed Molly's voice of congratulation.
I then heard Tabby give a slight chuckle on the other end of the line.
"Thank you, George, Molly," Tabby replied, "thank you. A lot of this has been done for you, you know."
"We do," Molly nodded, though Tabby couldn't see that, "and it's why we want to congratulate you and wish you well."
"Thank you," Tabby replied, "Here's hoping I can do well. Show the last holdouts like Hireman that you two aren't monsters."
Molly and I nodded again, even though Tabby couldn't see us doing that.
"Anyway, I'm sure there is plenty to talk about in terms of things to do, I'm afraid I can't stay on the line right now," Tabby then continued, "I have a First Grader here who needs to go to bed as there is school tomorrow."
"We aren't too far behind you," I called, hopefully loud enough that Tabby could hear and soft enough that I wasn't hurting Molly's ears, "we would like to see who wins the Presidency, but things seem so close at the moment that it looks like it may take a few days to actually declare a winner there."
"Well, hopefully sanity rules," Tabby replied, "see you around."
"See you," Molly and answered and then hung up.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The next morning the newspaper repeated the report that Tabby had won the Superintendent's race. The national elections still seemed to be undecided. Mostly over the counting of the votes in Nevada. The popular vote, according to the newspaper was extremely close, as was the total electoral count which made Nevada important. And the overall race was so close that the people counting the votes in Nevada were the ones doing the recounts. Not because of corruption or anything like that, but because they wanted to be accurate. It confirmed my suspicion that it would take a while to resolve the Presidential election. Hopefully then when the votes were tallied, they were done accurately and without any difficulty. A repetition of what happened in Florida in 2000 would be a problem for both sides.
With regards to our local situation the election, and Tabby's election would also present a bonus... at least for Officer Howard and the officers still on patrol duty while Officer Barnes and I were on DARE duty. With the election over, the reporters that had been in Columbia Falls for practically a month would now be on their way. They had been here to cover Tabby's race against Hireman. Now that that was over, they had no reason to stay. They might run some small side report on the end of the campaigns and the reactions to it, but they would soon be returning to their stations to cover other assignments. Hopefully things would quiet down now. Other then the incident involving the attack on Amy and Marcella, they hadn't been too much of a problem... and even there, the problem wasn't caused by them. Still, the reporters presence from what I had been able to see was still a point of frustration for many as they then tried to get coverage of the school related issues outside of the school hours.
"Hopefully things will quiet down now," Molly commented as she kept an eye on the steaks we were cooking for breakfast, "we can move forward... as we have Thanksgiving up, then Christmas, our wedding anniversary, and then hopefully... mating season."
"It may not come in that order," I gave her a slight nuzzle as I got up, "remember I was still human when we got married. My sense of smell wasn't strong enough to pick up on the hormones you were producing to signify that you were biologically ready until after we had sex for the first time and I transformed... for all I knew, you might have gone into heat before our wedding."
Molly slowly nodded, "yeah... and unfortunately, I wasn't paying too close attention the signs that should have let me know I was in heat..."
"How would you know...?" I began to ask, "I mean isn't it the male that comes along and smells something that identifies whether or not female is ready...?"
"A male does... but a female does know..." Molly answered, "increased urination is one sign, which the male will smell... and some of it instinctual... leading to a female roaring to attract a male. Like they having the timing of when they're in season memorized in their head."
"Yeah... but Leon has told us that you could come into season at any time in the year," I commented, "Some of the limiting of a Bengal Tiger's mating season to the winter has to do with when the tiger/tigress matures. It just happens to reach maturity in the winter months and won't bread again until its cubs are mature, which by the sake of timing ends up being two years down the road in winter time... outside of that standard, they could establish a different cycle."
"Well... have I smelled "sexy" to you once a month then?" Molly wondered as she turned to me.
"A little bit... and only for a few days, though," I answered, "and then it goes back to a normal... non-estrus related scent... though to be honest, you smell good to me all the time."
"Flatterer," Molly answered and then sighed, "okay... maybe some of those other days is part of some readiness sort of thing... I'm not pregnant or caring for cubs and my body says its ready... even if it isn't the official season... giving us the option to conceive outside of the end of December to early January."
"Or some other time in winter," I managed.
And winter weather was beginning to settle onto the northern Rockies. Things had been fairly mild, but being fairly far north and high in elevation, we had seen some light snows here and there. Though no blizzard was yet to arrive. So far our fur managed to keep us warm, though some of that came from the fact that weather had been mild while we'd been in Columbia Falls. I wasn't entirely sure how well we'd cope if a major blizzard came through or we had a "wicked" cold-snap. I had read somewhere that even Siberian Tigers suffered from Frostbite on occasion and they evolved to live in a cold climate. Molly and I were Bengal Tigers which while some ventured into the mountains at the foothills of the Himalayas, their "strongholds" were in areas that were far warmer.
"Yeah," Molly sighed and began to take our breakfast out of the oven, "so, what would you prefer... when it comes to mating I mean. Keep close track of things and go as soon as my hormones announce that I'm ready this month... or should we wait until December?"
That actually made me stop and think for a moment. The fact that we had an option to time the starting of our family was not something that had crossed my mind all that much. My mind seemed to assume that the time when Molly would come into heat again was around the time of our anniversary, as she was in heat at that time. But with a choice, that meant we had other options. And Molly wanted cubs, and so did I... and with options we could start our own family as quickly as we wanted.
"Maybe wait until December," I commented, "Just in case anything else comes up... you never know."
"I know it'd make Christmas, our anniversary, and New Years a lot more interesting," Molly gave a wink.
I only shook my head as things were progressing along well. Tabby had won the election and the last remnants of R.A.M. would finally go away, and Molly and I could move on to what would be our next major chapter. Starting and raising a family of our own.