You are a cat demon

You wouldn't recognize this purple flower at all.

You've been learning about various herbs from your mother since you were little, just in case. But you have no recollection of this flower, not a single description of it in your memory (you're absolutely certain you listened carefully to the explanation), and you have no idea if it's the culprit that's been causing your injury to keep getting worse.

Come to think of it, you didn't know in the first place, so how could you possibly know now? Oh well, let's just consider it a wasted trip. On the bright side, maybe it wasn't for that reason...

You're standing in a stream where the water barely covers your ankles, trying to catch small fish and shrimp. Your injured leg just barely touches the water, but you still don't dare to relax. You try to keep your movements as small as possible.

In shallow waters like these, the fish and shrimp are pitifully small. Sometimes, after a long day's work, you might only catch one or two tiny fish, less than an inch long. But you don't get discouraged; live fish and shrimp are rich in nutrients that will help you recover… hopefully. Occasionally, you're lucky enough to find a few large, stranded fish or dead fish washed ashore by the current. You don't care if the meat is fresh or rotten; as long as it fills your stomach, that's enough. However, fish meat naturally has a strong fishy smell, but for you cat demons, the fishier it is, the more fragrant and appetizing it is.

After all, there's still a sliver of hope for your leg to recover. You trust your intuition, and that's all you can do. Otherwise, you'd want to bite it off to get rid of it. As long as there's hope, you have the motivation to live. So what if life is tough? It just means tightening your belt. For now, you can barely make ends meet.

That's all for now.

Ever since you injured your leg, you've felt the days have been incredibly difficult, every minute and second seeming to stretch on endlessly. These past few months have felt like years. However, as the temperature gradually drops and the leaves slowly fall from the branches, time flies by in the blink of an eye. You were just worrying about lunch when, without realizing it, the sun had already set in the west.

You may wish the sun could linger a little longer, but night will eventually arrive as scheduled, and darkness will eventually fall.

The cat demon is not afraid of the dark.

Winter has finally arrived.

The earth was once again draped in silver, snow covering the mountains and plains. You looked up at the hazy sky, your breath turning into a puff of white mist in the cold air before slowly dissipating. A deathly silence surrounded you, and you felt as if you were hallucinating, as if someone were whispering in your ear. You stopped and looked around for a moment, confirming that you were the only living thing nearby.

You shivered, then realized you were about to faint from hunger, so you quickly shook your head to stay awake.

Food is even harder to find.

For those cat demons who are young and strong with all four limbs intact, winter is the most difficult season. But for you, who has injured a leg and has not yet recovered, it is even more difficult, making it even more challenging.

After several days, you only found one frozen bird. The dead bird was frozen solid, as hard as a rock, and gnawing on it almost knocked your teeth out. You had to hold it close to your chest, using your body heat to melt the ice and make it more palatable. After struggling to swallow a mouthful of icy bird meat, you couldn't help but feel grateful that you'd always been good at grinding your teeth; otherwise, that bite would have surely broken your canine tooth. Who would have thought that a childhood sulking would help you so much now? Now, grinding your teeth has become a habit, and you've long forgotten the original reason you did it…

If we could eat this kind of frozen meat every day, that would be fine, but good things don't always fall from the sky. If food were so easy to obtain, how could there be any starving cat demons?

You searched for a long time, and finally, you saw a dead fish floating under the frozen surface of a lake. But your joy was short-lived; the thick ice made it impossible to dig through. The food was right in front of you, yet you couldn't reach it. Impatient, you even tried to bite it directly, but your tongue got stuck. It took a lot of effort to finally tear it off, and your tongue throbbed with pain.

In the end, you can only swallow your saliva and leave dejectedly.

You finally spotted your prey, only to have it spot you before you even got close. By the time you arrived, the prey had vanished without a trace, leaving only a patch of lingering snow dust. You were seething with hatred, never before had you loathed your own black fur, so conspicuous in the snow. You had tried other methods, like hiding motionless in the prey's path, disguised as a stone. You tried it, but the result was that you were stuck to the ice before the prey even reached you, unable to break free for ages. Forget hunting, you nearly froze to death.

Logically, by now that you're this big, your fur should be enough to keep you warm, but your body won't allow it. Without enough food intake and the heat it provides, it's like a stove without coal; you can only shiver in the cold wind.

Even if you're lucky enough to catch a few old, frail, large herbivores, before you can even rejoice, other monsters will have already caught a whiff of their scent and come rushing over.

I remember that time you found a dead male elk in the freezing snow. Even though the meat was frozen solid, it was still enough to keep you alive. But a short while later, you were surrounded by a group of ravenous wolf demons. Leading them was a male wolf demon who had almost reached human form, maintaining a half-human, half-wolf shape. It walked up behind you without a word and kicked you in the backside, sending you flying over twenty meters. When you finally pulled your head out of the snow, the elk was already completely surrounded by the wolf demons…

Forget about fresh meat, you can't even find the scraps left over from other monsters' meals.

You're starving.

Finally, you even had to cling to an elm tree and frantically gnaw on its bark. The cat demon was a purely carnivorous monster, unable to digest plant fiber. Doing this would at best fill your stomach and alleviate the discomfort, but you were still in great pain. The bark was incredibly prickly, almost tearing your throat. Even after finally swallowing it, wood shavings remained in your mouth, like a burning ember, causing you to cough incessantly and nearly choke.

You paused for a moment, your eyes still blurry, and looked up at the sky again, which was still a hazy gray.