a detective is called in. In Paul's basement, police find shackles, bones, and remains of dozens of corpses. They figure Paul is a serial killer who fed corpses to a captive black panther, and call in Oliver and Alice to inspect. On the run from Paul, Irena takes refuge in a frustrated romance with Oliver, fearing the consequences of physical intimacy. Paul visits Irena again and explains their shared werecat heritage, thus revealing himself as the escaped murderous leopard. Mating with a human transforms a werecat into a black panther, and only by killing a human can it regain human form. He tells her their parents were siblings because werecats are ancestrally incestuous and only mates between werecats prevents the transformation. He resumes his sexual advances, hoping Irena will accept their predicament, but she does not. Paul then transforms, attacks Oliver and is shot by Alice. Oliver starts a necropsy on Paul. A green gas emanates from the surgical cut and a human arm and hand reach up from within Paul's corpse. Before he can document this, Paul's corpse melts into a pool of green slime. Irena's feline instincts start to emerge, and she stalks and nearly attacks Alice twice. She later mates with Oliver and transforms into a black panther but she flees, sparing his life, and is later trapped on a bridge by police. Oliver arrives in time to see her jump off the bridge. Realizing where she is headed, he confronts Irena at a secluded lake house. She has regained human form by killing the house's caretaker. Irena tells Oliver she did not kill him because she loves him, and begs him to kill her. When he refuses, she begs him, then, to make love to her again so she can transform and "be with [her] own kind". Oliver ties Irena naked to the bedposts by her arms and legs to restrain her, and mates with her. Some time later, Oliver is again in a one-sided relationship with Alice. He stops at the cage holding the "recaptured panther" - Irena, now permanently trapped in her black panther form. Oliver reaches through the bars, casually hand-feeds and strokes the now-docile Irena's neck. Cast Themes Director Schrader has said, in relation to the erotic and horror aspects of Cat People, that the film "contains more skin than blood". He has described the film as being more about the mythical