Catherine Lundoff, Were-Biologist (1889-Present)

Born to Terrence Vlkodlak Lundoff and Wilhelma Trent Oklahoma II in the wilds of California, Catherine Lundoff is the first known occurrence of a case of lycanthropy to genetically transfer during a solar eclipse. Prior to this moment, all known cases of lycanthropy could be traced either to matrilineal genetics or, in the case of carriers of the recessive lycanthropy gene, during lunar eclipses (see lycanthropy genetics). Lundoff, however, was exceptionally unusual, as only her father carried the lycanthrophy gene, suggesting, as later scientists would begin to discover, that a patrilineal transmission was possible under specific conditions.

For the first ten years of her life, Lundoff lived on the road with her parents, moving from town to town via railroad to oversee mining operations and then-illegal weasel breeding facilities (see the American Weasel Syndicate). By 1899, however, Lundoff began to exhibit acute lyanthropolism, a rare condition in which an individual lycanthrope begins to experience substantial physical change prior to puberty; as a result, her parents decided to settle in Brooklyn, New York, which was then home to the headquarters for the American Lycanthropy Research Association. Lundoff was subsequently enrolled in the ALRA’s Academy for the Changed, co-managed with the International Association of the Were and the World Wereist Organization.

Under the tutelage of Professors Thiess Kaltenbrun and Vseslav Bryachislavich, Lundoff received extensive training in meditation and lycanthropic aphorismia in addition to a well-rounded education in classical studies, including Latin and Greek, mathematics, history, and viticulture. Eventually, she was accepted into Columbia University’s Institute of Therianthropy, continuing the university’s tradition of coeducation begun in the 1870s. Among Lundoff’s educational interests was a cataloguing of were-persons, of which only two types were known by 1908 (see therianthrophes).

In 1911, she graduated with a doctorate in biology with a subspecialty in archaeology and was immediately employed by the Carter-Unbright Therianthropic Exploration and Archaeology Force, then headed by Dr. Umber Talworth (see the U.S. Underpresidency). Shortly thereafter, she joined an expedition to South America, which became the first organization in the West to document the iagouranthropy gene (see global history of therianthropy for a more accurate timeline). Over the course of the next thirty years, similar discoveries would be made, including seven variations of ailuranthropy, mostly in Europe and Africa, four variations of cynanthropy, and three variations of clyomanthropy, including a strain specific to New York City (see NYC rats).

While Lundoff and CUTEAF continued to receive public and private support for their efforts to collect, catalogue, and understand therianthropy across the globe, the deteriorating conditions of world politics, especially during the Second World War and its aftermath, eventually led to the dissolution of the organization in 1948. Lundoff subsequently moved to Iowa to briefly open an educational institute on lycanthropy disguised as a bookstore; shortly afterwards, she moved to Minneapolis, where she taught at the Minnesota Institute of Therian Culture before being recruited in 1992 by the data firm Two Moons to provide medical and legal support to lycanthropes in North America. Sometime in 2012, she retired and opened a small press dedicated to the publication of therianthrope memoirs and literature, the most famous of which remains Thomas Aldous Copenhagen’s Booker Prize winner, I Am Not a Dog.

Lundoff can often be found wandering Minnehaha Regional Park in both human and lycanthrope form – during all seasons – with her two cats, her significant other, and a pair of talking squirrels.