Cheetah Person

The Cheetah People are a race of predatory cheetah-like humanoids. Very little is known about them.

Appearance
The Cheetah People had the heads of cheetahs and thick, spotted fur, distinctive golden eyes, retractable claws and sharp fangs. They also had an excellent sense of smell which they can use to track their prey.

Some of the Cheetah People, like Karra, the Cheetah Person with whom Ace would develop a bond, began as Near-Humans, gradually acquiring the cheetah characteristics mentioned above. Their eye colour changed to gold, the pupils gained the feline slit shape and they developed fangs. Of the Cheetah People seen, only Karra spoke, but she did so without any difficulty. At the moment of her death, Karra lost all her cheetah characteristics.

Culture
The Cheetah People generally wore leather and trophies from their hunts, using horses as mounts. They had the ability to teleport from planet to planet, but they can only bring back prey to their homeworld. Similarly, they must have a link to a world, in the form of an inhabitant of that world to return there.

Cheetah People are a dangerous, but playful, race. They will only go after food which is moving and will attempt to make hunts more interesting. By Human standards they have a vicious way of life and will fight each other over spoils or kill helpless Humans without provocation. They do seem to have some sort of respect for their own dead and will return to a world to come back for their fallen.

Powers
The Cheetah People have a symbiotic relationship with their world, as well as with the native kitlings. The planet is almost alive and is mentally connected with the Cheetah People. Its sources of water can heal them, and if they fight the planet would slowly start to destroy itself. The Cheetah People also use the kitlings to find new sources of food, since they can mentally control them and see through their eyes. It seems, even worlds away, that they know if one of their kind has died.

As already noted, they also had the indirect ability to change people in their own kind. Persons influenced enough that they had started to turn into Cheetah People include: the Master, Ace, Midge and the Doctor. Karra (whose origins are unknown) had been deeply affected by the planet's influence, which lead to a full transformation.

History
The history of the Cheetah People remains completely unknown. They may have originated on the Cheetah Planet or another place entirely. The Cheetah World may have destroyed itself in the upheavals that happened there in the 20th century. However, when a Cheetah Person teleported to Earth in order to retrieve the bodies of Midge and Karra, it must have returned somewhere. (DW: Survival)