I woke with a start. The light streaming in from the window was all wrong; it must've been nearly 10:00 by the look of it. It was Wednesday, wasn't it? Shit, I must've slept through my—
Oh right, I didn't have work today, either; I was out sick on account of turning into a cat. Silly me, when would I get that through my fuzzy little head…?
I laid there in bed as the memories flooded back: my tripped-out weekend, the cold and scary Monday where I realized something was wrong but didn't know what, the shock of discovery yesterday morning, my futile attempt to remain in denial derailing in front of a client, the stunned realization late last night…I buried my face in the pillow, squirmed uneasily, then squirmed even more uneasily when I felt my still-tender nipples rub against the mattress through my undershirt. Gah, were they always going to be like this? Even if they weren't, I'd probably end up sleeping on my side…
It was very strange to think like this – I knew, in the broad strokes, what was going to happen to me, but most of it hadn't happened yet. Again I was reminded of puberty, in the sense that all you know going in is what you've been told by people who aren't you, people who can give you an endless and unsettlingly specific litany of squishy biological factoids and a bunch of frustratingly vague generalizations about behavioral and emotional phenomena, and still leave you entirely clueless as to what the experience is like – and then you have to go through it yourself, and discover that probably nothing could've prepared you for it anyway…
I was turning into a catgirl, I knew that much, and I had a mental checklist of things that'd be part of the process; but I had absolutely no idea what it'd feel like. What was the subjective experience of ceasing to be one thing, and becoming something else? Okay, I could think back on some of the oddities I'd noticed in the last few days,° but was that all there was to it, just a package of physiological alterations and a new blend of chemicals in the brain-meats? Where did one state end and the other begin? Would I know when I was…not the old me…anymore?
° (God, I knew what it felt like to have your skull rearrange itself.)
It was strange and disquieting to think about. In the light of day, I was less shell-shocked, less of a total emotional jumble…but that in itself was pretty weird. After all the precautions, all the stress, all the embarrassment upon finally realizing, I felt like I should be…I didn't know, distraught; instead, I was more just uncomfortable. Was it my brain's way of coping with being powerless to do anything about it? Or was it just that I'd already run the gamut yesterday, and sleep had calmed the storm? I had no idea.
It was kind of anticlimactic; I'd sort of imagined that, if it got me, it'd be more dramatic. Not that I wanted to panic, break down, plead to Heaven for the preservation of my humanity/manhood to no avail, etc., but wouldn't that be the more normal reaction? Hell, poor Alex was pretty freaked out – but somehow it felt worse remembering his reaction than it did to think about going through it myself; my ears even felt like they should be drooping. Some part of me kept insisting I should've done something, despite there being nothing I could do…
Anyway, there was probably no avoiding this next part. I got up, and even that was novel; I could feel the blanket tugging gently at my tail as it slid down my back, and I definitely felt my chest un-squish more than usual. I stumbled into the bathroom – emphasis on stumbled; there was some major skeletal weirdness going on, and my limbs were all out of whack – took a deep breath, and turned to the mirror to take stock.
The changes were more noticeable than yesterday, but I'd arrived in some strange no-man's-land between what I was used to seeing in the mirror and how I supposed I'd probably end up. Between the skeletal weirdness and the reapportionment of adipose tissue, my facial structure was softening, but the result thus far was more "vaguely androgynous" than anything. I found it off-putting, but I wasn't sure if that was actual æsthetic displeasure, or just discomfort at the sudden unfamiliarity of my own face.
More arrestingly weird was the fact that my ears had begun to migrate up the side of my head. There's really no normal configuration for ears between the standard human and cat positions, so the process of going from one to the other is bizarre on a pretty instinctual level. They were longer and distinctly non-human in structure, but hadn't broadened out yet, so it looked more like someone had tried to draw anime-style elf-ears on me,° put them in the wrong spot, and made them fuzzy for some reason.
° (The thought had me uneasily recalling Duck Amuck.)
On which note, the fuzz was definitely thickening. It was still too sparse to tell the color; something on the gray/black spectrum, I couldn't make out a pattern yet. The inside of the ears had long wisps of white coming in as well.° I glanced at my tail in the mirror; yes, it was coming in there, too, and the thing itself was nearly 8" long. I didn't seem to have any motor control yet, but I could feel it brush against the back of my thigh from both points of contact, which was deeply strange.
° (Not that it'd ever been a problem for me, but it was weird to think that visible ear-hair was no longer going to be socially awkward.)
Twisting my body far enough to see that also made it clear that my hips were broadening; not by a lot, but enough that I could tell the difference in my own stance. My legs…well, I wasn't sure what was going on with them. I could swear the ratio of upper to lower leg was decreasing – between that and the hips, it was no wonder I had trouble walking – but they didn't feel any shorter overall. And yet! the floor was somewhat closer than I remembered.
Well, statistically it was almost a certainty…but I sighed, wondering how freakin' tiny I was gonna end up. It'd never been a major point of pride for me, but with my genetics I'd been lucky to make it to 6', or just shy of it; slightly taller than my dad, even, and a whole head over my poor mother. I can kiss that goodbye, I thought, bouncing antsily on the balls of my feet.
I stared into the mirror for a long minute, bit my lip nervously, then hissed in surprise, remembering that I was getting full-fledged fangs as part of the package. I…probably didn't need to change out of my pajama shirt, did I…? It wasn't like I was gonna have company over or anything, and underneath… Anyway, that was enough of this for now; I wasn't planning to sit here gazing at my reflection all day to see what happened next.
God, I thought, taking a moment to comb the gnarlier tangles out of my hair, that probably was a thing, wasn't it? Not that I went within ballistic-missile distance of "influencer"/streamer/YouTuber culture if I could help it, but it must've blossomed into an entire mini-genre by now. Hi, I'm progressively metamorphosizing into an unholy hybrid lifeform never before seen on this earth, but before we get started I'd like to talk to you guys about SurfShark…
I felt myself power-cringe just thinking it. Of course all the modern Narcissi would see this as just one more source from which to draw eyeballs, clicks, and likesharesubscribes, but who'd wanna watch that!? What kind of sick freak got their kicks from observing the progress of a disease as it gradually remolded someone's entire body…?
…
I shuddered and clapped my hands to my temples, willing myself not to think too hard about it; if the Internet had taught me anything, it was that there's always someone like that out there, for any given definition of "like that."
(It occurred to me that Nicole had mentioned documenting her transformation with a series of selfies, but…well, that was different; she wanted this, so it made sense for her to memorialize it. I still didn't understand that, but at least it wasn't something she was doing for attention.)
Well, that wouldn't be me, at any rate. I was a grown m…adult, damn it, not some performing animal chasing the attentions of a bunch of Internet randos; I had no need to offer up my most intimate awkward moments for a bunch of overgrown monkeys to hoot and holler over. Whatever I might struggle with in this process, I could at least face it with quiet grace and dign—
I sprang into the air and whirled 'round to face in the direction of the noise as the doorbell suddenly rang. Had it always been that loud? No, my hearing must be getting sharper; and I kept feeling like my ears should pivot towards it, but they couldn't, yet.
After weeks of battling with the delivery apes, I was conditioned to sprint towards the entryway pretty much on reflex – but about five yards in I realized I was pantsless, and on top of that, my boxers were shimmying down my thighs as my tail held the waistband down. I hiked them up and sprinted back to the bedroom for my sweatpants, but then I couldn't get those over my tail, either…
There was the doorbell again, and I felt a shiver run up my spine; it wasn't just louder, I could swear there were higher harmonics I'd never picked up 'til now. The apes would never have rung a second time, and I didn't recall having any packages due today; had Nicole come to check on me, then? Holding my pants up, I lurched to the door, threw it open, and came face-to-face with…a delegation of masked strangers.
It'd been so long since I was face-to-face with anyone besides my feline neighbor that for a minute we just stood there in mutual awkward silence; then something clicked in my brain and I put all the standard 21st-century American human social cues together. A pair of adults, dressed in suit-and-tie, neatly-coifed and standing expectantly at your doorstep, at least one of them clutching a leather-bound… Right, it was the JWs. Geez, how long had it been since they'd come 'round?
The cornucopia of fragrances that filled the neighborhood was still a bit overwhelming, but I didn't need scent to tell that they were even less at ease than I was: the younger of the two was plainly freaked out, and his elder handler kept shifting nervously from one foot to the other instead of maintaining the usual stance. This was puzzling; usually I couldn't get them to go away without practically shutting the door in their faces. Why were they suddenly so timid…?
Then the lightbulb went on. I'd been picturing the scene from their perspective with my normal self, a shabby but essentially ordinary man only a few years older than the young buck here – but what they were seeing was the partly-animalized androgyne from the mirror. Thinking of myself as something that just a few months ago would've belonged in a Hollywood effects shop was freaky enough, but it also occurred to me that this was about how Frank looked last Sunday, and he'd been addled enough to feel "friendly…"
The realization was not a comfortable one, and I could sense their discomfort so acutely now (the smell of the young man's fear, the audible rustle of the old goat's suit jacket as he bobbed like the world's subtlest boxer,) which only made it worse; even my urge to troll them with a question about whether bizarro cat-things could be numbered among the 144,000 couldn't overcome it.
Still worse was the nagging uncertainty over whether they were right to be concerned. I'd been too addled to grasp it at first, and I'd had other things on my mind the last couple days after coming to my senses; this was the first time I'd stopped to think about the fact that I had been carrying the virus for, hell, the last two or three weeks. (God, had I spread it to anyone!? I thought I'd been taking precautions…)
But that was over now, surely; I didn't feel all euphoric and huggy, so it stood to reason that I was no longer contagious. But I hadn't felt like anything was wrong then, had I…had I? My memory was too fuzzy° to be certain, and the question ate at me. That must've been the virus at work…what if I was still carrying it, and didn't know it? But Nicole didn't think it could prevent you from realizing…
° (Damn it…)
At any rate, I didn't want any misunderstandings on whether I planned to lunge for and glomp them 'til it took hold of their bodies like it had mine. If I could just tell them in a nice, civil, normal way that everything is fine but this really isn't a good time… Ignoring the feeling like my ears should be twitching, I stepped forward, tried to smile in such a way as to not draw attention to my teeth, and waved in greeting. "Mrowwl," I said.
The kid flinched and recoiled; I cringed in sudden realization; the old fellow clutched his book tightly. "Mya!" I yelped, trying to assuage their fears and get my emotions under control, and failing spectacularly on both counts. It didn't help that I was hearing my voice for the first time since that awkward phone call; it'd definitely shifted further overnight. "Mrowr, FFFT!!!"
The situation had never really been under control, but it was rapidly getting out of it. I could see the older man's muscles tense, smell the kid's fear spiking into full-on panic; and the more agitated we all got, the less coherent I felt. I raised my hands in a show of non-aggression, but they must've seen it as this half-formed mutant flailing its claws at them. The kid's eyes bugged out and he took off like a shot, practically tripping over himself as he fled; the elder skipped after him a moment later, not even stopping to slip a leaflet from the Watchtower Society under my windshield wiper.