And thus ended the shortest interaction I'd ever had with them. I tottered inside, shut the door, slumped against it, and slid down to the floor, then winced and leaned forward to un-kink my little stub of a tail out from under me. Just shoot me now, I thought, afraid to speak it aloud and hear what ridiculous jumble of animal noises would result. Was it going to be like this all the time!? It was one thing to hear it from Nicole; she aspired to be a cat, practically. But to have it come out of my mouth, in front of other people…
God, the way they'd looked at me. I was plenty used to not quite fitting in, getting the occasional funny look from someone over my personal appearance, the car I drove, etc. – but I'd never in all my life been looked at as a thing to be feared, 'til now. Was this what it was, to be a monster? Had I looked at the catgirl in the hardware store that way? I sure as hell hoped not.
I winced as something cramped up in the floor of my pelvis; God only knew what. With a sigh, I got up and stumbled back to the bedroom once more, shifting my hips around uneasily. I couldn't understand it; sure, I made a basic effort for work, but it didn't normally matter to me how I looked to people. Why did I care now what a bunch of humans I didn't even like thought of me? Why was I even more uncomfortable being seen like this than I was seeing myself this way…?
I focused pointedly on my back side as I doffed my boxers, turned them 'round, and hiked them back up, threading my tail through the fly.° A quick rummage through my closet yielded a pair of soft pajama shorts I'd had no need for since moving to a warmer state, and I did the same with these. There, that was at least technically covered up; I wouldn't have to worry about anyone seeing…things…
° (God, was it weird to feel my hands grasping an appendage I'd never had before.)
It was good timing; I'd hardly had a chance to settle in at my desk before there was a knock at the door. Frankly, I didn't feel the need to bother answering; I'd had my fill of awkward encounters for the day…week…month. But whoever it was wasn't standing on propriety; a minute later, I heard the door open and a woman's voice call: "Mya, hello?"
I felt my hackles rise a bit less metaphorically than I was used to. My rational mind couldn't really construe this invasion of my territory as a threat (a malicious party would hardly go announcing themselves,) but my subconscious saw it as an invasion all the same. In any case, I was not in the mood to deal with other people right now…and I felt a fresh wave of self-consciousness washing over me at the thought of being seen like this, technically-decent or no.
Then a breeze wafted in from the entryway, and I discerned that same cat-yet-not scent I'd picked up from Nicole. The equation suddenly flipped; my animal brain was soothed by that, while my human mind got all flustered over the question of why it'd be instinctively reassuring to me. Anyway, there was probably no avoiding this; with a growl, I got up yet again and stalked to the door to find…two catgirls I didn't recognize.
I had a vague sense of familiarity, but I couldn't exactly place them, by scent or sight. I wondered what they even wanted with me; Nicole was the only person of feline persuasion I knew, wasn't she? Unlike her, they weren't full-fledged° anthropomorphic cats; it was weird that that felt odd to me, but then she was the template for almost all my direct experience with the creatures so far, besides the direct experience of turning into one…
° ("Full-furred?")
One was a tall, shapely woman with dusky skin, lush (if somewhat short) raven-black tresses, and chocolate tortoiseshell fur. She had the basic ears-and-tail configuration, and I figured her to be in her late thirties. In a word, she was stunning, if a bit self-conscious about it; her tail lashed and her ears twitched when she saw me, and she glanced uneasily down at the hem of a skirt that wasn't quite long enough to conceal the fact that her legs were spectacular.
The other was just a kid. Unlike the woman, she had fur from the elbows down, and as far up her legs as I could see before they disappeared into a denim jumper that was clearly a hand-me-down. Her feet were full-fledged paws like Nicole's, and her leg proportions had changed to suit her new digitigrade stance. I couldn't tell whether her hands were more paw-like than usual, because they were jammed resolutely into her pockets.
She was paler-skinned than…her mother, I assumed…? but with a hint of olive; her hair was also black, but fine and silky, and her fur matched it exactly, except for white splotches on the tips of her ears and tail, and white "socks" on her feet and (probably) hands. At a guess, I thought, she was around the same age as—
No, wait. The face was a bit softer and rounder, but at that age the differences were subtle enough that I should've realized; hell, I'd even seen these exact changes underway. This was Alex, the catgirl version, which meant that the woman must be…Frank!? It was the only logical conclusion, but the cognitive dissonance from trying to connect this beauty with the craggy, mustachioed beat cop I knew was mind-bending. How was that even possible?
"Mya, sorry for the intrrrusion," she said. She'd ended up as a low alto,° but her voice was warm and velvety rather than husky like women in that range tend to be. "Nyacole texted to say she wanted to check in nyan nyew but got stuck in a meeting, and then we saw that commotion in the lot…everrrything okay here?"
° (Rant time: a baffling number of people on the Internet have taken to describing the shift in speaking pitch when someone changes from a man into a cat-woman in terms of "octaves," plural. For the record, one octave is the difference between Mr. Ed and the Chipmunks. The word they're searching for is register. This has been a public-service announcement.)
For a brief eternity, I stuck to awkward silence – apparently my theme for the day. I knew my voice was all weird right now, and the dumb vocal tics made me feel like even more of a spectacle; and standing before this belle that used to be my neighbor was making me intensely self-conscious. Okay, on closer inspection you could tell she was nearly forty – subtle wrinkles here and there, just a hint of crow's feet – and (understandably) not quite comfortable in her own skin; but she was still beautiful. And here was me, looking like a circus freak…
He ended up like that!? I still couldn't wrap my head around it. I'd wondered before what kind of connection there was between how you looked before the virus and what it made out of you, but again my main point of reference was Nicole; sure, she retained her essential Nicole-ness in mannerisms, body language, and speaking voice (mostly,) but there was nothing left of her face or frame that I could recognize, I didn't think.
This put the question in a more relatable context: was it merely chance, the "ouput" of an unthinking process for which my neighbor constituted the "input?" Or was it authoritatively "F. Gutiérrez (cat-woman edition,)" according to…whom? Did the Almighty already have a backup design on file for just such an occasion? A cabinetful, one for every man, woman, and child on the planet? Or for efficiency's sake, maybe just those of us who were fated to end up as—
"Kit? Hello?" She took a step towards me, and my brain flared briefly with a novel cocktail of surprise, territorial instinct, embarrassment, and existential angst. God, she even smelled like a woman; my enhanced senses made that clear even as I realized what a weird thing it'd be to say by normal standards. But then, nothing was really normal anymore…
"'m myalright," I sighed, and groaned inwardly. I hoped like Hell that I'd be able to control these stupid tics going forward, but I was too damn flustered right now to have any real chance. "It was just rrreally awkward, that's all."
Well, add one more to the list of things stuck in weird in-between states, I thought. The awkward adolescent squawking from yesterday was gone, but while the acoustic properties of my larynx were already changing, my brain was slow in adjusting my natural pitch to compensate. I didn't sound exactly like a woman doing a comic impression of a deep bass voice – not that I was ever a bass to begin with – but once I'd made the comparison there was no getting it out of my head. Ugh…
It was bizarre having to go through this again; puberty was long enough ago that I'd forgotten how embarrassing it is when your own voice doesn't fit right. Not that I'd ever been a model of timbre and cadence, but it was my voice, dammit, and now it was going to be all different, and I didn't even know exactly how. Swear to God, if I end up sounding like Mr. B Natural…
"That's good, at least," she said, stepping further inside; even her movements were fluid and feline. "Figured you'd handle this alrrright, but it seemed like a good idea to check in nyafter that. Hope we didn't catch you at a bad time."
I bristled a little, wondering what she meant by that, but couldn't stifle a snort. "I dunniaow what a good time would even look like here," I said dryly. I didn't have company over often, but I was pretty sure this was well outside the parameters for "normal" hospitality. Oh, do come in – sorry, it's a bit of a mess in here, I've gotten so busy mutating into a novel species lately…
Frank nodded knowingly. "I get you. Rrreally gets you off-kilter, having everrrything be so…different." She rolled her shoulders as if trying to get used to their altered shape and the substantially different weight distribution of her upper body, and shifted her hips, glancing uneasily down at her new gams. She probably felt awkward, but from my perspective she still made it look supple and sinuous… "Alex couldn't even walk upright the firrrst day or so."
"Daaad…!" Alex protested, shrinking behind her…father…? in embarrassment; I could still see her tail lashing from one side of Frank to the other. Her voice had gone up in pitch, but only a little – or at least, I thought it had; I hadn't really heard him talk much, before.
"Sorry, kiddo," Frank chuckled, glancing back at her; something about the tone of voice she took with her child struck me funny, but I couldn't put my finger on it. She turned and gave Alex's hair an affectionate ruffle, which turned into scritches so naturally that I wasn't even sure she'd meant to. Alex's ears were laid back in annoyance, but I could see her nudging up into the touch; I tried not to notice the itching in my own scalp.
She turned back to me, and her ears drooped slightly. "And, uh…apologies if I frrreaked you out the other day." She shook her head, tail lashing. "Nyacole said you were there, but I was so out of it that it's all a blur…"
I cringed, remembering Alex's distress, my own inability to bring myself to do anything, and the feeling of something else watching me through my neighbor's eyes – and then remembering that I'd gone through that phase myself just a couple days ago. Was there a connection? I felt a brief flare of emotion, wondering if he was responsible for my condition…but no, that didn't make sense. It hadn't been long enough for me to have progressed this far, and too long since I'd last seen them before…
"It's, uh, nyat your fault," I sighed, trying to reassure us both. She was visibly relieved, and I wondered if she was as uneasy as I was at the thought of this thing manipulating her in order to spread itself…or as embarrassed about getting all weird and huggy and spaced-out. We could learn to control all this behavioral weirdness, couldn't we…? God, we'd better be able to.
For a little while, we just stood there, the two of them glancing 'round my apartment with distinctly feline curiosity, which just got me trying to remember if I'd ever had any of my neighbors over before. …No, not that I could recall, aside from Nicole coming to check on me the other day; there'd been no need, really.
But for some reason I couldn't help wondering what they'd expected. What kind of person did my neighbors think I was? Hell, what kind of people did I think they were…? I glanced at Alex, who regarded me warily, and realized I didn't even know what grade he was in; but why should it matter to me? It wasn't like I needed anything from these people. Okay, sure, Nicole had stepped in to help me through this, had prevented me from spreading it to anyone, and even Frank had come to check on me, but…!
My internal conflict was interrupted when Alex caught sight of my practice amp and the guitar leaned up against it. "Are you, like, in a band or something?" she asked, ears perking up just a bit and tail flicking with interest. I could see her mouthful of little kitty teeth as she spoke.
I cringed a little; nothing makes you more keenly aware of being a newbie at something than someone else assuming you're proficient. "Uh, nyah," I said, feeling awkward and hoping they wouldn't ask me to demonstrate. "I just…got bored and needed a nyew hobby, that's all."
She eyed me curiously, and I couldn't help doing the same. I wasn't sure why I found it interesting to watch her; it might've been partly for the novelty of seeing her reactions and emotions, the first time I'd gotten to observe a more human type of catgirl face up-close. Maybe my brain was logging all this as it insistently speculated on how I'd end up – more like this, or more like Nicole? But for some reason I found myself remembering my sister at this age, though there was no real resemblance.
"…Oh," she said, after a moment, shifting her hands in her pockets. I couldn't tell exactly what to read into it, but her ears lost a bit of their perk. I glanced away, trying not to feel chagrined at the thought that my neighbor's kid whom I'd never really interacted with before might find me something of a letdown.
"Lotta that going arrround, lately," Frank chuckled, not really making me feel any less awkward. "I guess we all need to stay occupied, myakniaow? My partner took up whittling, for crrrying out loud." She glanced around the room, looking for something else to politely inquire after, and settled on the little bookshelf in back of the couch. "Nyew, uh, rrread much?"
"…A bit," I said uneasily, trying to recall if I had anything there that'd make the mo—father of a young child uncomfortable. Probably not, I thought. It'd be different if it were my sister's bookshelf, though I had…slightly different reasons to feel awkward about her Ranma ½ collections than mere comic nudity, lately. I bristled; how long were we gonna have to keep this conversation going? Why were my neighbors suddenly insistent on taking an interest in me…!?
Irritation was beginning to creep up my spine and into the back of my neck; I tried to tell myself it was just territorial instinct flaring up again. I could tell Frank noticed; she gave me a funny look for a moment, one that reminded me of the neighborhood strays when they were sizing each other up. She probably smelled it on me, didn't she? Could she tell what it meant…?
Then her ears flicked 'round and she turned to glance back at Alex, who was discreetly licking the back of her hand with her little sandpaper tongue. "Oh, mya, honey," she said, "let's nyat do that, okay?"
Alex cringed upon realizing she'd been caught, in a manner that was both pure kid and pure cat, and her ears ticked back a bit. "Okay, Dad," she sighed, wiping her fur off on her jumper and trying to straighten out whatever muss in her hair was bugging her using her claws instead. I puzzled over that exchange for a moment, before realizing that we'd ended up in a world where parents might have to worry about their kids hocking up a hairball on the neighbors' rug.
Well, it wasn't like my carpets were exactly pristine, but I should probably appreciate it; and yet I felt my irritation rise further. I've always felt awkward around parent-child interactions; as a kid I never knew where my sympathies were supposed to lie, and as an adult I'd never figured out whether it'd be ruder to stand around watching someone else wrangle their kid, or try to offer support and come off as a buttinski. I knew, rationally, that they weren't doing this to spite me, but why did they have to do it on my turf!?
Then, while I was trying to get a handle on my unease and annoyance, a new flavor of discomfort presented itself. I winced and hissed as a gentle tugging in my pelvic region suddenly turned into a pinching sensation that I really didn't want to think about, but definitely couldn't ignore. Frank gave me a sympathetic look as I shifted my legs around uneasily. "Oh, I rrremember that feeling," she said. "We'll, uh, get out of your hairrr, then – nya, do let us know if you need anything…?"
I nodded curtly, and they left, my neighbor ushering her son-turned-daughter out the door. Alex gave a last curious glance back as I gingerly stepped my way back to the bathroom, scalp prickling and cheeks burning at the latest fresh new humiliation this thing was putting me through. I heard the door close, and with a sigh, I pulled my shorts and underwear back off to take stock.
It was the first time I'd gotten a look at my privates since last night, and the first time I'd been paying close attention since yesterday morning. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the renovations were well underway; my dick had shrunk substantially, and the associated bits were lining up for an orderly – if cramped – retreat into the body cavity.
If you've never had your family jewels drawn back up inside you, rejoice – it's not comfortable. Okay, it probably helps that the passage is already widening by the time that happens, but only so much. While I'd known in the abstract that this must be part of the process, I'd never stopped to think about exactly what it'd feel like; I was certainly finding out now.
I sank down onto the toilet seat – and pivoted so my stubby little tail-in-progress could hang free – while I tried to process how to feel about that. Some guys seem to have a deep personal relationship with their junk, talking about it like it's their best friend, even giving it a freakin' nickname. I've never understood that, myself; in the grand scheme of things, it was just…part of my body, I guessed.
So it was a little surprising that seeing it like this really did give me a turn. I guess it's that you don't normally see a fully-developed adult body part dwindling like that unless something's drastically wrong; and in a certain sense something was. But it wasn't like anything was going to fall off and die here; as strange as it was to consider, as impossible as it'd seemed 'til recently, this was a process of mutation, from a normal and healthy set of organs to…another normal and healthy set of organs.
I knew that much, intellectually. I'd been subjected to enough media coverage on the topic to last a lifetime, by now;° I was fully aware that damn near all the bits in question were male and female variants of the same thing, or near enough, and the virus was merely converting from one to the other. From a clinical perspective, you could almost say that I wasn't even losing anything…
° (Nothing energizes TV news like the knowledge that they can talk about the sex parts on-air during primetime and excuse it as being in the public interest.)
But it's hard to be clinical when it's your own body on the line – and from another perspective, it meant I was about to be dropped into a radically different social context when I'd barely gotten the hang of functioning in this one, whatever I might feel about the physical changes. I knew I was becoming a woman, but this was like getting to the top of the big climb on a rollercoaster – that oh-shit-this-is-really-happening moment before you're over the crest and plunging into God-knows-what at breakneck speed. This was It: straight on into Lands Unknown, no getting off prior to arrival and no going back after…
I squirmed uneasily – and felt the fabric of my pajama shirt drag across my nipples. Right, I'd forgotten about that, hadn't I, what with everyone in the world deciding to drop in this morning. My trepidation from earlier remained, but there was really no point in dragging this out; I shucked it off, and there they were. While I'd never been in the kind of shape that could be described with words like "chiseled" or "rugged," I'd never had man-boobs. But there was no mistaking it now: I was developing real, actual breasts.
They weren't much yet, not quite enough to hang off the chest, but all the same, I was staggered. For being a biologically secondary sex characteristic, they're such a major social signifier that the reality of it hit home afresh. Whether I liked it or not, I was going to be something else, going to have to live as something else, going to be filed under a whole other category.° People would see me differently, treat me differently, expect different things of me….
° (I was too muddled right now to even get properly annoyed by that one.)
Could I even do this!? I didn't know a damn thing about being a woman, not really; could I handle it, or would I screw it up, somehow? Would I make a fool of myself in trying to fit with people's expectations? If I didn't try, would I come off as weird or freaky? Or would people find me comical and amusing, like tomboy characters in anime?° Which would be worse…?
° (Shit, I'd even have the little fang…)
Hell, what would I even look like, when all was said and done? I thought back to Frank; I couldn't even begin to picture myself looking like that, but then I couldn't have pictured him that way, either. I knew I was getting shorter; was I going to be some delicate little waif instead? Would that be better? What did I want to—
—!?!?!?
What did I want to look like!? God, I couldn't even process that question. I glanced to the mirror, but it was still the face from earlier looking back at me – the in-between face, the one that wasn't really one thing or the other. (Was it the face of a monster, or was that just someone else's reaction lingering in my brain?) Did I want this? Or if I didn't, would it…
I winced, deeply uncomfortable at the turn my thoughts were taking. Would it, I might reason, be better to just…get it over with? Say, if you just went straight back to bed, slept through it, let the damnable thing have its way with you…but no. I clenched my teeth and shook my head vigorously, forcing that idea out of my mind – and set the room spinning, because my inner ears were still migrating and my brain hadn't adjusted yet.
It didn't work like that, anyway; you woke up because, among other things, you needed food to fuel the changes. In fact, I could already feel my stomach reminding me that this nonsense with people coming to call had substantially delayed breakfast. Hopefully that'd be the end of it; I was in absolutely no mood to deal with people for at least the rest of the day, especially not when I still had to cope with the traffic jam between my legs. I dressed myself for the third time that morning, just in case the Universe decided to follow up with a visitation from, say, an entire marching band and majorette corps, and went to the kitchen, walking as bow-legged as I could manage stably.
I ended up making a pretty full-course breakfast before I was finally sated, and spent the afternoon looking for ways to kill time that didn't involve sitting. Mostly, that meant sprawling out on my back in front of my amp, legs akimbo, and noodling around with the guitar. It still felt awkward to admit that I didn't really have any purpose for it, and I was a long way from being any good at it…but it was absorbing, at least, and it helped keep my mind off what was happening downstairs, aside from the occasional uterine twinge and the periodic need to cock one leg or the other just so. Thankfully, I didn't have any more visitors.
By early evening, I was getting drowsy again. I hit the bathroom to get ready for bed, and it occurred to me that it was probably the last time I'd ever piss standing up. What a weird metric that was, I thought. When you got right down to it, it was a mild convenience and nothing more; certainly not a major quality-of-life indicator. Why did people make such a big deal over it? I recalled my conversation with Parker, back at the start of lockdown; honestly, even the pickle-jar thing probably had more practical impact. Would I be that deprived without the option…?
But then what would be a non-weird metric here? I'd wondered this morning if I'd know when I wasn't what I was anymore, but in truth I was already different. My brain had been going all screwy for the better part of a week now, and my senses altered for just as long. My skeleton was being remodeled even before I'd started growing a freakin' tail. Hell, I'd started in on developing a womb last night; did that make me already a woman, or was there some minimum set of required sex characteristics? Did you have to, what, be certified by a board of experts…?
Ah, screw it, I thought, with a heavy sigh. It'd been entirely too much of a day for me to try and sort that question out, especially when I was already fading. I'd just have to go to bed and find out what I was in the morning.