I snapped down the last of the French fries, took a long pull off my soda, and heaved a contented sigh. We'd stopped for lunch at one of the restaurants dotting the Palladium, and I'd finally gotten a proper damn hamburger; it was even that rare beast, the burger that comes with the right amount of fries.° Out on the patio the midday sun was so warm that, if it weren't for the stench of warbling Auto-Tune pop wafting through the air, I'dve been tempted to curl up for a nap.
° (I am dead certain that many places shovel on two pounds of potatoes just to keep people from complaining about the price.)
Things'd been drama-free since earlier. Alex was willing to compromise, though she'd insisted on picking shirts from the boys' section; then we'd hit shoes-and-accessories, where I'd gotten a basic, no-nonsense satchel° and basic, no-nonsense flats. Frank hadn't gone for anything flashy either, but she seemed to have a knack for making things work for her, which I still wasn't sure how to feel about.
° (Okay, okay, purse.)
(Alex, the moment anyone so much as hinted at getting her a purse, had triumphantly pointed out that her jumpers all had plenty of pocket space. I might've been incensed at her for getting smug over what was broadly my solution, but I was more envious than annoyed.)
It still felt funny having something hanging off my shoulder and resting at my hip, but it was more convenient (and less conspicuously odd) than the repurposed grocery bag; and in terms of the things I was self-conscious about, it didn't even crack the top ten.
No, it was much stranger to be out and about like this and think that, to an uninformed observer, we might just look like three women and a little girl;° that they might not realize 75% of us hadn't been female last month, even if Alex staunchly held the line at tomboy and no further. I still wondered if there wasn't some tell in my mannerisms, and then felt all weird at the thought that there might not be…
° (Indeed, it was weird to look at our group and think that Nicole was the standout oddity…except for the part where that was entirely correct.)
It was odd, too, to realize that there were quite a few of us here…and that there was an us there, and it was a very different us than before; between staff, patrons, and passers-by on the sidewalk, probably a third of the people in the vicinity were catgirls of one stripe° or another.
° (Damn it.)
Selection bias, probably – transformees were more flexible for staffing, and shoppers'd be more comfortable stopping in if they had nothing more to risk – but there was a part of my brain that found it…weirdly comforting. Deep in the primal wiring, purely sub-rational, I assessed proto-relationships with these strangers on the basis that they're like me → they think like me → I understand them → I can function around them…
But – I sighed – even as a human, my mental model broke down somewhere between stages one and three; it hardly made any more sense now, when we were still new to being this and hadn't had æons to adapt.° It touched a nerve, too, on a certain strand of humor popular with the memesheep lately: a ha ha, only serious treatment of catgirls-as-assimilatory-body-horror, replete with references to The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.°°
° (I also couldn't help wondering if that instinct hadn't caused a whole lot of human misery over the ages…)
°° (And, for reasons I couldn't begin to understand, that little Type-Moon critter.)
Which would've been merely exasperating if not for the nagging thought that I had gone through that – while I wasn't consciously plotting things, I'd been all hopped up on the right blend of brain-juice to make me want to do things I normally wouldn't, things that'd put others at risk of infection. Sure, it was the virus talking, but it was still plenty uncomfortable to think about…so of course cretins on the Internet kept reminding me.
And it made it all weird to sit here with a bunch of people I didn't even know, our only connection being that, on some level, my brain now saw them as Kin, and wonder if they felt the same way. I'd always found the Secret Underground Monster Society implausible – if just being the same species was enough to bond over, why were hum—why were we like this!? – but if I went up to these random Feline-Americans and started talking weird cat instincts, would they nod in recognition? Open up about ones they struggled with—
"Mya, Alex," Nicole said, breaking my train of thought. Alex was pawing at her dad's glass with a strangely intent look, nudging it closer and closer to the edge of the table; she started at the words and, realizing she'd been caught, turned away – silently disavowing all knowledge of the affair while her ears gave her away completely. I couldn't help but smirk…
…but dammit, now I couldn't stop thinking about it! I could see my own cup in front of me, feel my dumb cat-brain speculate on what it might do if I batted it just so, and almost hear this new part of me wonder if it wouldn't be the most natural thing in the world to test. For God's sake, no! I told myself. You're an adult, aren't you!?
I took a deep breath, heaved a sigh, and got up; I forced myself to gather up my tray and trash the normal way and took it over to the garbage cans. Nicole and Frank joined me shortly, similarly intent, which made me feel a little better about it.
As we prepared to leave, there was a microcommotion from the entrance. "Mom, Mom, look!" a girl's voice said, excitedly. "Lookit, see!? It's—"
"Don't point, sweetie," said her mother, in a tone that suggested this was a regular occurence. The girl, a freckle-faced little blonde with a guileless grin, did not get the message.
She was around Alex's age, but taller than usual – she'd hit her growth spurt and then some – and her face radiated pure childlike wonder, without a trace of that trying-to-seem-more-grown-up attitude kids tend to display on the verge of middle school. She wore faded, rumpled blue jeans and a pale yellow shirt with a daisy on it, and was pointing our way – at Nicole, I thought, but then her gaze wandered, and her eyes went wide.
"Omigosh!" she cried in delight, breaking away and rushing over to tackle the youngest member of our group in a hug. "You're Alex, aren't you? Oh wow, you got so cute…!"
"Mel, honey, personal space…!" her mother said, but it fell on deaf ears. Alex reacted to the sudden assault-glomp as any cat would – her expression really put the mort in mortified – but her attempts to pull away were stymied by the other girl's grip…
…and the fact that "Mel" here had a full head over her. I hadn't really noticed, but Alex was kinda short; partly, of course, because she'd been a boy 'til now and hadn't been due to sprout for a couple years. Wondering whether she would, or whether the poor kid was just doomed, I felt moved by empathy to intervene. "Frrriend of yours…?" I queried.
Luckily, this drew her captor's attention, and she managed to wriggle free. "She's in my class," she said pointedly, smoothing down her fur with visible annoyance – but the subtext was lost on Mel, who regarded me curiously, turned to follow a passing butterfly, and returned her attention to her classmate.
"Wow, you got fur a buncha places," she said. "Does that mean you got more sick with it? Or I guess you don't get sick when you turn into a cat, right? I got sick – my mom too. I mean, we weren't like really sick but that was no fun; I think it woulda been better to just turn into cats but maybe then I wouldn't get along with Grandpa's dogs and that'd be too bad 'cause they're pretty fun. Do you hate dogs now, or what?"
Alex gave her a look like she'd just introduced herself in Martian. She made to answer, but the other girl was already continuing. "Or did you ever even like dogs? I can't remember, I don't think I ever heard you say if you did – I don't think you talk to us girls much. Do you think maybe you will since you're a girl now? I wonder if people who like dogs don't turn into cat people. I wouldn't mind being a dog person I guess but I don't think that's happening. Do you like cats? Regular ones, I mean?"
It was the strangest damn thing to listen to her; I'd known hyper kids and spacey kids, but she was sort of a third point on the triangle. She wasn't motor-mouthed,° but no sooner had she finished voicing one thought than another was percolating out from her brain – and her train of thought was none too bound by its tracks.
° (Although her scheduler did prioritize talking over breathing – she kept having to stop mid-sentence for air, and then carry on.)
Alex, unsure which of the half-dozen questions she'd just been peppered with to answer, opted for the last. "We nyever had cats," she said, eyeing her classmate warily, as if she didn't know what this strange creature might do next. "Abuela Carmen's got a cockatoo, and…and Grrrandmya Asheby has an…nyaquarium…"
She trailed off, looking strangely intent again, and I could tell she was considering both of these data points in a new light; then, realizing that she'd been able to get a word in edgewise, she added, "Miss Nyacole's cats're okay, I guess. Snickers thinks she's better'n, like, everrrybody though."
Nicole churred in amusement. "Mrrr, can't argue with that."
Mel blinked in realization and turned to the two-legged, grownup-sized tabby cat in the patchwork-quilt skirt, tube top, and bandana.° "Oh wow," she said breathlessly, "Miss Nicole…?"
° (I had to admit, if anyone cut a distinct enough figure to be recognizable as an entirely different species, it was definitely my neighbor.)
Nicole gave her a happy-cat grin. "Hiya, Melody," she said. "Mya been keeping up on nyewr rrreading?"
Mel smiled brightly; then her expression fell, just slightly. "She's…trying," her mother said, with the vaguely unsettled look of someone who wasn't used to having parent-teacher discussions with large predators. "It's a bit of a challenge helping her focus, at home. Are you, uh…?"
"She's Chelsea's teacher," her daughter said, brightening as the focus shifted away from her homework. "But she helps out with our English assignments, sometimes." Then, to Nicole: "Are we gonna get to come back to school soon? I haven't seen a buncha the other kids in forever except I saw Tabbi and her mom at Safeway the other day. She turned into a cat person – Tabbi did, I mean – but it was funny 'cause she's actually a calico. I wonder what decides what kind of cat people turn into?"
"They don't know yet—" I began, instinctively weighing in when a subject I'd researched came up, but Alex interrupted. "Wait, do we have to go back…?" she said, looking significantly less enthused.
Nicole shrugged. "We've been talkin' nyabout it, for students who've been exposed," she said, "but they wannya be rrreally sure that means nyew're immyewne, and we're still workin' nyan prrroviding distance learning for the rrrest. Don't think it'll happen 'til the fall semester, but we'll let people kniaow."
"The sooner the better," Mel's mother sighed. "Er, well, no pressure; I've just been feeling a little out of my depth. Math and English I can handle, but history's just a jumble of names and dates to me…"
"Think that's mostly in how it's taught," Nicole replied, tail lashing, "but that's anyather rrrant. Honestly, it's encouraging just havin' nyew folks make an effort. It's the kids whose parents can't be bothered that I rrreally feel for," she growled.
Mel'd been studying the other half of our group; at the mention of parents she had an obvious lightbulb moment. "Omigosh," she said, turning to Frank, "she's your dad, isn't she? Oh wow, she got so pretty…! Um, although does that make her your mom, now?" she mused, staring into space, a finger to her lip. "What about your—"
"Sweetie…" her mother interjected, pivoting from parent talk to timely intervention with practiced ease; this was clearly not her first rodeo. Alex bristled, tail puffed out and ears ticked back a bit, but said nothing; Frank, between ears, tail, and face, had about the most muddled expression I'd ever seen on a person, like she was processing several very different feelings at once.
Mostly it wasn't any of my business, but I didn't feel quite as flustered as usual at being a bystander to this; I wasn't sure why. The kid mean no harm, and her mom wasn't nearly as frazzled just trying to keep up with her offspring as that woman the other day; really, though, I was just glad this wasn't going to involve—
"So are you maybe her aunt, I guess?" Mel asked me, rebounding off her mom's verbal guardrail without missing a beat.
"Wh–!?" I sputtered, wondering how she'd come to that conclusion; there was no resemblance, beyond our being not-so-human no-longer-males. Well, for all she knew Frank and I might be sisters-in-law, stepsisters, or…who knew; even in my own family, my mother was the only one of her siblings who hadn't divorced and remarried at least once. "I'm their neighbor," I clarified; it was…weird…to think about being anyone's aunt,° in any case.
° (You could have "honorary uncles" of no actual relation; my dad's college roommate was one, to Caitlin and I. I wasn't sure if "honorary aunts" were a thing, though I couldn't see why not.)
"Ohhh," she said thoughtfully. "I never had an aunt before except now I do 'cause one of my uncles is my aunt now, that's pretty cool I guess."
"…I see," I said; I could guess what she meant, with the pandemic, but I wasn't 100% certain.
"She turned into a cat person," she nodded; "I mean, all the way into a cat, like Miss Nicole, only she doesn't have the extra boobs.° She's, um…what are they, those spotty tigers that live way up where it's cold all the time? She teaches skiing up at the lake, so I guess that makes sense."
° (Her mother gave Nicole an apologetic look; she laughed it off.)
"'Spotty tigers…?'" muttered Alex, as puzzled as myself. After a moment's consideration, I ventured: "Snow leopards?"
"Uh-huh!" Mel beamed. "She's the fluffiest thing EVER – and she purrs when you pet her, it's so neat. Um, Miss Nicole, can I pet you?"
"Melody…!" her mother said, sounding a bit closer to her limit. It was kind of a weird thing to hear said; even Nicole was visibly surprised. But it was plain to see the kid was totally earnest, and she chuckled, doffed her bandana, and knelt down so Mel could get at her.
She approached almost in awe,° reaching out to touch her snow-white hair delicately before giving in and scratching at the base of her ears. Nicole let herself nudge into the little girl's touch, prompting a delighted grin from her; then Mel stroked the fur on her neck and shoulders. "You're so soft," she marveled. "I think Aunt Brad is fluffier, but that's okay I guess."
° (I wasn't sure why, if she'd already done this with her erstwhile uncle; she probably just really liked animals.)
I glanced at Alex, who'd turned away; again, her ears were tipping her hand, trained as far as they could go toward what she Clearly Had No Interest In. With a smirk, I turned back to Nicole – and felt a particular itch in my chin, as Mel scratched under hers. I did my best to ignore it, with some difficulty; then that familiar low rumble started in. "Oh," Mel said, "you purr too!"
Nicole, knowing she couldn't speak intelligibly, smiled and nodded, canting her head just so as to give optimal access for scritches. Mel brushed one of her whiskers; the corner of her lip curled instinctively at that, revealing a fang, but she let it fade back into a gentle smile.
Still, I could tell she was getting twitchy. When you have an instinct for this, you get very attuned to it in others – like how, as a human, you can watch someone make a really embarrassing faux pas and feel almost as mortified yourself just out of sympathy. I worried that things might get out of hand; thankfully, Nicole was more self-aware than a typical cat. "Alrrright," she said, gently grabbing Mel's hand, her claws discreetly velveted, "that's enyough for niaow." She smiled. "But that was rrreally nice; thank you."
Mel beamed. "I got to practice with my aunt," she said, "but she'd get all twitchy too, like when I'd rub her tummy, and 'specially if I pet the base of her tail. I guess regular cats do that too, but I dunno why. I probably gotta lot to learn about them if my aunt's gonna be one. Gosh," she mused, "I wonder if I'll ever have cousins who're cats?"
There followed one of those moments where everyone has something on the tip of their tongue, but isn't sure if they should say it.° Frank and I shared an awkward glance; Alex was merely confused; Nicole was plainly amused, but carefully measuring her words. "Well, nya never kniaow," she said, "but in nyany case, it's good to see myew trrryin' to be sensitive about that. Even ordinyary cats'll apprrreciate it."
° (This, I'm certain, is why the "beat panel" was invented in comic strips.)
"Yeah, I s'pose!" Mel grinned. "Oh, and Tabbi too, I bet – it's probably okay if she comes over now that we both had it, that'd be fun, I haven't been over to anyone's house in forever either. Oh," she said, turning to Frank, "can Alex come over sometime, or maybe we could go play in the park or something? I guess it's too cold out for the pool still and I dunno if she'd wanna swim if she's a cat now. Do cat people hate taking baths and stuff? Oh, or d'you just—"
"We'll see," Frank said, answering the first question before she could finish asking the third. "We're still getting nyewsed to…all this, and it might be a bit before sh—before Alex's comfortable with that. Mya, we'll keep it in mind," she added, as Mel prepared to break out the puppy-dog eyes at what she took for a denial; then, with a wry churr, "And I had enough of a time getting him to take baths beforrre."
"Daaad…!" Alex yowled, but Frank gave her The Look. "Kiddo," she said, "I wouldn't say it if it wasn't true."
She stuck out her lower lip and ticked her ears back, but couldn't muster a firmer protest; instead, she jammed her hands in her pockets and turned away in a performative huff.
"Anyway," Mel's mother said, deciding that this was probably the best opportunity she'd get, "we really shouldn't keep you. It was very nice to meet you, ah, ladies…?"
Nicole took the hint. "Mya, they'll prrrobably need our table." She hunkered down next to Mel, ruffling her hair with her palm-pad and provoking another delighted grin. "Hang in there," she said. "I kniaow it's hard to stay focused sometimes, but mya can do it if you trrry."
Mel wasn't thrilled to be reminded, but gave the best smile-and-nod she could offer – which was still pretty cheery. We gathered our bags and left, and she followed her mother into the restaurant, talking excitedly about a cornucopia of topics, at least some of which related to our encounter.
We walked on in silence for a bit; after being around that kid, it seemed like a novelty. Finally, I turned to Alex, who was lugging her own shopping bag (she'd insisted on doing it herself.) "Is she always like that?" I asked.
She heaved a sigh, as if she'd just come off an intensely busy period and finally caught a break. "Everrry DAY," she said, ears drooping. "I dunniaow how the other girrrls keep up; nyan of the b—nyan of us get what she's even talkin' nyabout half the time." She gazed uneasily from one adult to the next before asking: "…I don't rrreally hafta go over to her house, do I?"
"Well, I won't make you," Frank said, after a moment, "but…it might nyat be a bad thing for you to get to know some of the other…mya, other kids in your class."
Another palpable silence. "But she'll wannya do girrrl stuff," Alex said at last, tail lashing. Her bag slipped lower in her grasp; she hefted it back up and clutched it to her chest.
"Maybe, maybe nyat," she replied, treading delicately. "She wasn't dressed all that girrrly, was she? Mostly seems like she just likes anyamals."
"Mya, fifty-fifty," Nicole put in, trying to be diplomatic. "But I can't imyagine she'd purrposefully do anyathing to make you uncomfortable; she's a good kid."
I felt awkward again, recalling perfectly well-intentioned attempts by the adults in my life to help me "break out of my shell" – which usually meant tagging along with a group I didn't really want to be part of or getting invited over to the house of some kid I didn't know, and inevitably saw me holing up in a corner with whatever reading material I could find 'til it was finally time to go home. It'd seemed like grown-ups were all under the impression that absence-of-hostility was the same as friendship, when it couldn'tve been clearer to kid-me that it wasn't…
…and yet, as an adult, I couldn't help wondering. Did it have to be that way? Alex was a bit shy, a little sensitive, but nothing like I remembered; maybe she could function around her peers, with some gentle nudging. But that was probably what parents, teachers, and the like thought about me, back when…
I studied the scene from the rear, as we walked: the parent and teacher, sincerely concerned but maybe not fully aware of how "help" from authority figures can feel like just another arbitrary imposition to a child, and the kid, stuck being not entirely sure of herself, but unable to express it clearly…or was that just me projecting?
They were getting farther away; I'd slackened my pace, lost in thought. With a quiet sigh and a shake of the head, I hefted my bags and hustled to catch up. She'd seemed like a little enigma on the way over – but, for the first time, I wondered if I might not understand her better than I'd thought.