“PFFFT—” Cat splutters as I run between her legs with one of her socks in my mouth. I can hear her laughing her ass off as she chases after me, trying desperately to form actual words to indicate that, yes, she wants her sock back, but also no, not really, chasing a silly cat around is far better than having two socks.
Her fault for letting me take it off, really.
I think the goal, for Humanish Alice, was to give Cat cuddles after switching, but now that I am a cat again (finally), I just want to run.
Luckily, it seems like Cat wants to encourage this behaviour. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be chasing me around. I’m even laughing a little as well as I dart around the kitchen island, the sound coming out as a hss-hss-hss-hss, though with a slight high-pitched intonation that I can’t describe too well coming in at random intervals. It doesn’t matter too much; it’s all muffled by the sock anyways.
She rounds the corner I’d been lurking by, startling me out of my thoughts and causing me to backflip away from her and scramble away across the vinyl, sock still safely secure in my mouth. Hehehehehe.
“I’m—” she huffs out, “I’m gonna getcha!”
No one can catch me. I am speed. I am a blur of midnight-black fur.
I’d cackle if I could.
Instead, I leap over the back of the couch and wait for her to get close enough before zooming away again, this time looping around the back of the TV and the console it sits on. There’s enough space between it and the wall for me to just… stay put.
Cat peers into my little hiding spot.
“I can’t get you back there!”
“Maooooooo,” I respond through the sock, and then I begin traipsing my way through the mess of cords so I can escape from the other side, but Cat’s suddenly there, blocking me.
“Mao!”
She just giggles in response.
Screw it. I turn and jump over the cords, landing safely on the other side of them and dashing out of the trap so I can run around some more.
Unfortunately, somehow, zipping around a college dorm gets boring faster than I get tired. I can’t go in the bathroom since Cat could trap me in there too easily, and I’m not comfortable going into her bedroom unless I’m invited in.
I hop up on the couch and spit out her sock, waiting for her to come sit as well.
When she does, I notice how sweaty and out of breath she is, but she looks elated. She smells like… like fun? Like happiness, joy, wonder.
And sweat, but she seems to care about that as much as I do, which is to say, not at all. She sits down on the couch and beckons me over while picking up her sock from where I dropped it.
“Ewwwww, Alice! You—you drooled all over it!”
I mean, yeah! What did you expect! Ehehehe.
She doesn’t respond and I realize I’m not talking.
Right. Can’t talk. I’m a cat.
I go for a “Mwawooowww!” instead, and she just giggles some more while trying to catch her breath. I make my way over to her, my heart hammering away as my body comes down from the running—no, the zoomies, ehehehehe.
When I’m in petting range, she rakes her fingers across my scalp and I let out an involuntary “Mrrrahhh…” of pleasure, which of course elicits even more giggles from her.
I love her laugh.
It’s like she’s choking on it as it comes out of her, but not in a bad way—you can hear the smile in the noise, and she isn’t trying to control it. She’s just letting it come out of her in whatever way it wants.
I’m getting a lot of smileage out of it.
Okay, I’m receiving scritches and being pet, but now what? I wish I’d been able to expel more of the energy I have stored inside me. Going outside might help with that, but it’s late and probably pretty cold for Cat. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
I walk onto her thighs and turn to face her, giving her my cutest face and making my eyes all big and trusting because I know humans like that. I walk my forepaws up her tank top until I’m nearly at eye level with her—and then I press my wet nose to her dry one, closing my eyes and balancing delicately on top of her.
She makes a muffled noise and I grin internally as I realize my fur is probably right in front of her mouth.
Neither of us seems to care.
“This is the sweetest, most cutest, most adorable moment of my life,” she whispers.
I swell with pride.
Pride in myself for making her feel so good, and pride for not agonizing over whether or not getting this close to her would be okay. I just did it. It felt right, I wanted to, and I know she can move me aside easily if she stops wanting physical contact—and I’m okay with that, too.
Her hands wrap around the underside of my body, her thumbs making gentle circles in my fur, and she pulls me back a bit, holding me in the air while I balance on my hindlegs. My forelegs are outstretched in the air to either side, like I’m about to give her the world’s most awkward hug.
She gives me something better.
She leans forward, slowly, questioningly. She gives me time to pull back, to communicate that this isn’t okay, but I stay where I am and close my eyes again. I show her I trust her.
She places a soft kiss on my nose.
It is a tragedy, really, that I have never known affection as intimate as this until now, after 21 years. Not even with Gwen have I felt this special.
It makes me want to cry.
It makes me angry—no, furious.
It makes me want to be nothing.
It makes me happy.
It… it makes me want to switch back to being humanish so I can give her a kiss of the more romantic variety—and I can switch. I’ve felt safe this whole time. In fact, I was able to switch back as soon as I turned into a cat this time. Any bad emotions I had been feeling were gone the moment I became a cat, and the hole they left behind was filled with warmth and comfort, safety and the knowledge that Cat was there for me.
But I don’t actually want to be humanish.
Nothing I experience when I’m like that can compare to this.
This reminds me of how I imagine I felt as a kid. Endless wonder, joy, optimism for the future, absolute safety—invincibility, almost. This is that feeling, over and over and over again.
I can’t remember when I stopped wondering, when I stopped feeling optimistic for my future. I remember a moment where, near the start of puberty, I had a day where I felt like I was either going to come out of it a girl, or not at all.
Was that it? Was that the moment I lost my innocence?
No.
I’m not stupid enough to believe I didn’t lose it long before puberty ever started.
…
This isn’t stuff I wanna be thinking about right now. Tonight, or at least this moment, isn’t about me—it’s for Cat.
“Are you—Alice, are you crying?” Cat asks.
I’m pulled away from the bad thoughts and thrust into the spotlight, wholly unprepared for whatever comes next now that she’s noticed I’m crying. I didn’t even notice I was crying. What does it look like? Little kitty tears soaking into my fur? This chapter was taken from NovelPing without permission.
I let out a simple, half-sad mreow before lunging forward to bury my muzzle in the side of Cat’s neck. My paws are released shortly after, and each one finds its way over a shoulder.
Kitty hug.
Cat places one hand delicately on my back while I wet her neck with tears. She brushes her palm down from the base of my neck to the base of my tail, slowly, deliberately, before repeating the process and quietly asking me what’s wrong.
I can’t answer her.
I can’t talk.
I don’t want to move from this spot I’ve found, but I also want to tell her that I’m okay, I’m not sad, these are happy tears. Except, no—that’s not completely true. I am sad, but I’m also happy. The tears are the result of both emotions, but they are predominantly happy ones. Tears of contentment. Tears for a feeling I didn’t know could exist so strongly.
“Can you at least twitch your tail if this is okay?”
Swish! I flick my tail to the left and then to the right, before letting it settle and return to what it’d been doing before I paid it attention, which isn’t much.
She forces a laugh. “Well, all righty then. You take your time, I’ll be right here trying to decide if this is even sweeter than being nose-to-nose. Or I can talk, if you’d like. Um… flick your tail once for quiet, twice if you wanna listen to me talk about whatever.”
Swish! Swish!
“Mmk then, how about… oh, right, duh. Do you see a scar on my neck? It’s pretty faded, but you should be right by it.”
I have a small debate with myself over whether or not I want to pull back to look for her scar before deciding to just go with it. Sure enough, there’s an old scar running across the side of her neck. It looks like someone sawed her open with a bread knife.
I press my muzzle back into her neck. I’m not crying anymore, but the closeness still feels like something I want, something I need.
“Okay, so, I told you I grew up on a ranch. We had tons of animals, right? Alpacas, cows, sheep, chickens, horses, a bunch of farm cats and four dogs. Anyways, when I was ten, my mom started teaching me how to ride a horse. It was easy enough for me, so eventually we started riding down to the lake to have a picnic. It became a monthly thing, just me and her, and I’d always get to pick the food. Usually sandwiches and brownies, ‘cause she was really good at making them.
“Fast forward a year, I’m 11 now, and my horse—Peneighlopy, I named her when I was six, and don’t you dare laugh at me when you switch back—got spooked when we were on the way back from a picnic. I’m still not sure why, maybe a garter snake or something, but she just took off with me still saddled up, away from the trail my mom and I used and into the woods. I… don’t remember much after that.
“I woke up in the hospital. My mom said I’d had a tree branch lodged in the side of my neck when she caught up to me, and we found Peneighlopy a few days later. I guess, at some point while she was running away, I fell off of Peneighlopy and, well, tree branch. My mom actually thought I was dead at first, but nah, just unconscious. I remember she wanted to shoot Peneighlopy, which is crazy, ‘cause she’s even more into animals than I am. My dad and brothers talked her down, and four months later I was riding Peneighlopy again. I get a cool scar, everyone at school thinks I’m a badass, and I acquire the ability to one-up any story at any dinner table.
“Oh, you accidentally got your belt stuck in the hay baler? Oh, Aunt Eunice, you lost the tip of your pinky finger? Well, did I ever tell you about the time I had a tree branch through my neck and almost died? Pretty cool, huh?” she finishes.
Oh, how I wish I could talk and stay cozied up to her like I am currently.
I settle for something in between the two—I pull myself out of her neck, find a comfortable spot to sit on her lap, wrap my tail around myself, and look up at her. I make my eyes go big, I twitch my ears…
…and I start furiously nodding my head up and down.
“What—what the—what are you doing?” Cat giggles out, her whole body shaking as a laughing fit takes hold of her. I, being a cat, keep my balance on her wobbly legs with impeccable skill.
…
Okay, fine, instinct, but whatever.
Time passes.
It mostly passes while we cuddle, but Cat takes some time to sneak a few bites of leftover chicken biryani from the fridge when she gets snacky—I pass on having any more with a wave of a paw. It’s good, but the seasoning all over the chicken puts me off of it a little, especially when I know there’s freaking tuna waiting for me back in my own dorm.
It’s a perfect night.
Even taking into account all the anxiety prior to revealing myself to Cat, it is a perfect night.
I am tempted to stay the night. I didn’t bring anything I usually would have if I was staying at someone’s place overnight, but I also don’t need to if I’ll be sleeping as a cat. Don’t need to shower, don’t need to brush my teeth… don’t need to do anything but sleep.
Unfortunately, Cat inadvertently reminds me that I have an essay due tomorrow, it’s 11pm, and I have not started it yet.