Warm milk is exactly what I need after telling Gwen and Evan about my day out (and then doing my best to get them to move past it). It’s so frickin’ smooth and milk-y and soothing and it feels like I’m floating down a river of the feeling you get when alcohol makes you warm—just without the alcohol. Honestly, it’s pretty great. It helps me relax a lot as I introduce myself to Evan properly while wondering if I should have done so before telling him about my near-death experience. We’re still all gathered around the kitchen island, and it’s kind of a vibe.
“Alice,” I say, taking a sip and offering a hand for him to shake. “Good to meet you.”
He shakes the offered hand, and his grip is firm, pleasant. His hands are really soft as well. “Evan. It… feels kinda weird talking to you?” he says, managing to make it sound like a question.
“Yeah… sorry for wrecking your date night,” I say, rubbing the back of my head and suddenly feeling quite sheepish despite being part cat. “It makes me really happy that you’re not freaking out about me, by the way. I appreciate it.”
He waves me off. “Don’t worry about it. Gwen’s cool and you’re her best friend. I still have a ton of questions, by the way, if you feel up to that sometime.” He seems so much more assured in the way he speaks compared to the first time, when he was more of a stuttering mess. I guess seeing a girl turn into a cat will do that to a guy.
“Can I ask one instead?” I ask, sipping my milk again. It’s sooo-ohhh-ohhh gooooood.
“Sure.”
“Why aren’t you freaking out about me?”
“‘Cuz he’s great,” Gwen helpfully supplies.
“You guys literally met on Friday,” I deadpan.
“We get along,” she adds. “Seriously, no one else I know plays Crypt of the Necrodancer and this fucking guy,” she says, pointing at Evan, “can do all zones as Coda. Or so he claims. I told him I’d ghost him if he was lying and he doubled down, so I don’t think he’s lying…”
“You’ll have to find out,” he quips back, and it’s so lame and cheesy and the shameless flirting is so weird to see so soon after the Cody fiasco.
I giggle a bit. My giggle sounds so nice now. Like a real giggle. My new voice is awesome.
“To answer your question, though,” he says, turning to face me as I hide the lower half of my face with my mug of milk, “I did after I left. I just held it together in the moment because, uh…”
I expect him to pick up, but he just sort of trails off and looks to Gwen for help.
She sighs, but she’s smiling. “I’m really good in bed and I play the same games as him. I would’ve told him to fuck off if he pointed out that I’m cool and a nerd and a girl and studying biomed, even with his abs. But he’s like, actually a good dude. You saw those, by the way, right? The abs? Who the fuck plays Crypt of the Necrodancer and has abs?”
I sip. “So… video games and sex,” I summarize, looking between the two of them. Gwen’s physique is a runner’s, whereas Evan’s is just casually jacked. Being around them both feels kind of intimidating.
I hide a little further behind my mug after taking another sip.
“Yeah dude,” he says, and I inspect his face for any hint of malice, finding none.
Although, wait. This is the first time he’s seeing human me up close. He probably got at least a cursory look when I barged in crying after Octavia on Friday, but this is still his first real encounter with me. I think he sees me as the girl I am. I hope he does.
Whatever. I need to get over it.
If there’s one thing I learned from letting other people know how much it bothered me to be called ‘dude’ or ‘guy’ or ‘man’, it’s to never show people you don’t know what bothers you. The teasing and bullying that had followed my outburst was enough to make me regret ever having said something. They didn’t know I was trans, they just knew I didn’t like it and made fun of me until I cried because they didn’t like me for some reason.
I’ve been fine with Gwen calling me ‘dude’. I can be fine with Evan as well. It just seems like it’s the way he talks. Or… one of the ways? Getting a read on him is hard. He has business professional vibes, stoner vibes, (minor) football player vibes, and lives-in-his-mom’s basement vibes all at once.
“Also…” he says after a few seconds pass, and I can tell he’s working his way up to something. Please don’t be weird, please don’t be weird. “I think it’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen,” he blurts out. “Magic is real! I… I wanna know more about it and didn’t wanna piss you off.”
Oh, is that it?
“Cool, I guess?” I reply, because what else can I say? Little weird to basically ask someone if they can be friends with you because you… Oh. Wait. No it’s not. It’s not weird at all. That’s how friendships start. Someone wants to be friends with another person because they like them, or parts of them. Me being a cat sometimes isn’t exactly what I’d define as me, so he might be more interested in the magic part than the me part. And whatever is happening to me may as well be magic, ‘cause I sure as hell don’t have a better idea. “Although, I don’t know anything about what’s happening to me. I don’t know what it is, but I guess it could be magic. I’m not your science project though, and I’m not obligated to talk to you or be friends with you. But you seem chill, Gwen likes you, and you game, so I’m not dissing the idea either. Just don’t bug me about the cat shit, okay? If I wanna talk about it, I will. Otherwise, I’m just a normal person that something out of the ordinary is happening to. Don’t be weird, don’t fanboy, just… let me be.” Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
My tone was firm, my words were clear. If he fucks around, he will find out.
He’s disappointed, I can tell, but luckily we have Gwen to butt in.
“Ohhh. I see,” she says devilishly. “You’re interested in my cat more than me.”
“Your cat?!” I splutter, thankful I hadn’t been taking a sip of my milk.
“No!” he yelps.
Gwen cackles, the bitch.
“‘m not your cat…” I grumble, but there’s no real mmph to it.
“Says the cat-eyed girl lapping up literal milk with her tongue,” Gwen teases.
Uh. “…what do you mean?”
“You’ve been lapping up the milk this entire time?”
“Oh.” I didn’t notice. Shoot, I meant to say that out loud. “I didn’t notice.” There. “Is my tongue, like, barbed now? Like a cat’s?” I ask, sticking my tongue out.
“It looks like it, kinda?” Evan says.
I drag my finger across it one way, then the other. The surface of my tongue is rough, just like a cat’s.
“Good thing you’re ace?” Gwen tries, and the tension is diffused. Evan suppresses a smirk and I roll my eyes. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a big deal. I go back to enjoying my milk, actually sipping it and not lapping it up with my tongue until I realize I prefer it the other way. I feel a little self-conscious at first, but then I get caught up in Evan and Gwen’s banter about Satisfactory and forget all about it until the mug is too deep for me to keep drinking out of the way I want to. I decide not to pour the rest out in a shallow bowl to finish it and instead sip the remaining milk like a normal person. I don’t know exactly why, but I feel like I should keep some degree of separation between my human self and cat self.
It would be weird for Human Alice to eat and drink out of bowls like a cat, so I don’t.
I do microwave and then ravage the rest of the chicken from the plastic container Gwen had initially put it in with my bare hands, stuffing my face until all of the chicken is gone. To my credit, I did try to use a fork, but it felt awkward in my grip and I gave up after being assured I could eat in whatever way I wanted to without being judged for it.
Evan is a good guy, I decide. He rolls with my abnormal behaviour and mostly hangs with Gwen for the rest of the morning, the two of them chatting away about a new video game that’s supposed to come out next year. Time slips by and we don’t end up going out for breakfast, so by the time lunch rolls around and we order pizza, Gwen and Evan are starving (I’m still full of chicken). No one really asked me if it was fine for him to stick around all day, but I don’t mind, so it’s okay.
The pizza arrives and we all get high and watch a movie. Normally, the smell of pizza would have me eating a slice even if I was beyond full, but it doesn’t appeal to me at all anymore. It’s greasy and processed and the flavour feels like it would be wrong somehow, especially compared to chicken.
I need more chicken.
Ooh! And I need to figure out what fish tastes like now. My craving for it has only grown in the past few days and I need to have some.
Unfortunately, we are all baked and cannot drive to the store.
The movie ends up kind of sucking, so I tune out during the ending of it and ponder if it’s the switching that’s changing my human body, or if it’s the time spent as a cat. It feels like it’s the switching, but there really is no way to be sure.
While I’m not super concerned with the changes to my body so far, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I was at least a little scared of what an “end stage” transformation might look like. Classic catgirl? Full cat? Some kind of human-cat monster thing? Follow the newest chapters on novelping . com.
It gives me pause, makes me actually think about how much I enjoy being a cat (an indoor one) and if that might end up costing me something if I keep doing it. I do want to go back outside as a cat, but I’d need to be with Gwen to feel safe enough to do that again. The outside world is not friendly to me. Trucks, dogs, people. It’s awful, but it would be okay if I was with a trusted human.
For now, I enjoy the heady bliss of weed and cuddle up closer to Gwen. Evan has his arm around her and they’re taking up a lot of the sofa, so I’m leaning against Gwen with my feet hanging off the edge. Her arm is also slung around my neck, her hand resting on my shoulder in a way that is oddly calming.
I have to go back to class tomorrow.
I’m not looking forward to it.
I have an essay to finish.
I haven’t started it.
I have a question I’m avoiding thinking about.
I need to acknowledge it before I’m forced to, but it’s hard. Too hard.
I can feel that I’m able to become a cat again if I want to, and I’m thinking about it as someone knocks at the door, startling us all from our comfy cuddling.
“I’ll get it,” I decide, not wanting to disturb Gwen and Evan.
Seriously, what is up with them? There’s “being casual”, and then there’s “spending the night and half the following day in a new girl’s dorm room cuddling with her”. It kind of feels like now would be when I start getting a bad vibe from Evan and find out he’s a secret stalker or something, but I really do feel no ill intent from him. His vibe is relaxed and he smells content. Maybe Cody fucked Gwen up more than she let on, maybe they’re soulmates, maybe human connection is rare and it’s nice to enjoy things sometimes.
I get up, debating putting on shorts before deciding the shirt I’m wearing is enough. I’m high, it’s Sunday, I can greet someone in just a shirt. It hangs down to my knees, after all.
When I open the door, I find her standing there.
Brown pixie cut. Squishy face. Hazel eyes. Smells like cinnamon and fresh linen.
…and gave me lemon chicken.
Heh. I rhymed. I’m so cool.
I’m so, so cool, in fact, that I stand there gawking at this girl until my brain comprehends that she’s talking—talking to me while I’m not a cat and I must still be a lesbian because she’s holding my missing backpack and beaming at me and, after everything she did for me yesterday, I discover I have a crush on this girl. Or the beginnings of one. Bleh, doesn’t matter! Cute girl! Crush! And where the shit did that come from? I’ve “known” her for like, fifteen minutes total. Can I be ace and a lesbian? Would she still want me if I said I didn’t want to have sex? I should tell her that from the start so she doesn’t react like Octavia did. Oh gosh, what if she isn’t gay?
Oh shit, why am I thinking about saying I don’t want to have sex to a complete freaking stranger?
Oh fuck, I’m high and meeting this girl as my human self for the first time.
She is talking to me and staring at my eyes.
“Um… u-uhh…” I say, successfully failing to communicate.
“Sorry!” she chirps. “I said those are really cool contacts.” She pointedly keeps her gaze away from my chest. She’s a little taller than me, I notice, and she’s wearing a beige hoodie and blue jeans.
I need to actually say something this time. She knows I heard her, knows I’m paying attention. I can’t be weird. I want her to like me even though I barely know her.
“Uh… yes?” I say.
Perfect.