The Familiar Next Door

A pretty girl moved in to the apartment next door. Just seriously pretty, a living idealization. I have seen her a few times in the hallway, just entering or exiting. Once in the stairwell. I never said anything to her. She always ruined her good looks with a dour look on her face, like she was furious at the world though.

I don't know what I should do in a situation like this. Am I supposed to talk to people? Maybe she doesn't want people to talk to her randomly. Maybe she wants to live her life and me to live my life and for her to be left alone. Or maybe she's more like me and is just wishing I would talk to her, wishing someone would talk to her. Yeah, right. A girl as pretty as her I'm sure has people trying to talk to her all the time. That's the way it is. That's why women complain about male attention, they get so much of it, they think it's a bad thing, and hold men in disdain as pigs or just so lucky that they don't have to deal with "harassment" the way they do, while we men think there's something wrong with their heads, that the bad way around is our lot in the deal, no one talking to us on their own, no one wanting to talk to us when we talk to them. Let me tell you, ladies, being lonely and hated is no privilege. But I have largely kept myself out of the game because I'm better at tolerating the loneliness than most, in my humble opinion. They're content to not talk to me, I tolerate not talking to them, it works out beautifully.

Fuck it. I won't know unless I try. I saw her sifting through her keys at her door.

"Hi" I said.

She glanced over at me. "Hi" she said.

"I live next door," I said.

"I know," she answered.

"Do you.... like..... things?" I asked.

She closed her eyes and sighed deeply. "What do you want?" she said impatiently.

"I'm sorry! I just was trying to be friendly! I'll leave you alone." It's how I always knew it would go. I opened my own door and was just about to close it behind me when she said...

"No wait," she said, giving up for the moment on finding the right key. "What are your interests in me?" she asked bluntly.

"Uh, um, my interests?"

"Yes, what are you hoping to get out of this?"

"I... I... I don't know. I guess I know what you probably think, you probably get guys coming up to you all the time, after all, let's face it, you're beautiful, and I don't even mean that as a compliment, it's just a simple empirical fact."

"You think I'm beautiful?" she said, shocked.

"Humility has its limits. What, is that a surprise?"

"Actually. Yes! Look at me. Tell me what you see."

"What I see?"

"Yes, what do you see when you look at me."

"A pretty girl?"

"Be more specific. Describe me as if you were giving my description to the police."

Well this was taking an unexpectedly weird turn. "Ok. Um, you're a very attractive, very tall young woman, I'd say 5 foot 11 or 6 feet, maybe 25 years old, dark hair with..."

"That's enough. So you DON'T see a hideous old hag with frizzy gray hair?"

I tried to give her the oddest look. "Why would I see that? I can hardly imagine you could possibly be hideous even in 50 years."

She found the right key and opened her door. "Come with me inside. We'll talk about it in there."

"What?" What the hell was going on here.

"Look, I don't want to discuss this out in the open."

"I have no idea what's going on."

"All right, I'll show you," she said, eying another of our neighbors who had just walked to his door. It was the obese cyclist guy. I had watched him ride his bicycle, marveling at how strong steel was. I would have expected at least that the spokes of the wheels would distort visibly, but not really. But I had to hand it to him, he did try to exercise, and he wasn't a pansy about it either. Who could say how much he must eat to yet be as fat as he is despite it.

"Fred, could you come over here for a bit?"

Fred waddled on over.

"Fred, we'd like to settle a dispute. Don't be shy, or embarrassed. Just tell us honestly. Would you fuck me?" the girl said.

Fred's fat face turned purple, a little. Either he was making some kind of super-blush or having a heart attack.

"Would I? Are you asking?"

"I'm saying hypothetically. All other things being equal, would you like to have sex with me, if I asked."

Fred seemed to think this over for a few seconds. He put his hand on his chin and mulled it over, his focus drifting off to the distance. "Yeah, I think I would."

She sighed. "Oh, bad example. How about this then. Fred, on a scale from 0 to 10, how pretty am I?"

"Um...."

"Be honest. Do not spare my feelings. I want absolute harsh honesty. If you respect me as a person, tell me the truth. Honest assessment. I won't hold it against you, whatever it is."

"Sssssss... fffff..." he said, squinting. "Honestly? Absolute brutal honesty?"

"Brutal honesty."

"Two. But I'd still fuck you. It might help if I was drunk. Forget I said that." Was I missing something? Did he say that as some sort of weird-sense-of-humor joke? Because I didn't get it. I didn't understand the motivation that could underlie it.

"Ok Fred, that's ok. How old would you guess I am?"

"Ffffff...... sssss....?" he trailed up his voice like it was a question. She wasn't giving anything away. "Eighty?" he asked. "But among 80 year olds in general, I'd say you're a 7! And that's my honest assessment! Really!" I was dumbfounded. What the hell was wrong with the man. He was fat, but was he blind too? She couldn't be a day over 30, and she was a goddess! On a scale to 10, any man with functional eyes ought to give her a 12!

"Thanks Fred. Don't worry about it. We just had a bet, that's all."

Fred waddled to his door, looked back at us standing there, and slipped in and closed it behind him. I felt like his eye must have loomed past his peephole, but that was probably just a paranoid feeling on my part.

"Ok, what the fuck. What the literal fuck."

"Like I said. We'll talk inside." I followed her in.

Inside, she had lots of books on shelves about the occult. Or that's what they appeared to be at least.

"Would you like some tea?" she asked.

"N..." I started to say. Maybe refusing would be seen as an unfriendly gesture. "Sure. Why not."

It was the sort of tea where I couldn't actually tell whether it was just hot water or tea from the taste of it. One of the reasons I don't normally drink tea. Because to me, most tea is that way.

"So here's the deal," she started. "I'm a witch. An actual witch. Not the sort of witch who follows some fruity religion and worships the solstice or nature gods or any bullshit like that. A REAL witch, with real powers. Like in Bewitched."

I was silent. Obviously SOMETHING weird was going on. That or Fred was in on a prank. When I stopped and thought about it, that seemed far more likely for the moment, actually. But I remained silent.

"I try to keep beneath the public radar. And part of that means not getting attention. And that means I can't be looking like, well, what I actually look like. Which you seem to be able to see. So there's a glamor on me. Or maybe I should call it an anti-glamor. My true age is actually far greater than Fred guessed either. I was there, when Europeans set sail across the ocean. I was there for the dark ages, when Ancient Rome fell, when the Egyptians built the pyramids, and long before that. As far as I can tell and have kept track, I'm a quarter of a million years old. I know languages that haven't been spoken since tens of thousands of years before the wheel was invented."

Dynamite stuff, I thought, as I sipped the tea. I was starting to like the tea a little more now. Noticing its taste more.

"It has been over a thousand years since I found someone who could see past the illusion I have cast on myself."

Man, this tea, it's fucking AWESOME. How did I think it was tasteless before?

"And I can't really risk tolerating someone who can resist my magic."

The teapot was now empty, after like 8 refills into my teacup.

"Of course there's a difference between resistance, and immunity," she smirked.

"Got any more tea?" I asked.

"I think you've had enough," she replied.

"Awww."

"This is why I'm making you my familiar. If you want to call the position as such. Cat ears," she said matter of factly.

I didn't need to see them in a mirror. I could feel them. And move them. And my hearing! Wow! Not only were sounds clearer and could I make out quieter sounds, I suddenly got at least 2 more octaves of range at the upper end. And it was telescopic! I could hear in specific directions by aiming them!

"Cat tail" she said nonchalantly.

"Oof!" I grunted as it slid out my right pant leg. It's a good thing the shorts I was wearing were rather loose on me. It was giant and covered in soft, fluffy black fur. It was astonishing, I was suddenly feeling things in places that my brain didn't have mapped as part of my body moments before. It was maybe 3 feet long. No, make that 4 feet, it was 3 feet just past the bottom of my pants, reaching a foot past my legs. I experimentally lifted it up, and hooked it through the loop of the handle on the teacup, and picked it up with my tail.

"You're very fast to adapt, that must have taken some coordination, and you did it up on your first try," she remarked. "Though the tea is helping take off the tension, you would probably otherwise be feeling shocked and terrified. I'll bet your hand-eye coordination is very high. Do you play a musical instrument, or maybe you're a gamer?"

"Both, kind of, meow," I replied.

"That's cute. I haven't even modified your speech. You did that on your own. Please take off your shoes and socks." I happily complied.

"Cat paws. Cat eyes."

"Ooooohhhhh," I marveled, mesmerized looking at my hands, seeing them in sharp visual clarity. Now they were huge, fuzzy, ink-black, cumbersome things. Bigger than any big cat's, larger than the size of dinner plates. I practiced unsheathing and retracting my claws. "I don't think I can play the violin like this." I looked down at my feet. They were giant black paws too.

"You may be surprised how much dexterity a cat's paw has. Opposable thumbs don't make as much a difference as you think. The only reason regular housecats can't open doors is because their paws are so small, but lions and tigers, it's almost as if they have five thumbs. It only looks like it's one solid piece because of the fur between your fingers filling in the gaps. Of course your fingers are much larger and wider now, and under that fur much more webbed as well, so maybe you would have trouble playing the violin after all. You know what, I don't want to destroy everything about what makes you you, I'm granting you the power to return your hands to human form for an hour at will, at your choice, every day, but only after 24 hours of being like that, so you can play the violin for an hour a day."

"Then it wouldn't be every day, it would have to be 23 hours like this and then one hour back for that to be true, otherwise it will be an hour later every day and eventually will be at most 24 out of every 25 days, more like 16 out of 17 if I sleep on a regular schedule," I commented.

"I guess so. What an intelligent person you are! It's amazing that you figured that out so quickly and easily even with your reasoning impaired by the tea."

"Thanks," I said, pleased with myself. She scratched my hair between my ears.

"Soft fur on your head," she said disapprovingly, rolling her eyes, disgusted by my course quill-like oily human hair. Her petting felt much better for me too then. "Cat sounds." I started purring. She pet me for over an hour. Stroking my hair, my ears, my tail.

"Well, I'll catch you tomorrow," she said. "Oh wait, I didn't catch your name?"

"Meow." I said.

"That's your name?"

"Meow meow meow meow!" I said.

"Oh yeah. Cat AND human sounds. What's your name?"

"Alex meow."

"That's not your last name is it?"

"Meow! I meow no! I mean no! Alex Gray."

"See you tomorrow, Alex! I have some things I need to do, and I suppose you do too. By the way, I have had thousands of names, or at least hundreds, I'm not sure exactly, but please call me Marianne."

I waved and opened the door. Standing in the door I said "Meow you were right! It's easy to open doors!"

"Have fun with the new you," she called out. "By the way.... whiskers!"

"See you later!" I called back, touching my face and twitching my whiskers. I shouldn't have been so reluctant. It wasn't so hard to make friends, not even with a pretty girl.

~~~~~~~ 3 hours later.

BANG BANG BANG! I banged on her door. I was still civilized, and as I couldn't exactly make a fist and resorted to kind of karate chopping the door, I took care to do it cautiously and not scratch it up with my claws or hurt my paws. "Open up Marianne! Meow meow back meow! CHANGE meow back NOW. Change ME byack meow!"

"Wow, you overcame the effects of the tea! That's never happened before. Not even after years, and this is what, like 4 hours?"

"Shut up you crazy meow! Witch! You cwazy witch! Crazy meow! What gave you the right to do this to meow!?"

"You were happy with it before."

"Only because you frickin' lobotomeowzed meow with that tea! It might moweven be fun from time to time, but myuu can't leave meow like this!"

She opened the door. "All right, come in, stop making a ruckus! Everyone will hear you."

I entered her apartment and tried to calm myself. "Look Meowianne. I'm neot going to tell anymeow that meow a witch. Meaby syome mwyould but I'm not syou petty, and I don't even think it myoud be a disaster for myou if I did, I think meowkind, mankyind, manKIND, culturally is probyably past the point meow, where, the point where you would be meowed at the stake or shunned, I think meow would beowcome a celebrity if everymeow meow. If everymeow KNEW. Meow everyone meow! Meow it! Sigh. Just like in that meowvie Meowtel Transylvania with the meowpires. Meowbe meow saw it. Meowever! WHATever! If meow want that to beow a secret meow's, that's, your meowative. Prerogative. Meow, BUT, don't meow think it's too harsh assuming the meow, the worst, of meow? Of me?"

"As my familiar, with my spoken word controlling your body, you don't have to die of old age."

"Meowww...." I said. So maybe I should take my poison without complaint because its upsides vastly outweigh the downsides? I don't know. It still stinks of not caring about ME, of thinking of me as just a toy. And what happened to all her past familiars, after hundreds of millennia? If their lives were extended indefinitely by her, why weren't they still hanging around her? Did she tire of her toys and eventually dispose of them, or was it more innocent than that, like that they eventually left or died of accidents or violence not committed by Marianne, in more brutal times of human history?

"I'll change you back if you can look me in the eye and tell me that you hate this."

"Meowww...." I said again. "Meowkay I don't HATE this, I'll tell the truth meow it IS fun, meow myind says meow, no, and meow id, MY id, as Sigmeownd Freud called it, says nya, yes, meow is that reowlly meownough for meow? For myuu?"

"Oh come on, lighten up. It hasn't even been a day, it's been 4 hours! Stop and smell the roses. We have all the time in the world. At least give a little more time and effort trying to enjoy it. I'll bet you haven't even showered like that. I can see you're wearing the same clothes, have you even taken them off? How about sex. Want to try having sex like that?"

"Meowwwwwww......" I was surprised, but then I realized I really shouldn't be. She was a quarter of a million years old. There was no feasible way that the process of having lived that long would allow her to be anything like anyone I had ever met before. Of course her outlook on life would be foreign to my experience.

"I'll even up the ante," she said. "You'll be begging to not be changed back. Girl."

Without the calming effects of the tea, her spoken changes were a bit like having a panic attack. Except that the actual panic and shock feeling were short-lived at least. I felt myself physically calming down within 10 seconds.

"Meow! Meow did meow do to meow! What! WHAT did ... you... do... to .... me." I squeaked meticulously and as sonorously as I could in my new sweet-as-sugar soprano voice, cupping my breasts in my front paws. Big ones. Like, F cup. Marianne didn't do things half-assed, did she. I quickly felt myself getting aroused, and the feelings down there inside my pants, they were just a pool of contradictions.

"As if it wasn't obvious," she said sardonically.

My paws were far too big to slip into my pants to feel things, so I patted the area down. Which was a very blunt method of attack, but it still resulted in more sensations altogether new to me, especially since I was already aroused. It was amazing, it felt a lot like having an erection, plus some more things, but without the tightness of fabric against me.

She directed me to her full length mirror. Ok, I had to admit that what I saw reflected back to me was the most adorable creature I had ever seen in my life. "Meooowwwwww....." I said.

"Yeah, I know, even I had no idea you'd end up looking quite THAT good. Now I'm actually jealous." She turned me around and kissed me on the mouth. I was frozen in shock but enjoying it, and purring loud. "It helps having a quarter of a million years of experience," she said matter of factly.

"Do you, meow, prefer girls?" I asked while simultaneously still purring. What an amazing set of vocal chords I had.

"I have, shall we say it, a wide variety of tastes. But I'll say that at the very top of the list is guys-turned-into-girls."

"Meeooow..." I said but was interrupted by her kissing me once again.

She pulled away. "I can make it more fun still. Cat sounds."

"Meow? Meow! Muh meow me meow!" I protested. But I didn't exactly hide that I was still enjoying this, since I was still purring. And she was right, there was something deeply alluring about being trapped making only sounds like this.

"Oh that is just so adorable I can't even stand it," she said, scritching my ears and kissing me again. I purred louder. She reached both hands into my pants. Something I couldn't do myself any more. That made the act even more exciting. Of course she would know what to do with a woman's anatomy with both hands. Plus she hugged against me despite having no free hands by sandwiching me between herself and a wall, pressing against me and rubbing up and down against my breasts with her own smaller pair and torso. So many simultaneous points of attack. And as a guy, I had just the one before.

While she was busy being aggressive with me, I made an effort to be gentle with her. It just seemed like the right thing to do, since it just concerned me that my body might be dangerous if I wasn't careful with it. Chalk it up to still having the instinct as the guy to be gentle with the girl. After the initial surprise, I relaxed a little, wrapping my paws under her armpits, around her back and holding her shoulders, gently hugging her towards myself, keeping us from losing grip of each other. I was being gentle, but I didn't want her to escape my grasp either. My tail too. It was just long enough to wrap around us both at our slender waists and grip to itself, like a soft, luxurious shared belt, and cement us together. It's a pity she didn't have one too. That would be fun. I would have to suggest it when I could talk again.

"Me! Meow! MEOW!" I gave up trying to talk and let her smirk at me and resume the kiss. It did at least stand to be inconvenient, I kind of wanted to be able to at least tell her how I liked what she was doing, and that gosh darnit, I liked her, but I guess she knew. Soon I wanted to tell her that I was very close to climax. But I think she knew I had actually reached it when I yelled

"MEEEOOOOWWWWWWwwwwwwwwww!!!!" And that was how I lost my virginity. At least it was to a beautiful woman. But I never imagined I would be one too. I felt a little ashamed that I couldn't return the favor. My fingers were frickin' huge. But then I had a tail now, too. Nah, too much fur. It was a tempting thought, but shaving even just the tip was out of the question. My human hands once-every-25-hours was still 20 hours away. I expected they would actually probably be daintier than my old ones. I looked forward to possibly seeing what they looked like. I suspected she would be changing me back before that, though. She said it herself, she wanted me to try the experience, to stop and smell the roses, and that probably implied not taking up permanent residence in the rose garden. Though that could still very well mean she considers the appropriate timeframe of such a diversion to be measured in years.

"Wow. Already? I should have moved this to the bedroom." She led me there. There, she found a way for me to return the favor. "Scratchy cat tongue" she said. "This relationship goes both ways, little kitty." She took her clothes off, lay on the bed, and beckoned me to her. LITTLE kitty was a bit of an exaggeration, I was just as tall as her. She'd be getting some love from a BIG kitty.

I looked at her at an angle, cautiously. "Meow?" I said, as I was visibly obviously moving my jaw and moving my tongue around in my closed mouth, testing it. It wasn't just scratchy, it was longer, flatter and now much more flexible. I stuck it out as far as I could and reached it up, easily past my nose, and surprised myself by successfully licking my right eyelid! I wasn't seriously expecting it to go that far, but I closed my eye just in the nick of time. That was good, because it also gave new meaning to the term "sharp tongue". Though it really was another fun upgrade, it also really deserved caution. "Meow? Me nyou ma mou." This was very hard to get my point across. But somehow she guessed exactly what I was trying to say.

"Don't worry, I can take it, you're not going to hurt me. Too much. Plus, I'm immortal. I heal from injuries in seconds anyway, so even if you go too far, it will only be momentary discomfort. Just so you know, I've done the same to you. Try injuring yourself, you'll heal in moments." That was ok, I wasn't going to test that, at least not right there and then, certainly not by scratching my eyeballs.

I was hesitant for a moment, shrugged my shoulders and shed all my own clothes, a difficult task with my paws. She looked me over from the bed and said "natural fur bikini." I looked down. I had grown fur just to simulate a woman's bathing suit top and bottom. Or should I say for downstairs, that the hideous course human hair turned to dense, fine black kitty fur. All my fur was jet black, and it was so thick, you couldn't see anything. I could strut around naked and never be stopped for indecent exposure, I was sure. It felt pretty good too, not itchy at all. I was simultaneously awed by the aesthetics of it all and disappointed because it was my first chance to actually see my new equipment, though its topographical flatness and my figure in the area was still as plain as day. But I meowed approvingly and paced over to the bed at an ordinary walking speed, not too fast lest I resemble a pouncing cat, nor too slow and seem like a stalking one. As I got there, I reached my big paws forward and put them on her breasts, and you can probably guess what I did with my new tongue. I tried to be tender and gentle. I flexed my claws into her flesh, but not hard enough to puncture it, just enough for an acupressure sort of effect. I had had cats on top of me before, doing the muffin kneading thing, I knew their claws felt good if they didn't apply too much pressure. I tried to be even gentler still with my tongue. I also tickled her with my whiskers. I know she liked the experience. I'm not even sure exactly how many times she REALLY liked the experience, but it was definitely a two digit number. I had more than returned the favor now, but I actually enjoyed making her happy more than being on the receiving end. It gave me a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, plus she was pretty cute when I set her off, all those years and that air of superiority about her, all her control, melting away as a result of my actions, and me being trusted to take away that control, even if only briefly, while I smugly thought to myself that she had judged me correctly, to trust me with it, that I could be trusted to not seek some sort of vengeance for doing this to me without my permission. Not that I wouldn't give it now, if she asked me. I could practically have kept that up forever. But when she had had enough, I carefully pulled myself higher up on her body so that I was directly on top of her, face to face. We fell asleep that way.

~~~~~~~~The next morning.

I woke up purring. I must have been purring in my sleep. She gently woke me up by tenderly stroking me in my various furry places, mostly the sides of my chest and back where the "strap" of the "bikini" stretched all the way around, and on my head.

"Oh, did I wake you up that time? I was just trying to give you good dreams, my kitty."

"Meow," I said, and licked her face and tickled her cheeks with my whiskers. She giggled and kissed me. I had discovered the night before how absurdly enjoyable it was licking just any of her ordinary skin with my cat's tongue. Something that by all rights should have been so revolting and gross and unsanitary had no business being so pleasurable. I would have to tell her about this later so she could try it herself. If I could ever speak again, that is. I surprised myself by coming to the realization that I wouldn't mind it if I never could. I could still write it out if necessary. I hadn't tried holding a pen. I'd type it typing one letter at a time with clawtips if I had to. And of course, I could have human hands for an hour (approximately) every day. Truth be told, I seldom practiced the violin for an hour a day anyway. I could write or type for the rest of the hour. I was by no means trapped in a body that was incapable of human communication in any case.

"Mind you I have had tens of thousands of relationships, but you may be one of the best boyfriends I've ever had."

"Meah ha ha" I said, trying to make it sound a bit like laughing. MAY be ONE OF THE? Isn't that a little bit too redundant to be saying much of anything? I couldn't be that offended though. That's a lot of years, and it would be arrogant of me to insist on being ranked as being the best. If I made minimum wage and worked one hour a year, I'd be a millionaire in that time.

"You're so silly too!" she said, kissing me. I purred more deeply. Was this what it was like to be deeply in love with another person? I only met her yesterday. We didn't know much of anything about each other, aside from me knowing of her vast age. But she was right. I was too quick to try to throw away the experience before. I loved this. And she was right the second time. I didn't want to go back to normal. I knew I would have to, to live out my normal life, to put food on the table, but my id, the true core of my being, my deepest desires, wanted me to stay this way forever.

"But I guess it's about time I turned you back." Was she reading my mind? It didn't seem to be the first time, and I wouldn't put it past her.

"Meow?" Aww. What a disappointment. Oh well. We could always do it again. Maybe even later today.

"Oh, it's just as you said before. I'm not some narcissistic psycho bitch who doesn't care about you or your life or anything. I just wanted you to give the experience a shot. And I know you couldn't have been COMPLETELY against it. My powers are white magic. Which means I can't do evil with them, I can't hurt people. If you had absolutely totally from the deepest core of your being been against anything I did to you, not only would I not have been able to do it to you, but it would have backfired on me."

"Meow," I said pensively. Wait a minute. No..... but how could I warn her? Instants later, I found out that she wasn't reading my mind after all.

"Return to normal," she said.

"MEEOOOWWWWWW!!!!!" I cried, shutting my eyes closed hard.

When I opened them, I was indeed still the same. I strutted over to the mirror in her bedroom. I was the same adorable mostly human-looking F-cup natural fur bikini catgirl as before, with a hugely long, powerful yet willowy kitty cat tail, with shining green kitty cat eyes with no whites and slit pupils, and spidery kitty cat whiskers and fuzzy kitty cat ears and furry kitty cat front paws and fluffy kitty cat back paws and a scritchy scratchy tongue. "Meow?" And I still couldn't talk. Ah well, I'm sure that could be easily rectified. She was nothing if not fast with her magic. I just needed to talk myself into having just a LITTLE doubt that I wanted to be this way forever, and surely I could do that. I looked over at Marianne.

Marianne was now a catgirl, much like myself. Including the F-cups. And through subtle modifications of her facial features, she was somehow even prettier than before. And even though there was no way to sneak them onto an otherwise human face without them looking a little out of place, the white whiskers like my own near her mouth and eyes didn't hurt her look any. She didn't have anything to be jealous of now. "Meow?" said she. "MEOW?" she repeated. "Me-ow me-ow mow!", obviously trying to say "return to normal!" because she said it in the same exact intonations and syllable emphasis as she had said the words "Return to normal" seconds earlier. "ME-OW ME-OW MOW! MEOW!" Then she looked scared. Deathly frightened. She held her paws out in front of her and looked at them as she turned them around to see them from both sides and tried extending and retracting her claws a few times, while the fur on her tail poofed out, just like a frightened housecat. As unhappy as she may have been, I couldn't help but think that she was obscenely adorable just then, having that reaction, doing what she was doing.

"MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW!" she said to me in a panic.

"MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW?" I said back to her.

She started crying. Bawling uncontrollably. "Me... meee. meeeeee ooowwwwwww!!!!!!!" She was convulsing in a crying fit.

I rushed toward her and cuddled close in to her. I gave her a bear hug. A cat hug, as it were, as it also involved tails. I didn't want to say "shhhh" because I was afraid it would come out as a hiss. "Meow," I said gently and quietly. "Meow." And I kissed her tenderly.

When the kiss was over, "meow," she replied, another tear slipping from one of her eyes. She smiled a little, made a short contrived laugh out of cat sounds like I had earlier, and kissed me back. Halfway through, she relaxed and started purring, so I guess she had cheered up a little. It was hard to despair being trapped in a body that felt and looked this good. It wasn't the end of the world. We'd figure something out, it couldn't require English since she had powers before that, maybe she could eventually invent a new language with the sounds she could make, and even if that never happened, we could cope. I started my own purr motor going, licked her face and smiled. She tried licking mine experimentally and squeaked "Meow?!" in astonishment before continuing more aggressively, as if to tell me "why didn't you tell me this was so great?" Not that French kissing each other with our cat tongues wasn't itself extraordinary. We licked each other's faces for several minutes, until it started irritating our skin, apparently that was below the threshold of activating our healing powers, and then went back to regular kissing. At the very least, we both found a way to enjoy that moment and make it last. At least we were also both astonishingly cute. And we might just both have all the time in the world.