Kitty!

I sat down in my chair, taking a sip out of my cup. The milk burned my tongue, but that was exactly how I liked it. Even the thought of cold milk gave me the shudders.
Mrs. Whiskers jumped up onto the end table and started to play with my tail.
“Hey, that tickles!” I teased it.
But Mrs. Whiskers wasn’t about to listen. She had no reason to, after all. She was just a cat, at least now she was.
I guess it had been a year since I had moved into this place. Sure, it still was under Max’s name, but the landlord didn’t care. As long as the rent was paid, she didn’t care who actually lived here – be it a boy, girl, or in my case, catgirl.
I finished my milk and walked to the window, with Mrs. Whiskers following me. The sun was slowly rising, and I would want to spend a good amount of time lying in it today. I wondered if I’d even bother to move from that spot outside of my meals.
I curled up under the window, wondering why I never understood cats in the first place.
Mrs. Whiskers curled up beside me, and I ran my fingers through her fur. Of course, the first time I felt this fur, it was all moist and shaggy. At least, on that cold winter night when I walked by that water main break flooding the street.
“Somebody call the police!” shouted a lady.
“They won’t do anything, get the sewage authority!”
The street looked like a swimming pool, to be honest. Thankfully nobody had been caught in it. At least, nobody except for that one silly cat.
But that cat looked so pitiful. After a moment’s hesitation, I dove straight into that inferno of water and grabbed her.
“What is that boy doing?” I heard someone say.
“Kid, get out of there!” shouted someone else. “Come on, use your manly muscles and get out of there!”
Yes, for indeed, I was just a high school boy at the time named Max. I did make sure to swim, but I swam to the other side of the torrent. No way was I going to stand them chastising me!
But, as I got out, I learned how silly I had been. The cat was near death, by the looks of it, but I wasn’t going to be able to make it to a vet or anything. For the water main had isolated us onto a little island in the city, unable to connect to the outside.
I held the cat close to me though, and felt that it still had a bit of warmth. If I just did that, maybe the poor thing would survive.
The hours passed as emergency squads came. The water company started to jump in with their wetsuits to try and seal off the break, and the fire department worked to get over the torrent and reach me. The snow started to fall, though, and I felt the cold deep within my bones. Ice had started to grow from the drips. But through all the cold I could feel, I felt the warmth of that cat, and its small heart beating on.
The sun peaked out over the buildings, and I hugged Mrs. Whiskers to my chest. I couldn’t hold her quite as close to my heart as I did that day last year, thanks to a nice pair of breasts getting in the way, but I could feel her heartbeat even through the mounds of flesh. She meow’d at me.
“Meow,” I said back, smiling, enjoying the warmth of the sun streaming through the window.
After the firefighters had rescued me, the world went black. Before I knew it, I was in a room with white walls, and a single bed. Tubes flowed into my body and out. I wanted to get up, but I couldn’t.
“Oh, you’re awake,” said a man in a white coat, gazing up from his charts. A doctor. I guess that meant I wasn’t dead, at least not yet.
“Why wouldn’t…” I started coughing violently. I looked at my hand and my eyes went wide. Blood?
The doctor shook his head. “I’m surprised you ever woke up,” he said. “After the foolish things you did. Pneumonia, hypothermia, frostbite… all over a stupid cat.”
I shivered. “Is the cat…”
“The cat ran away,” he said. “Because it doesn’t care about humans. So why should you risk your life to save it?”
“It… it was drowning,” I said. “It needed help.”
The doctor clicked its tongue. “And its life was worth this?” he asked, pulling off the sheets. My right leg looked discolored and swollen. But my left…
“Where is my left leg?” I said, not wanting to believe my eyes.
“Frostbite,” said the doctor. But I barely heard him say so, as sleep overcame me.
I hugged both my legs while lying in the sun, glad to have them. I looked over at Mrs. Whiskers and flicked my tail. She just yawned, stretched, and went back to her nap. I could probably use a nap myself. Just like that first time I had fallen asleep after that hospital visit last year…
“Max,” said a voice. I looked around, but was unable to comprehend where it was coming from. Stars shone all around me, and in all directions.
“Who’s there?” I asked, gazing around.
“Everyone, and nobody,” said the voice. Oh, this was a dream, I got it.
“Hello,” I said, playing along with the dream.
“Max,” it said again. “Please accept the gift.”
“The gift?”
“My daughter,” it said. “She wishes to bestow upon you a gift. But it is not an easy gift to give, as it takes away all parts of her which make her a goddess.”
What a strange dream. “Um, all right,” I said. Dreams are more interesting if you just do what they say.
And then lights started to flood over my dream body. My leg returned, although thicker in the thigh and hairless, and my belly fat disappeared, along with my manhood. I felt two plump breasts pop up on my chest, and could feel my bones creaking. A tail sprung out of my rear, and two ears on my head. Long brown hair fell in cascades down my back.
I laughed. What a strange dream! Me as a catgirl. Well, whatever. Let’s make the most of it.
And then I was in the park. I had visited this park so often as a child and it was always crowded, but in the dead of the night it’d be funny if I even found a soul here.
I looked down at my new body. I was wearing a white dress with some frilly near the neck and legs, but nothing else. Catgirls don’t need clothes anyways.
I got on all fours and started to run. Man, this is the life! I ran down all the paths I used to follow as a kid and…
I woke up to the room with the white walls. I felt a pain in my left leg, and hit the button for service.
A nurse ran in immediately. “Yes, Max?” she asked.
I groaned. “My left knee feels like it’s…”
The nurse shook her head. “Max, your leg is gone. But don’t worry, phantom pains happen to everyone. You’ll learn how to cope soon, I promise.”
I coughed harder than before. “Am I going to…”
She nodded. “I don’t think you’ll last much longer than a day, Max. Just lay back and relax. Sleep. Sleep is the best for it.”
The prospect frightened me. My life for a cat’s. My life for…
But the world started to get fuzzy, and my eyes closed again.
I woke up in the park again. The sun was rising over the snow covered park, gleaming light into my eyes. Oh, it’d be nice to just lie in the sun and warm up. But the ground everywhere was wet.
“Purr~” I heard a cat behind me.
I looked back, and there was the cat from the other day. It still looked a bit razzled, but it also seemed to be missing something. Like, it somehow seemed less, human?
I saw blackness, and beeps throughout the room.
“He’s fading!” yelled somebody. “We need twenty CCs of plasma, stat!”
“Stay with us, Max! Keep fighting!”
Max? Oh, that’s right. That’s my name…
And then I was back with the cat. I picked up the cat and petted it. “Let’s go,” I said. Together we ran through the park and towards my apartment. We headed up the stairs to the top floor, and I punched the key back into the room.
My apartment lay just as I remembered it. Books everywhere, posters of beautiful women on the walls, and a television I used to watch every night. It all seemed so silly, looking back on it. Those women don’t even have a tail. How could they even balance themselves? Thinking back, how did I ever used to balance myself?
I lay down a year ago by the window, just as I am today, and let the warm sun cover my body. Just a little bit here, and I’ll be fine.
I wanted to close my eyes and sleep. But that would mean waking back up as Max. Even so, the urge was too strong. I felt them droop, and started to purr softly.
Yet when I next opened my eyes, the cat was brushing its face across mine. “Hey, hey, that tickles!” I said, laughing.
I sat up in the warm sunlight, and my stomach growled. There was all kinds of vegetables and fruits in the refrigerator from the diet I had attempted to go on in the past, but none of it seemed appetizing. All I wanted was a glass of milk and some meat.
I poured out the milk and took a sip, but then shuddered. This didn’t taste right. It was like ice! Growling, I put the mug into the microwave, and let it heat up.
I considered doing the same to the pork chop I pulled out, but it seemed so pointless. I just dug my teeth into the raw meat and took a bite out.
I never did wake back up. Because, as I soon found out, it wasn’t a dream.
Max’s funeral was held the next day. Not many people came out to see it, since I didn’t have many friends when I was Max. My parents had died years ago, and I was already old enough to not need a guardian. I will admit, seeing yourself buried is something not many people get to view.
When I got home, I threw off the pants and hat I had used to cover my tail and ears, and went back into that white dress. Covering up my animal parts hurt too badly to ever want to do it again.
I looked over at Mrs. Whiskers. She purred softly in her sleep. I had a dream soon after when I learned the truth of that cat. The daughter of the cat goddess had nearly died in that torrent of water, and by saving her, she had a debt to me. She wanted to be my girlfriend, but when she found me dying, she decided to sacrifice her consciousness to create a new body for me.
So while I was now a girl with cat ears and a tail, I was still alive. But Mrs. Whiskers, she was just a normal cat. Well, normal outside of her abnormal attraction to me.
I opened the refrigerator and smiled. The vegetables had been replaced by meats, and gallons of milk lined the shelves. People would throw hundreds just to see a catgirl move her tail, so money really never would be an issue for me ever again.
I ate down another piece of meat and returned to my favorite spot by the window. I won’t deny that life is definitely different now. But why would I care? A life without responsibility is great. I curled up into a ball and closed my eyes, drifting off to sleep.