The Transformation Story Archive Horses and Doggies and Cats, Oh my...

Cat Scratch Fever

by Trey McElveen

From ???@??? Tue Sep 15 06:53:46 1998 Received: from delta.integral.org (root@[209.172.186.164]) by t0.or.at (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id FAA28916; Tue, 15 Sep 1998 05:12:21 +0200 (CEST) Received: from Lists.Integral.org (mailman@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by delta.integral.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id VAA24211; Mon, 14 Sep 1998 21:46:44 -0500 Received: from lionking.org (root@blacker-99.caltech.edu [131.215.86.99]) by delta.integral.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id VAA24172 for ; Mon, 14 Sep 1998 21:46:04 -0500 Received: from tamarik (user-38s00p3.dialup.mindspring.com [209.192.3.35]) by lionking.org (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with SMTP id TAA13441 for ; Mon, 14 Sep 1998 19:50:06 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19980914214946.00794a80@lionking.org> X-Sender: tamarik@lionking.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.5 (32) Scott sat at his terminal, the glow from the monitor lighting up the already dimly lit room. He chuckled quietly, the antics of his IRC friend one again more than amusing for another night. "Jeez, you'd think there'd be one night you could think about something other than yiff!" Scott typed in and sent. "Of course," was the reply, "You're just never here on those nights. :)" Scott smiled again, but his laughter was cut short by his pet cat jumping lithely into his lap. He gave a small "Oof!" at the surprising weight and began to stroke the cat gently. The feline nuzzled into his stomach and purred deeply as he typed his reply. "Figures. bbias." He switched windows and surfed around the Net for a while, checking in on his favorite comics and websites, all the while softly stroking the cat in his lap. He went to scritch it behind the ears, when suddenly she started, and dug her claws into his finger. "Yeow!" Scott shouted, wrenching his finger from the cat's paws. The feline leapt out of the chair and scrambled underneath a nearby recliner. Scott tsked and looked sharply as the cat ran off. It wasn't the first time she had done this, and every time was a surprise. It didn't bother him either; just one of the many joys of owning a cat for a pet. Although now might be the perfect time for a scratching post. "Not a bad idea," Scott said as he surveyed the damage. A small droplet of blood formed in a small cut the claw had made and pushed its way to the surface. Scott sighed and stood up from the computer, after telling his IRC buddy what had happened, of course, and went to wash out the wound as a precaution. He reached the bathroom and looked at it again. "Ah, it's not so bad," he said, and licked it clean. He checked the cut and noticed that it would heal easily in about a day or so, but something inside was bothering him and he couldn't quite put his finger on it. He washed off the saliva under the tap and took a wash rag to dry it off. As he was putting the rag away, he noticed something very, very odd about the cut. It was gone, and all around it what looked like very fine brown hairs were starting to grow. Scott stared in wide-eyed wonder as the hairs doubled in length in a matter of seconds, begging to overtake his finger. "Holy..." Scott breathed, the fur now enveloping his finger and spreading over his hand. He rushed back to the computer, and hastily typed in, "You there?" "Of course. You expect me to have a life? :)" "My finger's growing fur!" "Come on, Scott, I'm not in the mood for RP tonight." "I'm not kidding!" He looked at his hand, now completely swamped in fur. He turned it over and almost screamed as rough bulbous pads started to blossom from his palm. "Yeah, suuuure. And I've suddenly got a tail. :)" The pads exploded from his hand, and almost instantly it began to shrink. Slowly at first, but getting steadily faster, it collapsed in size until it looked exactly like a cat's paw. The fur grew up his arm, and Scott noticed that his other hand was starting to change as well, growing the same brown fur that covered his other hand. "I'm serious! I've got a paw now!" Scott said, typing with only one hand and having to go back to delete a numerous amount of typos. There was a pause at the other end, and then finally, "You are serious, aren't you?" "YES!" Scott scrambled to type, his arm completely covered in fur, his left hand now a real paw, and the right hand quickly becoming one. There was a stinging pain in his spine, followed by a warm slithering growth that collided painfully with the underwear and jeans he wore and snaked his way down the pant leg. He stripped off the garments, taking his shoes off as well, and saw a white and brown striped tail hanging limply from his rear. In addition, his toes were covered in brown fur as well, and he could feel the same pads on his hands begin to grow from his toes. Fear-induced adrenaline coursed through his body at the sight, and his tail stood straight up in response. Scott went to type on the keyboard, but found that both hands had completely changed into paws by this time. The screen was filled with worried complaints from his friend as to why Scott was being so silent. Scott tried to type, but kept hitting the keys two and three at a time. He tried straining his paw-digits wider apart, and was completely horrified when a neat set of claws unsheathed themselves and easily tapped each key alone. "I'm turning into a cat!" Scott managed to type with great difficulty. His ankles began to ride up on his body, and his feet shrank to match the size of his paws. This threw him off balance, tossing him onto the desk. He caught himself on the keyboard, padded paws smashing into the keys and sending random characters over to his friend's terminal. "Scott! SCOTT! What's going on?!" He would have responded, but the fur was covering his chest, and he was clambering to get his shirt off to watch. The brown and white calico pattern spread itself along his torso, and he could feel it spread along his back as well. The eerie feeling overtook him and mixed with his fear. Something, other than his new fur and appendages was nagging at his being, gnawing at his memory, struggling to keep something he should know out of his mental grasp. Scott began to feel his bones shift painfully, his shoulder blades and hips rearranging for a quadrapedal stance. He clambered with his clawtips to type in another message to his friend. "I'm changing I cant stop" He didn't bother with attempting to correct his errors. Almost instantly, the reply came, "Scott!" But Scott couldn't read it. He was on the floor, the fur swarming over his face, his mouth and nose pressing forward in a distinctively feline muzzle, his ears coming to a point and moving to the top of his head. He watched in horror as the desk and computer began to grow, looming way over his head, the glow of the monitor flickering as frantic messages filled the chat window. His vision blurred as his eyes changed, and came back sharper and clearer than ever, although he now knew that he was color-blind. He now only stood half the height of the office chair that stood at his computer. He leapt into the seat and looked at the monitor. Something he vaguely recognized as "letters" covered the screen. Scott yowled in cat-like terror as he realized that he couldn't read. Feline thought patterns invaded his thoughts: hunting, resting, communing with other cats. New scents, sounds, and sights bombarded his senses, and he felt his grip on rational thought loosening. And just as it went, the mental blockade on whatever was irking him throughout this change shattered, and he realized just what that "it" was. He had done something about his pet cat scratching him after about the fourteenth time: Scott had her declawed. There was one last desperate howl from the feline in the chair as the final vestiges of humanity disappeared. The cat shook his head and blinked ignorantly at the computer screen in front of it before curling up and taking a light snooze.

Cat Scratch Fever copyright 1999 by Trey McElveen.

<< Cat A Cat's Fantasy >>