Chloe took a deep breath and slinked her way over to where the cardboard cat carrier containing both kittens had been placed on the floor. Now that the concern about danger had passed, it was time to start letting the new babies get used to their new home. It was bad form to just turn them loose in whatever room they were in. This wasn’t Chloe’s first feline rodeo, after all. Instead, she kicked off her shoes and brought the carrier and the bag of kitten food into the bedroom where the primary litter tray was located and set the carrier down. 

“Mo? Can you grab a bowl of water and a plate to put the kibble on? I’m going to keep them in the bedroom for now. It’s a lower-traffic room so it should give them time to adjust. They already like us, so it shouldn’t take too long for them to get used to things, I think,” Chloe rattled off with her tail high in the air, purring unbeknownst to herself. She positioned the carrier between an overstuffed upholstered chair and their dresser and opened the top, at the same time sliding the socks off her feet with her toes. The kittens within both mewled in harmony, apparently quite hungry.

“Shush shush, babies. Mama Mo is coming with some water and something to put your food on. Then I’ll let you out to eat!”

“Mama Mo, huh?” Morgan said as she entered the bedroom with a flat plate and a bowl of water. “Can’t argue with that. You realize that makes you Mama Chloe, though, right?”

Chloe’s face went red. “No! I’m Papa Chloe! Someone has to be the daddy figure, right? Like how Hotaru referred to Haruka as Papa in Sailor Moon?”

Morgan set the bowl and plate down in the carrier with the kittens and rose up to her full height which, while not particularly tall, still allowed her to look down into Chloe’s eyes. “Sweetie, I know you’re not really used to this dynamic, but let’s be honest. Between the two of us, who is giving off bigger Papa vibes?”

After scooping a bit of food onto the plate, Chloe poked Morgan in the left tit. “Papa’s got something big, just not sure it’s vibes,” she quipped.

Morgan responded by lifting her diminutive girlfriend up by the armpits and tossing her on the bed. “Oh my Goddesses, you’re such a brat!” she yelled as she pounced on the bed with Chloe and began tickling her. 

Chloe squealed, her giggling becoming frantic as the sensation of the tickling overwhelmed her. “Stop stop stop!” she howled. “I’m gonna peeeeee!” The flustered feline-kin was kicking her legs up and down, her arms balled up close to her body, trying to defend against the ticklish onslaught.

Morgan, glancing down at Chloe’s petite body and the redness in her cheeks, realized she was actually a bit turned on. This transformation seemed to have flipped some kind of switch in her, bringing out her dominant and slightly sadistic tendencies. She would ease off tickling the sides only to focus on Chloe’s bare feet or her neck or her thighs. Finally, she relented. “All right, I’m not into watersports and I don’t want to have to change the bedding.” She paused for a moment to glance over the edge of the bed. “How are the furballs?”

“Mew! Mew-mew!” came the response from the cardboard carrier. Both girls stood on their hind legs, their front paws pushing at the open panels excitedly. The plate of food was empty, save a couple small broken nuggets of kibble. The splashes of water inside the carrier showed they’d had a bit to drink, at least.

Morgan slipped off the bed to scoop the kittens up into her arms and deposited them on the quilt. The black-and-white longhair kitten bounded over her sister to climb onto Chloe’s prone form, eliciting an “Awww!” from the latter. The gray tabby, on the other hand, was busy pouncing on Chloe’s tail which twitched periodically all on its own. “So what are we going to name these two?” Chloe asked as she forced her tail away from the gray kitten.

“Well,” Morgan began, “considering the circumstances, maybe we should give them Egyptian names?”

Chloe pouted. “Doesn’t that feel a bit too cliché?” She lifted the black and white longhair kitten into the air to scrutinize her more closely. “I mean does this little girl look like a Mau or a Chausie?”

“No…” Morgan conceded. “But it’s to honor the goddesses that saved your life! It’s protocol!”

With a scoff, Chloe replied, “Fine. But we’re not naming them after gods or goddesses. We don’t want our kids to get big egos or start acting like their namesakes.” She spent a couple moments regarding the kittens. “How about city names?”

“Ooooh, I like that! We could name one of them Cairo!”

“Okay, that’s pretty good. I think that would work for the gray tabby. She’s got big city energy. What about the black and white fluffball?”

Morgan frowned at the kitten that was now busy making biscuits on Chloe’s modest bust. “Giza, maybe?” she asked tentatively.

Chloe's face scrunched up sourly. “Sounds too much like ‘geezer.' What else you got?”

“Alexandria!” Morgan exclaimed. “That one’s perfect!”

Giving an affirmative nod, Chloe picked up one of the kittens with each hand and regarded them. “Cairo and Alexandria. Good names. All right, that’s settled!” She put the kittens back on the bed and allowed them to clumsily wrestle with each other as she watched on. 

After a few minutes, however, Chloe’s eyes grew misty and her lower lip began to tremble.

“Sweetie? Are you okay?” Morgan asked with a tone of concern.

“Just… remembering when Luna was this size, back when I first brought her home. I was eleven years old. My dad gave me a lot of shit for picking a kitten instead of a puppy, saying that cats weren’t good pets or something about how they couldn't protect the house. But from the get-go, she was my best friend…”

Morgan moved closer to Chloe on the bed and gave the smaller girl a reassuring hug. “I know, baby. I’ve seen how you two were together. There was a lot of trust and love there. And I know you’ll build strong relationships with these two kitties as well. We both will.”

“GAH! When did I get so sappy? It’s like… everything I’m feeling makes me cry. If I’m happy, if I’m sad, if I’m overwhelmed..”

“Honey, I realize you’re still pretty new to this whole estrogen thing, but that’s kind of part and parcel of the deal,” Morgan replied drily. “If it’s any consolation, I feel like you’re handling the sudden hormonal shift pretty well. And you’re absolutely adorable, figuring it all out!”

Chloe pouted. “Adorable,” she said with a huff. She then gestured at the kittens. “That word is for them, not me.”

“Oh?” Morgan replied with an eyebrow raised. “Then what word should I use for you?” She repositioned herself between Chloe and the kittens. “Gorgeous? Beautiful? Magnificent? Breathtaking?”

Chloe’s large green eyes studied Morgan’s face with an unreadable expression. “I used to be handsome. Dashing. Dapper. It’s only been a few days. I’m still getting used to the shift in perspective.”

“Do I need to take a picture to show you how adorable you are?” 

Grimacing sourly, Chloe scoffed. “It’s embarrassing. Boys aren’t supposed to be adorable. I’m not supposed to be adorable. It’s weird.”

Morgan gave a knowing nod. “Oh, I gotcha. It’s that toxic masculinity thing. Okay.”

“What are you talking about? I’m like… the least toxically masculine person you know!”

“You say that, but you can’t fathom calling someone who looks like or identifies as a man ‘adorable’ can you?” Mo retorted with a ‘gotcha’ grin.

Chloe hesitated. “I mean, I can’t say I’ve ever seen a guy do anything that I would think of as ‘adorable’ so no, that doesn’t really register in my brain.”

“That’s funny, because I’ve seen you do a lot of things that are adorable. Like the way your ears turned bright red the first time I said, ‘I love you.’ Or when we got the new GPU for your PC and you were bouncing up and down in excitement.” She leaned over Chloe. “And I know for a fact that when I top you, you make some of the most adorable sounds. Before and now.”

Crimson tinted Chloe’s cheeks as she took in those words. “Hey, you know I’ve always been a bit of a switch, but I hardly think that makes me adorable.”

“Okay, but what if I was a man? What if something happened and suddenly I was in a male body? Would you be able to see me as adorable?” Morgan continued meaningfully. 

“That’s different! I mean, yeah, you do some things that are adorable, but you’re just like crazy sexy. You exude confidence constantly, which was part of what attracted me to you,” responded Chloe. “I feel like that would be the same even if you were a dude.”

“Okay, but if I still did things that you thought were adorable, even as a guy, what would you think?”

“It’s you. I love you, I love your jokes, your personality, your teasing, your sometimes-superior attitude. I love the things we do together, the way we play, the closeness we share. So, I mean, yeah, I’d probably still think that those things you do were adorable, even if you had a guy’s body,” the smaller woman admitted.

“Well, there you are. I think you’re adorable and I always have. So get used to me saying it, because it’s even more obvious now.”

Chloe sighed and flopped backward onto the bed from her sitting position, startling the kittens and eliciting a devilish grin from Morgan. “Case in point! You have always done the cutest shit!” Chloe’s reply was a blown raspberry directed at the ceiling.

Alexandria clambered over Chloe’s prone form and mewed defiantly at Morgan, only to be promptly tackled by Cairo from behind. The distraction of the kittens’ rough play brought a welcome reprieve to the discomforting thoughts racing around in Chloe’s head. Morgan sprawled out next to the feline trio and pulled Chloe’s head to her breast.

“Look, honey, I know that your entire life has been turned on its nose. I can’t say I know how hard this is for you. But you’re getting stuck on some silly things that I think are masking some deeper fears you have. You don’t have to talk about them now, but we’ll need to address them at some point if we’re going to get through this together. I don’t want you getting all walled up inside that head of yours like you usually do when things get rough.” As she spoke, Morgan gently stroked the back of Chloe’s head, smoothing the hair and trailing her fingertips down the back of Chloe’s neck.

It wasn’t long before Chloe’s loud purring caught the attention of the kittens, who padded their way in between the loving pair to snuggle. As much as Chloe would have loved to have fallen asleep just like that, they were still quite small and there was the risk of rolling over on them. Instead, she languidly pet the tops of the kittens’ heads, alternating a few strokes between each of them until they closed their eyes and settled in. Without speaking, she turned her golden eyes toward Morgan and gave a pleading smile.

Morgan rolled her eyes with a grin before rolling off the bed, eliciting a grumpy mewl from Cairo, and removed the (mostly) empty plate and water from the carrier to set them to one side. She scooped the sleepy kittens into her hands and placed them carefully into the carrier along with a t-shirt that Chloe had carelessly tossed on the floor in the hopes that the familiar scent would help them fall quickly back to sleep. It worked like a charm.

“Now that that’s settled, how about we turn in early?” Morgan murmured. “It’s been busy and I think we both need the sleep.”

Chloe, now sitting up on the bed, was holding her tail with both hands and watching Morgan. “We haven’t even had dinner yet! We’ll let the babies rest and I can throw together something quick. Besides,” she added with a sly wink, “I feel a bit keyed up from the tickling and wouldn’t mind getting a bit of revenge after we eat!”