The origins of the virus still haven't been definitively nailed down. It was a basic fact that the initial outbreaks were in east Asia, but between the high population density and the lengthy incubation period it was so perniciously hard to track that by the time anyone caught on, it was almost impossible to say beyond that. And the theories were all over the map.

With a big, life-altering issue which can affect anyone, regardless of class, race, sex, or age, and which requires extraordinary measures to properly combat, everyone wants someone else to blame for it, and the scapegoats they prefer tend to be those they already dislike. Public-health officials suggested that it was a freak mutation spawned in an open-air fish market; conspiracy nuts said it'd escaped from a Chinese bioweapons lab; and the really bizarro types thought that it was a secret genetic-engineering project by Japanese or Korean idol agencies gone out of control.

Its effects were much clearer, but no less bizarre for it. In most cases, it was like a light flu or a bad cold: respiratory transmission with a lot of hacking, coughing, and sneezing to spread itself, plus a fever, chills, shakes, and general feeling-like-crap into the bargain. It was unusually contagious, but not really dangerous, and otherwise pretty normal. Much less normal was the completely different course it took in a certain percentage of patients.

It began, generally, with a heightened sense of smell and breathing tremors so rapid they nearly cleared the subsonic range, accompanied by behavioral symptoms that promoted the spread of the virus: mild euphoria and impaired judgement, semi-compulsive grooming (licking the fingers and/or the back of the hand and running them through the hair,) and urges to engage in close physical contact, increasing the chances of respiratory transmission or salivary transfer.

This lasted for a few days to a week - same as the "flu" stage in normal patients - before the immune system caught up, ending the primary infectious period. But the virus had one last extremely surprising trick up its sleeve in these cases. Patients reported experiencing not the exhaustion felt normally, but a pleasantly drowsy, almost irresistable urge to just sleep. That was when the realweirdness started: nothing less than a full-fledged metamorphosis.

The extent of the changes varied widely, even with similar viral loads; but at a minimum, the canine teeth became pronounced fangs; the ears migrated to the top of the skull and became broad, thin, and triangular, with greatly increased mobility; the coccyx unfused and the end of the spine grew out into a lengthy, flexible tail; and the altered appendages gained a dense coat of hair in a wide variety of colorations.

In short, the affected patients became catgirls. Really, seriously, actual catgirls, like a damn anime come to life. That wasn't always the end of it, either. It wasn't uncommon for patients to end up with whiskers, or cat's eyes with colored sclerae and slit pupils, or longer, thinner tongues with a rougher surface, or to have their hair change to match or complement their fur. Some manner of behavioral changes were almost certain, though the details varied greatly.

Somewhat less common were more substantial changes; the feet and/or hands becoming fur-covered and more paw-like, with a digitigrade stance for the legs, stubbier fingers and toes, claws instead of nails, and those squishy paw-pads; the whole lower half becoming fur-covered and more animalistic; or the development of multiple sets of breasts. Some patients even became fully anthropomorphic cat-people, with a feline muzzle and a full-body fur coat.

It was unclear why it did this; it couldn't help spread the virus, since the infectious phase was nearly or totally over, and there didn't seem to be a latent third stage that'd require such bafflingly specific alterations in the host. The lack of any obvious explanation gave rise to a lot of wild speculation even outside of the tinfoil-hat crowd; it was generally seen as a freakishly pronounced example of virii as vectors for horizontal gene transfer, possibly interacting with some pre-existing genetic marker in affected patients - but even that didn't explain the mechanism for such a rapid and extensive change in body structure.

This had evolutionary biologists all in a tizzy trying to work out the full implications, while geneticists tried to isolate any such key factor in hopes of working out a means of prevention; the scientific community of the entire world was in an uproar. But for about forty-nine percent of the population, the biggest issue wasn't any of this. It was the fact that affected patients always ended up female.

It happened over the course of a few days, right along with the rest of the changes; it was all very well-documented, since the medical world was laser-focused on this thing. Facial structure softened, shoulders narrowed, hips widened; fatty tissue deposits accumulated under more prominent (and sensitive) nipples, developing into full-fledged breasts. Testes withdrew into the body cavity and changed into ovaries; the urethra separated from the glans as it shrank down to form the clitoris; and so on and so forth,^° until there was no trace left of male anatomy.

^° (Believe me, you have no idea just how many seemingly different parts of the body are actually homologous until you see it laid out in excruciating detail on the evening news.)

To an extent, this was a boon for attempts to control the spread. Some guys are of the mindset where they won't inconvenience themselves to save their life, but their manhood is another story. Performatively-macho types who might not want to comply with basic, wussy precautions like wearing a face mask, washing their hands, or giving people a little space on the bus were a lot more willing to listen to reason when the stakes involved a week of acting weirdly huggy before ending up with a more-than-usually-literal pussy.

But it wasn't that simple. There were still plenty of dolts who wouldn't play ball, certain that it could never happen to them; and when they caught it they'd pretend they hadn't until it was undeniable. And they weren't the only problem children; idiot fratboys daring each other to contagion parties as a hazing ritual, sorority sisters who wouldn't miss spring break for the Black Plague (let alone one that might, at worst, affect their ability to rock a bikini,) and crazed soccer moms who'd heard it from a friend who heard it from Facebook that they could regain their lost youth^° all played a part in keeping the virus circulating, spreading, and (God forbid) mutating...

^° (Which wasn't true as such; the rumors stemmed from cases where the mass of a patient's new tail and breasts - be they former males or women who'd ended up with extras - plus fat burned in the change was debited from their less flattering regions. The virus did seem to make the most of what it had to work with, but it couldn't turn back the clock. That was, anyway, probably the next best thing to them.)

There were also a surprising number of guys out there who wanted the sex change and considered the cat features either a small price to pay or an added bonus (plus, even more oddly, a few who wanted the ears and tail and felt the sex change was worth it.) They usually tried to avoid exposing other people while attempting to be exposed themselves, but public-health officials still asked that they desist and wait for the pharmaceutical industry to harness the virus's unusual properties safely after careful study.

For most of us, though, the equation was simple: be a dumbass and run a significant risk of losing your block and tackle and spending the rest of your life on the other side of the fence, possibly with a swanky new fur coat; or put up with a pile of inconveniences for months on end and have a chance to keep seeing that familiar mug in the mirror...but no guarantee.

It was shaping up to be a royally shitty year.

---

And when I first thought that to myself, I wasn't in my wildest flights of fancy imagining that it might involve literally running out of toilet paper - but life is just full of surprises. For reasons that still escape me, huge swaths of the population reacted to the lockdown orders with a form of panic where they decided that:

1. They had never prepared for a lockdown before, so they must not know how to do it right.
2. The Internet would know how to do it better.
3. Web pages on disaster prep mentioned stocking up on supplies like toilet paper and bottled water.
4. They didn't know off-hand how much of these they'd use in the space of a few weeks to a month.
5. Therefore, it was best to buy all of them, just to be on the safe side.

Which, as any sane person could've predicted, resulted in a huge run on the stuff, despite the fact that A. nobody's water was getting shut off in the first place, B. they'd be fine with a few weeks' worth of mostly non-perishable groceries, and C. nobody needs to use the bathroom that often unless they're already sick. And when the supply chain hiccuped in response, the panic intensified, to the point where not only was there no paper of any kind on the shelves 95% of the time, stores had to ration what they did get in to keep the hoarders at bay.

By the tail end^° of the week, I was half-convinced I'd be ambushed between the car and my front door by roving post-apocalyptic gangs of toilet-paper hoarders who'd knock me to the ground and tear through my groceries in search of their precious quarry, then leave me to die. Instead, I ran into Nicole coming back from the mailboxes, which was just as well; I hadn't bought any toilet paper this trip anyway.

^° (Ever since the pandemic hit, I couldn't stop noticing things I thought or heard or said that were not intended as puns, but in some dumb, torturous sense now vaguely-not-really counted as such. That wasn't even referring to the virus, but "tail end" automatically registers in my brain as a pun now. It drove me crazy.)

She was one of my neighbors, the next apartment over in our little townhome complex. She wasn't the post-apocalyptic warlord type; more the easy-going retro-hippie eccentric type. She was also a cat lady, in the classical sense that she had more cats than was probably reasonable. (As I recalled, the current tally was four; she'd nearly gone on the warpath when number five ran afoul of a late-night mystery joyrider last fall.)

She didn't quite fit the stereotype, being a lanky twenty-something in a long patchwork-quilt skirt, a tube top, sandals, and a bandana for a head-covering, rather than a frumpy upper-middle-aged woman with severe glasses and an unfortunate hairstyle, and she actually kept her pets in line and cleaned up after them, so her apartment didn't absolutely reek of cat piss. Still, you didn't have to see the "Love to eat them mousies" print hanging in the entryway to get the vibe of someone in thrall to Toxoplasma gondii from her.

"Hey," she chuckled, waving me down. "What spoils do you bring from the field of battle?"

"Peanut butter, frozen veggies, and a little extra dry soup," I said. "I got most of what I figured I'd need the first couple days, when everyone was going crazy over T.P. I'm just lucky I hung onto my tax refund; wasn't expecting to have to use it for this."

"Not bad," she said, stopping the prescribed 6' away from me, hip cocked and hand resting on it. "Beat 'em to the punch while they're looking the other way. I like it." She gave me a sly grin, one canine just creeping over her lower lip; I couldn't help thinking that she looked almost feline herself. It seemed fitting.

"And you?" I asked, wondering if there'd been anything like a rash of pet owners making runs on kibble and litter. "All good to go? Anything you need...?"

She laughed and shook her head vigorously, her long flaxen hair flying around her face. "You kiddin'? I've kept stocked up on essentials for years. These Johnny-come-latelies don't even know from prepping - water and paper, sure, but what about candles? Matches? Canned heat? Medical supplies? Hah. All they know is what clickbait tells 'em."

"...What've you been prepping for?" I asked, suddenly wondering about the lack of candles or canned heat in my own apartment.

She shrugged. "Well, this, apparently. Or, y'know, alien invasion, or whatever. Can't hurt to be prepared; that's what they taught us in Scouts."

"Well, it's just staying in for a while," I said, a little defensively. "It's not like the utilities are getting shut off."

She shrugged. "Not yet, no. But you know how it is around here - one minute it's spring, then next thing you know it's fire season and they're doing planned outages for line cleanup and all that jazz. That throws people for enough of a loop in a normal year, and this time around they'll still be figuring out this lockdown stuff."

"You think it'll last that long?" I wasn't optimistic about this being over in the immediate future myself, but I'd been kinda holding onto the hope anyway.

"Who knows?" she said. "But if civilization collapses into ruin, at least me and the kitties'll have a stockpile to help us through the transition back to a hunter-gatherer society."

"...Suppose so," I said, wondering exactly how tongue-in-cheek she was being. I shifted the grocery bag in my arms; the weight was beginning to wear on me. Behind me, I heard the Gutiérrezes pull in, at the opposite end of the lot. "Well, I, uh-"

"Man, though," she said, "all this fuss...I guess for guys it's a bigger deal, but isn't it weird how even a lotta women are so freaked out? Like they think they're losing something if it gets 'em. I dunno, you ever think it might be-"

She stopped short, waving hi around my shoulder. I turned to see the neighbors disembarking - Frank, and his son Alex. Until a few months ago, there'd also been his wife...hell, I never could remember her name. Alice...? I never heard why they'd split up, but it was none of my business, anyway...

I nodded hello, and Frank gave me a friendly little wave as he hefted some groceries out of the saddlebags on his bike. (The wife had gotten the family SUV, apparently.) Alex glanced warily at us before running ahead to get the door for his dad, and they went inside.

"Man," said Nicole, when they'd gone, "I feel for the kid, but I do not miss her, lemmetellya."

"Eh?" I said, a bit surprised; she wasn't usually the vindictive type. "She give you trouble about the cats or something?" I never had known what to make of Mrs. Gutiérrez myself; I was no expert at reading people, but it'd always felt like I was looking at a mask when I spoke with her...not that we'd interacted much.

"Nah," she said disdainfully. "Well, I don't think she liked the kitties, but she was dead convinced that I was screwing her husband."

I frowned. "Why?" (And how had I lived here for three years without ever picking up on that?)

She gave me a shrug and an I-dunno grunt. "Search me, man. I mean, he's not bad on the eyes, but dude's like ten years my senior andpart of the fuzz. Never even caught him eyeing me up or anything, but every time I saw her she was givin' me the evil eye like I was some brazen hussy."

"...Huh," I said, after a moment of searching for something to say; I had nothing constructive to offer, and no intention of getting dragged into whatever weird soap-opera nonsense this was. Luckily, Nicole didn't seem to be expecting any more from me than that. "So, uh, what were you saying, again?" I asked, hoping to change the subject.

She thought back, looked briefly embarrassed, then shrugged and grinned sheepishly. "Y'ever wonder if it wouldn't be simpler to just...get it over with?" she said, a bit hesitantly. "Like, so you end up with ears and a tail, big deal - and then it's done, right? You don't hafta worry about it anymore, or jump through all these hoops...you ever think about that?"

For a moment I just stared at her, turning the question over in my mind. "Honestly, I'm kinda surprised you haven't already," I said at last, wondering how I'd escaped from one weird, awkward conversation into an even weirder, more disconcerting one.

She glanced away, embarrassed again, her cheeks slightly flushed. "I, uh, can't say I haven't toyed with the idea," she said, clasping her hands behind her back and squirming a little. "It'd definitely be kinda awesome. But, well...what if something really crazy happened? Like, you went full cat? Even that might be kinda cool as an experience, but...who'd work the can opener or change the litter if I couldn't?"

"Well, uh, yeah, there's that," I said with a shudder. "Plus, you might spread it to people who don't want it, and you might not change even if you get infected, and...and..." It was one thing to think, in the abstract, that she might actually go for that, but I wasn't expecting her to admit to it so readily. Sure, it wouldn't be as weird if you were already female, but...just giving in? Changing yourself like it was nothing?

Even without the hypothetical risk of "really crazy,"^° you could still end up with your whole body altered; would it really be so great, having the vessel you'd spent your entire life in reshaped around you, just because you thought you wanted some snazzy new "accessories...?" And what about the behavioral changes? Sure, they weren't always pronounced, but on some level, wouldn't that mean that you weren't really you anymore...?

^° (There were no recorded cases of anyone turning fully into a cat, thankfully. But the virus was so poorly understood, and its knowneffects so wild, that it was nothing like certain that "human-sized anthropomorphic cat-woman" was the limit.)

"Yeah, I guess so," Nicole sighed. "It just seems silly, having to go to all this trouble to avoid something that isn't really all that bad..."

"If it helps," I said, "think of it as giving everyone who doesn't want that a better chance to stay as what they are." I shifted the groceries to my other arm. "Hell, you have my personal gratitude, for what it's worth."

She got a mischievous expression; there was that fang - er, canine - again. "Oh, I dunno," she said, scuffing her sandal on the pavement, "I bet you'd be cute. ...You know, if it did get you."

I squirmed a little, bouncing uneasily on the balls of my feet. "I, uh, hope I never have to find out."

"Um, well, I didn't mean it like that," she said apologetically. Her hand wavered upwards as if to rest on my shoulder, but we were too far apart. "It's just...you know, it wouldn't be the end of the world, would it? And if anything really crazy happened, you could always live with me and the kitties."

I felt some sympathy when I noticed her trying to comfort me; she was absolutely the touchy-feely huggy type, and while I knew Iwasn't, I could imagine the whole social-distancing thing being hard on her. I wished I could help, but there was no way to know if either of us was a carrier; besides, she did have a whole houseful of cats to pet. Still, I felt for her...

...but that was quickly obliterated by the full-body shudder I experienced at the second part.

It was one thing to have her try to comfort me over something I already knew was very possible, something I'd had to consider myself; but having her raise the specter of something much, much worse out of nowhere and then try to make me feel better about that was quite another. The thought of not merely changing from an ordinary guy into something else, but losing my humanity entirely - of becoming some tiny, ridiculous creature and spending the rest of my days crapping in a box and being laughed at on YouTube and never even comprehending what I'd lost - gave me a rampant case of the heebie-jeebies.

"L-let's hope not," I stammered uncomfortably, trying to put it out of my mind. I started edging toward the door, hoping to get out of this conversation and into the safety of my apartment before she managed to deal any further blows to my sanity. She gave me another apologetic look and a friendly wave goodbye before heading back to her own place, humming quietly. I didn't realize until after she'd gone inside that the tune was "Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat."