The morning sun glared brightly through the cracks in my eyelids as I fumbled my way to consciousness. I'd gotten entangled in the sheets almost completely, and I had that tell-tale psychic hangover you get from a bad dream you can't remember; the details escaped me, but the emotional jumble loitered on the premises as I extricated myself and clambered out of bed. I would've liked to sleep in, but I was too wide awake now.

Well, that's what I get for eating like this, I thought. I'd tried to prepare going into lockdown, but it hadn't fully occurred to me that eating the same handful of pre-packaged meals or rice/pasta/soup mixes day in and day out for weeks on end probably didn't make for a terribly balanced diet, and I was tending towards indigestion - and unsettled sleep - more often than not lately. But then, every trip to the grocery store for better, fresher food was an added risk...

I had the brief thought that I could get Nicole to do my shopping for me, but I'd have to have the guts to talk to her first. We'd seen each other at the mailbox and traded cordial acknowledgements, but I still hadn't worked up the nerve to face her straight-on and apologize for flipping out that day. And it'd been two whole weeks, now, which only made it more awkward...why hadn't I made myself do it back then...?

I put on coffee and checked my e-mail/forums, but my mind was elsewhere. I wasn't sure why the prospect of making amends unsettled me beyond the basic social awkwardness of it. It wasn't as if I didn't like her; we weren't close friends, but she was a good neighbor, and I hated the idea of just leaving things on that note indefinitely. But it still felt weird and uncomfortable to think of someone going through something like that and just...embracing it.

Okay, it wasn't like she was profoundly handicapped; she still walked upright, still had opposable thumbs and the right number of fingers, and by all accounts her senses were sharper now. And sure, she'd overcome the initial difficulties with speech; most of the initial tics were more subdued, and I suspected the rest were ones she liked. And okay, she wasn't reduced to a dumb beast by whatever new instincts she had; she was still intelligent, still recognizably her...

But still...why? I didn't get it. Didn't she have any attachment to her old self? And surely her new form had its share of complications; I'd seen with that catgirl at the hardware store how tricky a tail could be to manage, the full-body fur coat must make bathing an ordeal, and I had no idea what a six-breasted woman would have to deal with until the garment industry caught up. Was her notion of "cool" really worth all that?

But then, why was it my problem what she thought of her change?

...Okay, I knew the answer to that; I just didn't like to think it to myself...

I finished my coffee with a sigh and threw on some ratty work clothes; I'd finally gotten the rebuild kit. That, an oil change, and re-adjusting the valves would only take me a couple hours; I could get it done this morning, while it was still cool out on the pavement, and then I'd be good 'til June, when things started really warming up and I'd have to tweak the mixture anyway. I could shower afterward and then have the afternoon free for...whatever, I supposed.

I got my tools and went outside, crawled under the Bug to set the oil draining, then came back topside and started on removing the carburetor; I'd do the valve tappets last, after the drain-pan was out from underneath. Ugh, I thought, noting with annoyance that my hands were already smeared with oil and grease; I liked having a car I could work on, but that didn't mean I actually liked working on it.

I drained the bowl and disassembled it, laid all the bits out neatly on the concrete, and started working it over with a can of solvent and an old toothbrush. Okay, maybe I sort of enjoyed this part; I'd always found fiddly little tactile activities weirdly absorbing. It was all the grunge that I disliked; but there was no avoiding it, unless you just gave in and went to a mechanic for every little thing...

Later, as I was finagling the replacement rubber bits into place, I heard Nicole's door open. She padded over to the dumpster with a bag of used litter, then came and stood nearby, watching me. I didn't know what to say at first, but after a minute of her standing there and me feeling awkward, I gave in. "...Something you need?"

She shuffled her paw-feet. "Mrow? Nya, just...superrrvising, I guess."

I still felt uneasy around her, but I couldn't quite stifle a chuckle as I reached for my screwdriver. "God, you really are a cat."

She giggled; I could hear that feline trill creeping into it... "Damn strrraight! Nyeverrr saw this coming, but it's incrrredible. Wonder what my kids're gonnya think?"

"'Kids...?'" I murmured, bolting the carburetor back into place. "Oh, right. Guess you won't be back in the classroom for a while..."

"Prrrobably nyat." She sounded glum, and I could just about hear her ears drooping and whiskers sagging; then she brightened a little. "'Til they find a vaccine, anyway. ...Gosh, I wonderrr how many of them will've changed?"

She sounded oddly excited at the idea, and it got me feeling all weird and uncomfortable again. It was one thing for her to be into this herself, but dragging other people into your weird interests, and particularly kids... Grade-schoolers could seize on any little thing to ostracize each other; how would it be if your peers suddenly had a very big thing to tease you about, one that maybe you weren't even comfortable with yourself? If she were as blithe about their changes as she was about her own, then-

I sighed. I was doing it again, wasn't I? Jumping to conclusions about someone else's feelings and projecting my own worries onto them? For a while I said nothing, as I tried to remember where to set the volume screw; but I was a grown-ass man, wasn't I? I should at least be capable of sucking it up and apologizing...

"...Listen, Nicole," I said, feeling horribly awkward, "I, uh...'m sorry I freaked out on you back then."

"Hm?" she said. "Oh, nya, it's okay. I guess it was a lot to drrrop on nyew outta nyowherrre."

"Well, yeah, but..." Part of me wanted to leave it there and call that good, but I knew that it wasn't. "Look, I was...being paranoid, I guess. Honestly, I still don't get how you can be so cool with...with something this weird and crazy, but...I thought you were gonna, you know, start trying to...to..."

"...Push it on nyew?"

"...Yeah," I said, shrinking into the engine compartment as I hooked the fuel line back up. She didn't sound too offended, but it was still embarrassing to admit.

She said nothing while I replaced the air-cleaner; I turned and saw her lost in thought, tail lashing, as I crawled back under to pop the valve covers off. "I mean, I'd nyeverrr want to forrrce anybody into this, but..." She gave an ambivalent little churr. "...well, it'd be lying to say I didn't think it might do people some good."

I'd been prying the retaining clip off one cover, using the screwdriver as a lever, and I tensed so hard at that that it sprang free with an audible bang. "Mya, you okay down therrre?" she called, concerned. I sighed. "Fine, thanks."

There was a pause, as if Nicole was measuring out her words, trying to figure out if she was suggesting something weird/immoral/illegal. "Like, the nyews is always going on about 'cabin feverrr' niaow," she said. "Surrre, maybe it's just TV sensationyalism, but...if they werrre changed, people could just get out, rrright? I haven't had to worrry about it for almost a monthniaow, Kit!"

"Well, that's great for you," I said, sliding out from under the car, "but not everyone...ugh, I've got gravel in my hair."

"Nya prrrobably wannya put it up if you're gonnya be worrrking on the grrround," she offered. "I've got hairrrbands if nya want."

"Really, I meant to get it cut," I sighed, fitting my big crescent wrench onto the crankshaft, "but, y'know, lockdown."

She frowned, ears tilting back just slightly. "Mya, I dunniaow, I think it's a good look for you."

I cocked an eyebrow. "Eh? Without the beard, it's just my stringy-haired hollow-eyed cave-goblin phase in high school all over again. I haven't had it this long since."

She laughed. "C'mon, nyobody looks good as a teenagerrr. It's fine, trrrust me."

I shrugged. Easy for her to say; she wasn't around for that awkward phase of my life. "Anyway-" God, had I had any non-awkward phases? Aside from, y'know, now, where everyone just accepted that A. I was a weirdo, but B. it wasn't their problem? "-uh, actually, could you do me a favor and work the wrench there? I need to make sure it's at top dead center for the right cylinder."

"'Worrrk it' how?" she asked. "Sorrry, I dunniaow from car stuff."

"No trick to it," I replied, grabbing the necessary tools and dropping back down. "Just, y'know, rock it back and forth a bit."

She seemed intrigued by that, and I was hardly situated underneath before she started moving it from side to side. Well, that was fine; I could see the correct set of valves rocking. "Great, thanks, that's all I needed," I called up to her.

The valves kept rocking; I could see her tail lashing from down here, and I heard her starting to giggle as she continued to bat the wrench back and forth. "Uh, Nicole, you can stop now."

They kept rocking. "Nicole!" I said, a little more sharply than I meant to. God, was this what it did to you, turned you into the same kind of easily-addled goofball as real cats? I could even see her wince through her tail when she realized what she was doing. "Sorrry," she called back.

"It's fine," I sighed, trying to keep my cool. Maybe she'd always been like that, I reasoned, and I'd just never seen this side of her until I asked her to help me with something. I fiddled with the feeler gauge, trying to slip it in at the right angle. "Anyway...I mean, you mustrealize that not everybody sees that as a reasonable trade-off, right? I'm...not...gonna tell you you're wrong, but you're, uh, definitely a special case."

"Well, you're nyat wrrrong about that," she chuckled. "But is it rrreally that bad? Like, what do people serrriously think they'd be losing?" I almost fired back, but she beat me to it. "I kniaow, I kniaow, it's differrrent for guys, but...is it that imporrrtant to everrryone?I dunniaow, you tell mya."

I shook my head, trying to formulate a response; this got more gravel and concrete dust in my hair. At least I'd be showering afterward...why did it feel so uncomfortable trying to analyze this?

"I mean, uh, I don't know...?" I said uneasily, turning it over in my mind. "I think most guys'd see it that way, probably. Like, I knowthere are exceptions, but for most people it's a pretty basic part of how they think of themselves, isn't it?" I frowned, recalling what I'd told myself back when lockdown started. "A-anyway, even if you don't see that as a core component of your identity, the 'alternative' here leads straight into Lands Unknown. That's a big leap to take just 'cause you're getting a little stir-crazy."

"Rrreally?" she laughed. "It's that big a deal? Are we, like, a whole differrrent species to you?"

"Well, you literally are," I said, glancing at her furry paw-feet as I shifted around under the car. "But if you mean women?" I got my tools in place as best I could, trying to adjust the valves to just the right tolerance; it was a bit cramped down here, but it beat taking the tires off for this.

"...Yeah, kind of," I sighed. It was so weird trying to consciously work out stuff that I normally took for granted. Sure, analyzing problems I might not intuitively grasp was half of my job, but it was so much more complicated when people got involved. "Like, sure, prick us and we all bleed, but..."

I paused, trying to think of how to put it. "But...there's lots of things about women that most guys have filed under either 'will never be relevant to me' or 'Things Man Was Not Meant To Know.' You're straight-up put together differently; that leads to a whole class of physiological or psychochemical complications of which we're only dimly aware..."

"You surrre know how to make a girrrl feel special," she put in dryly. "Is it rrreally just a myatterrr of 'psychochemical complications?'"

"Well, that's the start of it," I replied, a little defensively. "You socialize differently, too..." It was hard trying to figure out how to say we find you strange and hard to understand at times, and that can be intimidating without coming across like a total jackass. I really didn't think that was inherently pejorative, but I'd heard enough hackneyed stereotypes from enough third-rate comics and self-styled culture commentators to realize it was a bit of a minefield.

"Plus, well...society treats you differently," I said, finishing with the one cylinder. "And you can have strong opinions about exactly how - but we only ever see it from the outside looking in." Though really, I thought, that was true of a lot of "people problems..."

"And sure," I sighed, "some of this might be social construct, but it doesn't make the implications any less real." I took a moment to wipe my hands down with a paper towel. It didn't get them clean, but it kept the grime slightly under control, at least. "There's tons of things about you that we'll never grok, even if we're intellectually aware of them, which we often aren't."

"'Grrrok?'" she queried.

"Uh, nerd thing," I said. Nicole was eccentric enough to not trip my "normie" detector, and I sometimes forgot that she wasn't a geek as such, and belonged in a different category.^° "Umm, 'to grasp intuitively,' I guess? To know it so well that you don't have to think about it to make sense of it. Like, some of this we might be able to comprehend, if you explained it right, but we often get the sense that some things are just forever closed off to our understanding."

^° (Damn it.)

I came back up and cranked the flywheel 'round. "So, yeah. It may not sound like a big deal to you, but that's because you already knowwhat it's like. Most of us, not only do we not know, we're not even sure of what we don't know. And the idea of getting thrown into the deep end with all that - let alone jumping in? It's kind of a scary prospect."

"I'm nyat surrre I get it," she said after a moment, as I went back underneath and started on the next set. "I guess it's nyaturrral to be intimidated by stuff you don't underrrstand, but...it isn't myagic. Billions of us live like that everrry day, and we do fine; who's to say that you wouldn't, too?"

I bristled; she probably meant that "you" in the abstract, but I felt myself getting worked up again. "Wh-who's to say we would?" I retorted, fumbling irritably with the feeler gauge. "I mean...maybe you're right, but we don't know that, and if we take a, a chance on it and don't end up, uh, coping well, it's not like we can just, y'know, call do-over - not now, and maybe not ever."