text: I'm not going to go into how. Honestly me trying to explain's like a physicist teaching pottery. Sufficed to say, I was having coffee, on a relaxing Sunday morning and suddenly my Sunday was NOT relaxing anymore. It would have been less totally fucking abrupt if my cat hadn't been chilling in my lap at the time. He does this thing where I sit at the kitchen table and scootch up close to it. Then he kinda meows to let me know he's there and jumps into my lap. I digress. Coffee. Sunday morning. Lucifer, my cat. If you could just imagine a kind of sudden expansion? Like if you pulled the cord on an inflatable dingy. And suddenly a man was in my lap. A full grown man. Now, I'm not a witch, but if I were I'd assume that when you turn a cat into a person they show up naked. Idk why.... It's not a sexual thing. Anyway. Lucifer (my cat) did not... arrive this way. He arrived in a suit. A *nice* suit. It just got weirder from there. Because he was in my lap and he... Expanded so fast? He absolutely upset the table,the coffee, the toast, everything. Upsetting for me, upsetting for the table. But not as upsetting as having an exploded cat on your hands. Exploded is the wrong word. Expanded? You get the idea. God. No one is gonna believe this. Aaanyway. After i became acquainted with the distinctly unusual turn of events there was a serious pause. A LONG PAUSE. we stared at each other confusedly. In shock. Then the chair collapsed. I should have mentioned. My chairs are garbage. Really great for one person, but a dangerous proposition with two smal people. Never mind the two of us. Yeah. So the chair broke and my cat. My person? Reacted as you'd expect. Now, I don't know if you've ever seen a gangly six foot two man in a suit try to frantically scramble up the curtains to his favourite hidey-hole, but I have and if it weren't so disastrous it would have been funny. Down came curtains, catman, and several shelves containing not one but two family heirlooms and -of all things- a tray of beads. The sound, the mess, the destruction was biblical. Not to mention the yowling of the catman who... Can he even talk? After that, there was silence. Blessed silence. I think Lucifer was stunned because he just lay there. "What the FUCK just happened???" Ah. So cat people CAN talk. I thought wryly. I added this to my little mental journal of things to note about recently transformed cat people. Then I thought "I'm being surprisingly cool about this..." Is that normal? Should I see a therapist? Lucifer, the man, the cat stood! Shakily at first. And then with a sort of grace. He would’ve been sort of regal had he not then slipped on the beads. I think in addition to his lack of experience with the beads he may not have fully grasped bipedalism. On his back a second time he shouted a frustrated: "FUUUUUUUUUCK" Rightly put out by his circumstance and obvious lack of catlike reflexes. Still sitting in the remains of my chair something clicked in my brain and I crawled over to where he lay. I was still at a loss for words. "How...? What...?" I fumbled "Fuck you" said the man in the suit, with conviction. I sat back. Look at the ceiling. There was jam on it. From the upset earlier. It fell on my face. A satisfying plop. I decided it was time to stop letting the day fuck me over. Something or someone was fucking with me and this was precisely where the buck stopped. Standing carefully, (because: beads) I said: "stay there". Then, with purpose I strode to the kitchen, almost died because again: beads. I poured myself a glass of water, dumped in about a teaspoon of salt I downed it like a shot. Then I took the salt to where Lucifer had stayed (surprisingly) and pouring myself a generous handful and threw it at him. Nothing happened. Not for at least ten seconds. Then Lucifer seemed to shimmer and the sun went out for a instant. Then everything was suddenly normal. Well... not **normal** People in the old days threw salt behind them. That works sometimes, but in my experience if you know where the trouble is you should address it directly. I imagine you're probably thinking it would take a great deal of magic to put the sun out. And you're right. It totally would. Assuming you're doing it for everyone. That said I figured by now that whatever was happening was happening around me specifically. The salt taken care of I knelt down to eye level with Lucifer (currently in the process of popping a seam) and said; "Lucy, can you understand me?" He then gave me a very familiar contemptuous look. "Don't be fucking stupid." Cat person journal entry no. 2: cats like the word fuck. Again, at a loss for words i just looked at him for a second. "Do you want to be a cat again?" "DO yOu waNT TO bE a cAT aGAiN?" He echoed without hesitation. I threw my remaining water in his face. He slapped me. "Doesn't feel so good, does it?" I'd just like to pause and note here that it would be manifestly wrong to assume that all cats (given a shot at being human) are assholes. I know it's sort of what we expect when we think of talking cats or people, but I've met plenty of cats who were sweet and tender and nurturing. My cat, like some people, just happened to be an asshole. Reeling a little from the sting I said "No. Don't ever do that again." Then: “Get up Lucy. We're going to find Emiley.” AAAAAAND that's it! Thanks for reading. Thoughts welcome. Pls be kind. It's been a while. There's more to this story. Lmk if you wanna know the rest of it.