Amy's arrival at home went no more unusual than ever. Her mother stared her straight in the yellow slitted eyes and simply smiled, welcoming her home. She ate her dinner with her mom and dad and neither one said a thing...until Amy mentioned the sweet potatoes weren't as sweet as usual.
"I think they're fine," her mother said. Amy realized her tastes had changed now that she was mostly feline. She continued having trouble when her father--a graphic artist for the local newspaper--asked what she thought about the coloring. "Do you think it's too bold? Should I take out the yellow?" Amy couldn't tell white from yellow or red from blue, but she made a noncommittal "I think it's fine, but maybe tone it dowwwrrn a bit?" She then coughed to cover her meow before hurrying off to her room to do homework.
She worried herself to sleep, wondering what was going through Lina's mind. She slowly fingered the bell on her collar as she thought about the coming day.
* * *
At school the next morning, Amy looked around for Lina. It wasn't hard to spot the poor girl. Her new bovine stature made her taller than most of the students. She was wearing baggy jeans and a turtleneck, which wasn't her usual style. Her nearly waist-length hair was up in a ponytail. The newly-grown white portion appeared to be just long enough to reach from her scalp to the frilly scrunchie, and everything pouring out the other end of it was brown. She had a somber look on her face, as if a pet had just died.
"Meow, we'll get through this!" Amy encouraged. "No reason to feel depressed!"
"I'm still mad at you," Lina said. "It's your fault I'm this...thing. But I know you couldn't help yourself. Just please promise me you won't get either of us into any more trouble?"
"You bet! Mrrow!" Amy saluted. Lina giggled. "Hey, that's more like it!"
They saw each other again later in the day at gym class. In the locker room, Amy still felt weird undressing in front of everyone with such a different body, but apparently she was the only one to mind. Lina, however, was very timid about it, and Amy waited for her while all the other girls changed into their gym clothes and left.
"It's fine," Amy said when Lina told her to follow everyone else. Lina slipped out of her pants, revealing her bovine legs. "Are they hard to stand on?"
"Is your tail hard to control?" Lina asked, glancing at the appendage that Amy didn't realize was waving eagerly. Amy blushed, clutching its black and gray fur to get it to stop. Lina tried to take off her turtleneck, but couldn't get it over her head. "Can yooou help? I think it's caught on my horns." Amy quickly got behind Lina and helped her yank up the fabric. Then they heard a loud clang as something hit the floor.
"Oh shit! My collar!" Lina screamed. Amy scooped the cowbell and collar up and tried to string it around Lina's neck. It was hard, though, as her hair had started to grow again and the ponytail was starting to loosen, obscuring Amy's vision of the back of her neck. "Huuurry!"
Finally, Amy got it on. The hair stopped growing, though now it was several inches below her waist and exactly divided: brown in the lower half and white in the upper. Amy redid the ponytail while Lina groaned. "Are you okay?" she asked.
"My...udder," Lina said pathetically. Amy looked around to Lina's front and realized that her udder had indeed grown. It was rounder now, and would be impossible to hide in her gym clothes. Amy looked up and saw that a few other minor changes had taken place in the short time the collar was off. Her hands, already distinguished by two thick fingers and a thumb, had grown large black nails that encircled almost 270 degrees around her fingertips. The fur around her wrists and ankles was longer and fluffier, and Lina's face was bulging just a bit, looking almost like a muzzle. "We have to go tooo the store," she demanded.