"Wait, I want to show you something," Amy said. "It's this way. You'll understand when you see it."
Lina hesitantly agreed. "Okay, but we can't stay here much longer. Dinner's probably going to be ready soon."
Amy led Lina through a few aisles. She tried to get her bearings and retrace her steps to find the chair that had given her her tail, but after several minutes they still hadn't found it.
"I know it's close!" Amy said. But Lina had had enough.
"We can come back some other time. Then you can show me."
"But Lina! You've got to believe me! I'm not your pet! I was just turned into a cat an hour ago!"
Lina wasn't listening as she pulled hard on Amy's leash. Amy had no choice but to follow, or else she thought her friend would be dragging her along the floor. Amy continued to protest until they left the store.
"What's gotten into you?" Lina said sternly on the walk back to Lina's house. "Was it catnip? Is that what you wanted?"
Amy frantically tried to convince Lina. "There's a chair! When you sit in it and say an animal..." Amy trailed off when she saw Lina's questioning expression. It seemed like the only way to explain it was to get her to sit in the chair herself...but every step they took the chair got farther and farther away.
Amy lamented on her situation as they turned onto Lina's street. She examined the thick, feather-light fur that had grown on her forearms. Its gray locks were gleaming in the light of the setting sun. She flexed her claws again, watching them spring out and back in. She wondered if she could cut the leash with them.
They reached Lina's house...now Amy's house as well. Once inside, Lina detached the leash from Amy's collar. "I'm gonna go see when dinner's going to be ready. Why don't you play for a while?"
Amy went straight to Lina's bedroom, where she was surprised to find several cat toys and a large fluffy pillow-bed that had her own name sewn into it. "This is too weird," Amy said to herself. "It's like I'm in another dimension."
She was even more shocked when she examined her reflection in Lina's floor-length mirror. "What happened to my face?!" She peered closer to look at her nose, which looked distinctly flatter. Her mouth gaped open, revealing a row of small but sharp teeth. "No!" was all she could say. She hadn't made any changes to her face at the store. What was happening?
An itching in her shorts brought her attention to her legs. She pulled up one of the shorts' legs and saw that the fur was now covering everything. From the feel of the itching, it had gone all the way up her legs.
"But...but..." she stammered. "The collar! It's gotta be this collar!" She scratched and scratched with her claws, but the leather was too tough.
Lina entered, smiling. "Dinner's all ready, Amy!" she said in that overly-cheerful manner that made Amy nervous back at the store. She was actually talking to Amy like a pet, not a friend. Amy had to do something if she wanted to stop what promised to be a slow and scary transformation into a cat.