This is a story arc inspired by a couple pictures by DPragan, Cat Scratch Caption () and Cat Scratch Caption II (). The basic story is that there is a flu-like virus, originally spread by an eco-terrorist, that changes a moderate percentage of its victims into anthropomorphic cats, mostly catgirls. The specifics, as laid down by DPragan:
Overall, people infected with the virus have a 60-75% chance of coming through unchanged. The rest become anthropomorphic cats (not anime-style catgirls.) Given that the original images depict a domestic cat morph as well as a cheetah morph, it's safe to assume that transformees can be any variety of cat. For those that do change, there is a chance they will undergo a gender change as well. The odds of sex-change are much higher for male victims: 75% as opposed to 2% for female victims. People infected with the virus remain contagious for 2-3 weeks. The net effect of this is that the large majority of transformees are cat-girls, regardless of their original gender. Assuming an equal number of men and women get infected, the breakdown looks something like this:
86.5% catgirls (37.5% former males plus 49% natural-born females)
13.5% catboys (1% former females plus 12.5% natural-born males)
So, in order of rarity, starting with the most common, we have naturally female catgirls, formerly male catgirls, naturally male catboys, and formerly female catboys. This is, of course, assuming that the 75% chance for men to be sex-changed and 2% chance for women to be sex-changed actually means that 75% of male transformees get sex-changed; statistically speaking, the longer the virus spreads and the larger the number of people exposed grows, the more accurate this assumption will be.
Of course, cat-people are still only 25% to 40% of the general population (as DPragan says, catgirls wouldn't be special if everybody were one!) And that's in populations where everybody has been exposed to the virus; in small towns or isolated areas, it's likely to be a lot less. Also, note that not everybody exposed to a virus catches it; populations with strong immune systems will have a much smaller number of transformees (and since one's immune system strengthens primarily by exposure to germs and disease, it's a reasonable assumption that the cat-person population in disease-prone areas like poorer countries or slums will be quite small indeed.)
Anyway, enough number-geekery. On with the show! Today's victim is: