...his ex-girlfriend.
Kathy--or Kat, as everyone used to call her--had been Jeff's first girlfriend in 8th grade. She had even been his first kiss. She was very cute with her strawberry blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. Jeff thought it had been love right up until Kat hit a sudden growth spurt leaving her with a much more mature-looking figure (her breasts had ripened like fruit almost right before Jeff's eyes) and making her a couple of inches taller than Jeff.
Jeff was so fascinated by her changes that he completely missed the signs of her shopping around for a new guy until it was too late. One day, as Jeff was going to pay her a surprise visit her at her house, he saw her through the window making out with some high school sophomore on her living room couch. Jeff angrily rang the doorbell and demanded to know what was going on. Kat just said the guy was a friend and that he would be a better fit for her than Jeff, someone more mature. Jeff called her a "bitch." She told him to "fuck off," and sent her new boyfriend to make sure that Jeff did just that. He cried over the breakup for months, mainly because of the betrayal and the sense of inadequacy it had left.
It was still a painful memory.
"Time for some revenge," Jeff said half smiling as he approached Kat's house with the Chronivac remote in his hand.
***
Jeff rang the bell, and Kat answered the door. She was even more gorgeous than Jeff had remembered. It was only then that he realized that he had no specific plan for his revenge. He would just have to improvise, he decided.
"What do you want?" she demanded coldly.
"Are you home alone?"
"Yeah," she said. "So what?"
Just then a cat appeared at her feet. Its fur was dark gray and it mewed and growled and rubbed against her legs with a hungry look in its eyes.
"Stupid cat," she said to it. "We should've had you neutered years ago."
"Tom looks like he could use a girlfriend," Jeff said as an idea hit him.
"Tom isn't the only one here," she replied and smirked.
Jeff smiled broadly as he started to program her changes into the remote. "Thank you, Kat," he said. "You have made this so much easier to go through with."
She just shook her head and sighed impatiently. "Are we done now? Not that this hasn't been nice and creepy, but I have a date in a little while."
"You sure do," said Jeff as he pointed the remote at her. "I hope you two enjoy it." He pressed the execute button and watched Kat change.
***
Kat started to ask what the remote was supposed to do when Jeff aimed it at her, but she was suddenly distracted by a tingle that seemed to spread all over her skin. She gasped as she felt her body start to shrink and her clothes loosen on her. Too many changes were happening at once to keep track of them all. She felt a stretching sensation at the base of her spine and her ears. Her face seemed to be pulled forward. Her fingers seemed to shrink as her fingernails felt like they were growing longer and sharper. And, as suddenly as it had begun, the change was done.
She could feel her shoes beneath the pile of clothes she was sitting on. For some reason, she had her hands on the ground in front of her for balance. Her body felt wrong and furry. Was that a snout and whiskers she saw at the end of her nose? She noticed Jeff's seemingly huge feet and legs in front of her. Looking up she saw him grinning above her, like an evil giant.
She went to ask, "What's going on?!" but all that came out was a loud meow from her mouth. In shock, she looked down and saw a pair of orange tabby cat forelegs disappearing into her too large shirt below her. She lifted her right arm, and the right foreleg below her lifted too. She twiddled her fingers, and the cat paw stretched its claws around a bit. That was her furry paw. She was a cat. "Impossible," she tried to say, but all she did was meow again.
"That's right, Kat," Jeff said, drawing her attention back up to him. "I thought this would be appropriate considering your name, a nice ironic punishment. Plus, your buddy Tom there really looks like he could use some companionship."
Kat slowly turned around to see Tom crouched on the ground behind her, ready to pounce. He looked gigantic now, bigger than she was for sure, and he had that hungry, horny look in his eyes again. Tom growled and slowly padded towards her. Instinctively, Kat took off running leaving her clothes and any semblance of humanity behind. Tom followed excitedly.
It was only later after Tom had treed her that Kat realized that she was not naked, Jeff had somehow put a collar on her. She wondered what it said on it. She wondered what would become of her now. She wondered how long she could keep away from Tom. She wondered why she was starting to want him to catch her now.
***
Jeff walked home, smiling. That was a great success, he decided. Kat had been brought down quite a few pegs. On top of that, she was about to discover what it felt like to be a cat in heat, as that was how Jeff had programmed her new form to feel by default. He smiled even broader when he thought about what would happen when someone finally read her collar.
***
Days passed as Kat's family nervously waited for news from the police about her disappearance. They were particularly worried, considering that Kat had left behind a pile of clothes on the doorstep, as if she had suddenly stripped naked and disappeared. Still, there was no sign of her anywhere. She had apparently vanished without a trace.
As they worried for Kat, they hardly noticed the noise from the backyard of Tom and some new feline companion of his making wild animal love day after day. Only when Kat's mother noticed a strange tabby cat sitting on the back porch one morning by the sliding glass doors did she consider what Tom had been up to in the yard all of this time. She stepped outside to check on the cat and read its collar, happy for any distraction from worrying about her daughter. As she read the words, her eyes went wide. The cat put a paw gently on her hand and meowed up at her hopefully. After a quick double take and a deep look into the cat's piercing blue eyes, Kat's mother promptly fainted.
Kat's father found his wife passed out on the porch by the strange cat. She woke up when he lifted her, and then she pointed to the cat and told him to read the collar.
Confused, he did as she said and read it out loud, "'Hello, my name is KAT. I used to be a teenaged girl. Now, I am a tabby cat. I will always be in heat unless I get pregnant or spayed. My family lives at 425 Elm St.' Is this a joke? That's our address."
"Look at her eyes," said Kat's mother. "Look at them. It's her. Oh, God, it's her."
Kat's father looked into his daughter's blue eyes and knew his wife was right, as impossible as it seemed. She was right.
"Kat?" he said.
His daughter just meowed back mournfully.
***
The official search soon went cold for Kat, but her family already knew that there was no point to it anymore. Their daughter was home. Still, they kept that fact quiet, knowing that they would only look crazy if they told anyone the truth.
Kat had her first littler a couple of months later. She was in heat again soon after. The family was torn on whether to spay her or let her live on constantly in heat. Ultimately, they just couldn't bring themselves to put her through the surgery.
A new sense of normalcy settled in more quickly than they could have imagined was possible considering how amazing the whole situation was. They all got used to calling the orange tabby, "Kat," even in front of other people. No one but the family understood just what they meant when they said it, though. Kat got used to eating cat food and peeing and pooping in a litter box. At least she had Tom, her constant companion, to comfort her.
Jeff walked by the house one day and saw Kat sitting there at the window staring off into space. He smiled as Tom hopped up next to her and started to nuzzle against her. Kat nuzzled back, and the two ran off to somewhere private to do what animals do.