Julia is a freelance artist who can't seem to please her mother. But when she gets a commission from Cali Co she ends up meeting a new friend and changing her outlook on life.

A short story created for the Overtime Cats Antholojam . Features transformation, self-discovery, romance, cattitude.

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ANOTHER ONE

Julia looked down at her salad as she anxiously rearranged the lettuce with her fork. Across from her, her date was focusedly carving apart his T-bone steak and shoveling it into his mouth, alternating between the meat and a baked potato. He took a break to speak.

“So, what do you do, again?” he asked, dabbing his lips with his napkin.

Julie stopped prodding at her meal and looked up. Her date, Andrew, was a young, dark-haired man with a square but soft face. He was the son of a friend of Julia’s mother, or the son of one of Auntie’s friends, or the son of someone Grandma knew; Julia had lost track of which one of the many eligible bachelors was currently foisted onto her. After some pressuring from her mother, Julia had agreed to meet with him at a nice bistro downtown. Andrew’s dark brown eyes bore into her and she looked to the side as she answered.

“Uh… graphic design,” Julia replied curtly. She felt an obligation to look directly at him and did so, cracking an awkward smile. Andrew’s neutral expression did not change.

“So, like… logos and stuff?” he asked before taking a drink from his water glass. Julia looked around the restaurant, seeing the packed Friday night crowd, and wondered which of the other couples were out on their first dates. She further wondered if any of the women in those couples had also been set up for five different consecutive dates by their mother.

“Yeah, logos, illustrations, page layout. That sort of thing,” Julia responded. “I’ve just been doing contract work since I graduated.” Andrew nodded, scratching his chin with his index finger.

All this dating was wearing Julia out, and she just wanted it to end. The time spent preparing for and going on dates was cutting into her working hours, pushing the work late into times of the night previously reserved for sleeping. Julia sighed, wondering if dating Andrew would appease her mother. She looked Andrew over, with his grey tie and ill-fitting white shirt, and imagined them in 10 years, married, with little Andrews waddling about in the same outfit. The thought of spending the rest of the date with him, let alone 10 years, was boring Julia to sleep, and she began to doze off.

“I’m in finance,” Andrew proclaimed after a moment of silence. Julia snapped awake and attempted to disguise her brief nap, rubbing her napkin on her face before raising her head again.

“Actuary at Brown Insurance,” Andrew continued. He immediately returned to eating.

“Mm-hmm,” Julia answered drowsily. Her mother had said Andrew would have been “a catch.” The trouble was that Julia never had much interest in fishing.

The rest of the date was uneventful. The two made basic small talk about their jobs, family and pastimes until Julia excused herself, making up the explanation that she needed to get up early the next day.

“When can I see you again?” Andrew asked immediately. Julia was stunned by his assertiveness and it took her a moment to respond. She imagined her mother sternly glaring at her and agreed to meet him the next week in the park for a walk. At the end of the date when they were parting ways, he leaned in to hug her and she reluctantly embraced him. At least he didn’t smell bad, like some of the other guys.

THINGS TO DO

Julia took a cab back to her apartment, a cheap place on the east side, or as her father constantly referred to it, “the bad part of town.” Once inside her building, she pulled out her keychain and unlocked her little cubby hole in the array of mailboxes, taking out some envelopes and flyers. She took the elevator up to her floor and walked down the hallway.

Muffled, loud music came from a door a few down from hers, and she remembered when the boy who lived there had invited her to one of his parties. She politely accepted, but later regretted it when she found herself in his noisy, smoke-filled apartment with guys constantly asking her for her number. Since then, Julia consciously tried to avoid him; passing by his door, she wondered if he had noticed.

Finally reaching her apartment, Julia inserted her key and opened the door. Once inside, she flipped on the light switch and swiftly shut the door behind her. Despite her continual anxiety about getting broken into, the studio was just as she left it, as it always was. Her frameless bed was tucked into the corner under a wide window, and a string of red and orange LED lights shaped like Chinese lanterns dangled from the ceiling over it. To her left was a small kitchenette with a bright red tea kettle her mother gave her sitting on the burners. On the wall opposite the kitchenette, a door led to the bathroom, her only other room.

Julia was dead tired. She collapsed in a heap on her bed, still in her winter jacket, scarf and hat. She closed her eyes for a moment before the anxiety of feeling unproductive got to her and she started to go through the few papers from her mailbox. Sales flyer, restaurant coupon, loan offer… She finally came upon an envelope with red text peeking through the plastic window and opened it, revealing a past-due electric bill.

Being poor, Julia was no stranger to unpaid bills, but her heart skipped a beat when she saw that the scheduled date to turn off the electricity was tomorrow. Thinking back, she did vaguely remember making a mental note to take care of this bill, but she had fallen behind from all of the dates her mother arranged for her. Suddenly, her layers of clothing felt uncomfortably warm and she promptly stood and stripped them off, still staring at the bill lying on the bed. Considering her overdrawn bank account, how would she make the money by then? Julia had initially estimated that her next contract would take a few days. Maybe if she put in some extra hours, she could cram it in by tomorrow and request an expedited payment.

After kicking off her shoes to reveal her pink striped socks, Julia stood up and removed her dress, replacing it with a long purple nightshirt with a unicorn on the front. Preparing for the long haul, she grabbed her clothes from the date and walked to the bathroom, dumping them in a wicker basket hamper. Next, she pulled out her toothbrush, and started to brush her teeth. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, Julia could only see flaws: her broad, flat face; her narrow eyes; her assortment of pimples. You should feel lucky that a man would ever be interested in you, she thought to herself as she washed her face and applied moisturizer.

Julia reluctantly walked from the bathroom to the corner opposite her bed, where she sat at her most expensive piece of furniture: her desk. A gift from her grandfather, the only person who approved of her artistic career, the drafting desk was loaded with all the bells and whistles, including a section with adjustable incline and a lightbox underneath its surface. It had been a while since she’d used any traditional drawing implements, and her digital tablet currently took over the bulk of the space.

Plopping down onto her office chair, she grabbed a scrunchie randomly lying on the edge of her desk and pulled her long black hair into a ponytail. She considered removing her makeup, but she knew that if she interrupted her impetus to work, it would be much harder to get on track. She popped open her laptop on the flat side of the desk and flipped to a browser window, pulling up her email.

The contract was nothing unfamiliar to her: a set of illustrations for a pamphlet ordered by a larger company. The basic description was in the email, but Julia hadn’t gotten around to looking at the exact task until this moment. She opened the attachment and saw that the pamphlet she was to illustrate was an advertisement for employment at a company named Cali Co: a commission by the company itself. Each page had a large “CONFIDENTIAL” waterstamp over it and there were gaps in the margins where each image would go. Each blank space contained some handwritten notes explaining what Julia was to illustrate in that area.

Julia read the pamphlet over to get an idea for the context of the images. The language used in the text was vague enough that she had a hard time telling exactly what the company did, and the first few pages were largely about the company’s history and core values of teamwork and cooperation. So far, pretty generic stuff, Julia thought, pleased at how simple the ideas would be to convey in illustrations.

The last pages mentioned company benefits such as insurance and on-site facilities. There was some heavy emphasis on the fact that overtime was heavily discouraged, with an entire page of the brochure dedicated to explaining how important that company value was. Near the bottom of the page, the text read:

“When you work too hard, you will be too tired to be at your best. We want all our team members to be happy and well-rested!”

Underneath the words, more handwritten notes instructed Julia to draw a cute sleeping cat looking comfortable. She was happy to see that this wasn’t a real stuffy client, so she could use a more humorous, cartoony style for the images. She’d have to work her butt off to get it done in a night, but at least it would be enjoyable. And so, she flipped on her drawing program, turned to her tablet, and started sketching.

COMPANY VALUES

As the hours rolled by, Julia carefully roughed out five illustrations for the pamphlet, battling sleepiness as hard as she could to get them done. The noise had finally settled down from the party a few doors down, and she could hear some talking in the hallway trailing off as people left. She took a break to put the kettle on, going for the most caffeine-laden black tea she had. Peeking out the window with her cup in hand, she felt calmed by the deserted streets. To keep a normal sleep schedule she usually tried to do her work during the day, but she always felt a little distraction and irritation from the hustle and bustle constantly going on outside her apartment.

Taking a deep breath, she looked back at her desk from the window. Last chance to just give up, she thought, wondering what other options she had. Beg her parents for money? Let the power go out and work at a coffee shop? She always tried to avoid all-nighters when possible, but these alternatives sounded horrible to her. Just dive in, she convinced herself, before hurrying back to her workstation.

The roughs were ready for polish, and Julia started the linework and coloring on the illustrations. This part was a bit more mechanical, and though it was more tedious, Julia was encouraged by the amount of progress she was making. As the night grew later, any last remnants of the thumping bass of music or muted mumbles of speech through the walls disappeared, and the apartment became dead silent other than Julia’s tablet pen lightly scraping.

As Julia reached the drawing of the sleeping cat, she thought about the message about overtime at the top of the page where the illustration was to go, and chuckled to herself. If only Cali Co’s obsession about avoiding overtime extended to their contractors, she thought, when her ear started to itch. She reached up to scratch it, and it felt strange, like a layer of hair was growing out of it. Being no stranger to the delirious thoughts emerging from an all-nighter, Julia figured she was imagining things and continued with her work.

A few minutes later, she felt a tingle on the base of her spine and figited about, finding that sitting on her side in the chair was the only comfortable position. She started to become more light-headed and sleepy as she worked through finishing her illustrations. Pushing past those sensations and an additional strange tingling all over her body, Julia finally got to the image she decided to finish last, the napping cat, and she painstakingly put down the linework and colors on top of her sketch. Just as she completed her shading, the tingling finally became too much for her and she reached over to scratch her left wrist.

“Ow!”, Julia cried as her nails dug into the flesh. How did her nails get so sharp… and pointy? She looked down at her wrist and saw a slight bleeding red line where her nail had scratched. Rotating the finger that made the cut up towards her face, she was amazed to see that her nail had become thicker, looking more like a claw that curved down and ended with a fine point. Below the nail, the tip of her finger was looking calloused and pink, and it felt rough when she rubbed it against her thumb.

I must be dreaming, Julia thought, as she drowsily rotated her clawed hand in front of her face. A layer of black fur started to sprout from the hand, and soon it looked more like a paw. As she flexed her fingers, the claw receded into her paw, disappearing behind a growing layer of fur. Just as she started examining the pink pads on her paw, she felt an odd sensation on her bottom and felt something moving, causing her to leap out of her seat. Looking behind her, she saw a dark, slim, furry object emerge from beneath her nightshirt. Batting at it gently with her paw, she could feel that it was part of her… her tail?

But before she could finish that thought, Julia noticed her nightshirt growing bigger on her. Looking down, she saw her shoulders, both covered in black fur, appear from the widening hole around her neck. Gazing upwards, she realized that instead of her shirt getting bigger, she was getting smaller, as the top of her desk was now slightly above eye level. Her entire body felt warm and tingly, and her head was starting to feel swollen, with a peculiar pulling sensation on her mouth and ears. She brought her forearm up to brush against her face and felt some whiskers on her protruding mouth. Her paws collided with her ears as she pressed her arm against her face, and though she could no longer move her fingers to feel them, she could still tell that her ears were significantly bigger, pointier, and closer to the top of her head.

Everything was happening so fast that Julia had barely had any time to process the emotions she was feeling. Despite the total metamorphosis of her body, she felt an incredible calm, as if she were receiving a full body massage. The fur covering her body felt like soft, warm pajamas, yet even more comfortable as it was an extension of her. She felt her tail slowly twitch back and forth, rubbing against the nightshirt, and felt a hypnotic sense of rhythm as it waved in time. Finally, her transformation gently finished, and she laid down on the floor, rolling into the nightshirt as if it were a large blanket. Completely at peace, Julia drifted off to sleep in her new form.

FELINE DREAMSCAPE

An indeterminate amount of time later, Julia experienced blackness, a pure void of nothingness. Slowly, stars began to form in the dark, tiny pinpricks of light, and they began to coalesce into shapes. As more points of light appeared, they began to form constellations: rough approximations of landmarks like trees, hills, and rivers. She began to focus in on a particular area, and the stars there formed into the shape of a small, short-haired cat; Julia recognized the animal as herself.

She felt connected to this feline body, but she was still able to observe outside its mere vision. Willing herself towards a nearby tree made of light, her animal avatar slowly crept towards it. Julia felt her consciousness enter the cat, and she began to experience its perceptions. Her body felt so sleek and comfortable, moving fluidly through space; it was a complete contrast to her awkward human form. She peered up the tree, a big elm, and watched its branches sway in the wind.

Julia cautiously placed her paw on the tree, feeling the bark on its surface. Everything was just specks of light before, but the forest had now become concrete. It filled up with noises, sights and smells Julia remembered from the last time she was in such a place. She recalled a vacation from her childhood when she briefly escaped from her parents; they found her crying out with glee, running around the base of a great redwood, and had to drag her out of that beautiful place.

Suddenly, Julia felt another presence watching her. Sure enough, a long-haired cat sat atop a tree branch on a nearby maple; her head and paws dangled over the side as she peered down at Julia. Their eyes connected as Julia looked up, and she sensed an energy of warm curiosity emanating from the other feline. After a moment, Julia felt the animal communicating with her.

“Hello. I am Mirabelle,” Julia perceived the other cat as saying. It manifested as a feminine voice in her thoughts, spoken plainly and confidently.

“I… I’m Julia,” Julia responded. She stammered initially from overthinking how she would need to communicate, but quickly found that the words simply flowed from her.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Mirabelle said. She jumped down from the branch and landed softly on the ground next to Julia . “I was getting lonely all by myself.”

“Oh,” Julia replied, suddenly feeling sorry for Mirabelle. “Where am I?”

“We’ve worked ourselves too hard, you and I,” Mirabelle explained, sitting calmly as her tail flickered periodically. “You enter this place when you need some rest.”

Julia sighed in her mind. “It’s all these dates my mother puts me up to. They make me miserable and I can’t keep up.”

“Why would she make you do something you hate?” Mirabelle asked, forming a question mark with her tail.

“My mom wants me to have kids and be taken care of,” Julia replied. “She just wants the best for me.”

“Maybe so, but what do you think is best for you?” Mirabelle responded.

Julia pondered the question while she looked Mirabelle up and down. Mirabelle appeared as a Maine Coon with soft, silky fur and a long bushy tail. The other cat’s head turned into the forest and Julia followed her gaze to a grove of oaks. After a brief moment, Mirabelle shot off in that direction, leaving Julia to watch her run.

“Wait!” Julia cried, chasing after the fluffy cat.

When Julia caught up, Mirabelle was standing next to one of the oaks in the grove, rubbing herself against it. The bark was torn on that particular tree; marks lined the fresh wood underneath.

“Have you tried your claws?” Mirabelle asked, pressing her face into the tree.

Julia looked at her and then down at her paws. She went up to another oak and put her paw on the tree just as she did earlier. She looked around, and questions started to worm into her mind: Was she going to use her claws the right way? Was this tree okay to scratch? An anxious energy radiated from her.

“It’s all right,” Mirabelle reassured her. “This place is created for you. Do what feels good to you.”

Julia closed her eyes for a moment, breathing in the fresh forest air. Her spirit was calmed by Mirabelle’s words, and Julia dug her claws into the bark, pulling her arm downwards as the tree resisted. Sticking her other paw up into the tree, she was able to stretch her entire back as she scratched. A number of satisfying vertical marks appeared on the surface as she scratched, little flecks of bright light flying off to the side as they formed. Sounds started to enter her ears; she could hear the tweets of birds, the buzzing of insects, and the nearby splashing of aquatic dwellers.

“Can you hear that?” Mirabelle said, an aura of confident happiness surrounding her.

Retracting her claws, Julia looked to the source of the sound and saw a pond nearby, breaking up the trees. She bounded towards it, her tail flicking in the air. Looking at the surface, a reflection of her feline visage appeared, but she saw past that to the shimmering forms underneath. Several fish swam back and forth in the water, seemingly unconcerned with the cat’s arrival.

“Oooh, those look good, don’t they?” Mirabelle asked, walking up next to Julia. They both gazed into the pool, watching the light reflect off the fishes’ scales.

Julia licked her lips in anticipation. Quick as lightning, she jabbed her paw into the water, catching a fish with her claws. As she pulled the creature out, it wiggled and squirmed. She released it on land, watching bemusedly as it flopped about. Finally her hunger got the better of her and she pounced on it, sinking her teeth into its head. At the point of contact, the fish disintegrated into stardust, and Julia felt an intense sense of satisfaction and satiation.

The wind gently picked up, lightly rustling the trees and creating ripples in the pond. Julia concentrated and perceived more of the world: an entire forest teeming with life, with nooks and crannies for her to run through and explore.

“Come on!” Mirabelle said, dashing off into the forest.

Julia followed her, running at full speed through the trees, splashing through little puddles, leaping over mossy stumps and fallen trunks. Mirabelle came across a great oak, and leapt high into the air, grabbing onto its bark with all of her claws. Julia followed, surprised with how easily she could scamper up the trunk with her paws. Up and up they climbed, scaling the bark of the tree and leaping from branch to branch until Julia finally reached the top, where the clouds rested above her head.

At the top of the tree, Julia couldn’t see Mirabelle for a moment, but she sensed her presence. Looking more carefully, Julia noticed that Mirabelle had somehow jumped clean off of the top of the tree and was now resting on a nearby cloud, as if the puffy thing was solid matter. Mirabelle gave off an mischievous, playful aura as she noticed that Julia found her.

Suddenly, Julia became concerned with how high up she was. Would she be able to make it up to the cloud? What if she fell? Her nervous energy returned in force.

“You can do it, Julia. I know you can,” Mirabelle said confidently as Julia lingered on the treetop, swaying back and forth in the breeze.

Julia thought back to all the hard times in her life-- the worst she had failed tests, the first job she got fired from, an angry note from a client-- and she remembered how she always made it through. She slowly wound herself up like a spring and leapt with all her might, flying through the air. As she landed on the cloud, her feline reflexes kicked in, deftly shifting her legs to create a perfectly balanced landing.

Mirabelle turned to Julia, and Julia felt an aura of pride flow from Mirabelle. Mirabelle approached Julia, and Julia leaned in closer to Mirabelle. Mirabelle rubbed her head on Julia’s shoulder as she stepped next to her, brushing her bushy tail on Julia’s neck. Julia felt her own aura grow happy and calm as she watched Mirabelle walk to the edge of the cloud.

“Bet you can’t catch me!” she said as she jumped.

Julia had never been very confident, but she felt so self-assured in this body that she immediately followed Mirabelle after seeing where she was going. Leaping from cloud to cloud, Mirabelle climbed higher into the sky with Julia in hot pursuit. The clouds grew thinner as the sky faded from blue to black as Julia ascended. Mirabelle launched into the night sky with a backdrop of billions of stars shining brightly in the distance.

The two cats became abstract constellations, darting to and fro among galaxies and nebulae. Finally, Mirabelle stopped, rolling on her back and waving her paws at Julia. Julia coiled her body and then pounced on Mirabelle, wrapping her arms around the other cat as the two rolled around from the impact. Hugging each other on their sides, their eyes connected, and Julia felt Mirabelle’s warm, comforting aura wash over her. Julia closed her eyes and nuzzled Mirabelle’s face. Their whiskers first touched and then their fur rubbed together. Julia started to purr and hoped Mirabelle would never let go of her.

But the stars were starting to fade in the sky. The darkness enveloped the surrounding points of light, leaving only Julia and Mirabelle. They too started to fade and disperse, as Julia began to lose consciousness. Before she did, a final vision was revealed to her of Mirabelle sitting next to an obelisk with an ankh carved into it.

“Come find me,” Julia heard Mirabelle whisper as the blackness took over.

RETURN TO EARTH

Julia woke to the noise of children talking loudly outside her window. As she opened her eyes, she could see the morning light illuminating the side of her bed and the back of her chair. She was lying on the floor, tangled up in her nightshirt. Rising up to sit, she massaged the back of her head where it had been resting on the hardwood. Adjusting her nightshirt, she got up and closed the curtains on her windows.

Feeling fairly disoriented, Julia sat down on her bed. The dreams she had just experienced felt so real that she felt compelled to look down at her hands to see if she still had paws, and she was surprised to see that she did not. Her fleshy, pink hands looked the same as ever, though she did notice that her nail polish was strangely absent. Didn’t she just apply it before her date last night?

Rising again, Julia staggered into the bathroom to freshen up. She showered and threw on her typical comfort outfit of jeans and a retro cartoon t-shirt. Stretching her arms and back as she walked out of the bathroom, she was surprised how well-rested she felt despite her extensive dream. After waking her computer up, she was pleased to find her contract work finished and ready to submit. Taking one last look for good measure, she flipped through her completed illustrations and the notes on the pamphlet to see if she hadn’t missed anything.

Everything seemed satisfactory so far, but as she was reexamining the reference image on last page of the pamphlet, a photo of the Cali Co campus, something stood out to her. Along the wall next to the tables of the food court area was the obelisk from her dream, easily identified by the ankh carved into the side facing out of the wall. Gasping, Julia sat back in her chair and gently bit her finger in an attempt to contain her excitement. With her heart beating fast, she read the time from the corner of her computer screen. It was an hour before noon; she’d have to move fast.

Julia zipped up her pictures and sent them off, attaching a short note requesting urgent payment. She stood up in a rush, launching her office chair backwards; she was able to grab the top of the chair before the whole thing toppled over. Moving over to her closet, she flipped through her wardrobe frustratedly. What to wear? This isn’t some fancy thing for show, she thought, calming herself. Just be yourself. She settled on black pants and a polka-dot top with a light blue cardigan. After tossing on her sneakers and grabbing her purse, she rushed out of the door; she would have to do her makeup on the bus.

THE SEARCH

The Cali Co building stood out downtown; if not for its massive footprint, then certainly for its fanciful facade. Two massive metal lion statues were set into the sides of the entrance, surrounded by intricate patterned stonework. Several doors, including a massive revolving one, lead into the building. The foot traffic was intense as Julia arrived, and she began to feel a sense of agoraphobia setting in. Powering through it, she blended into the crowd and followed a train of people into the main door.

Inside the building, she found herself in a wide open space with storefronts on either side. A bright pink sign advertised a popular Japanese brand, and Julia got excited for a moment until she remembered her empty wallet. Everything seemed very plush and upscale, and Julia started to feel out of place. Up ahead, the side of the building opened up to giant windows on the right, and Julia was encouraged when she recognized the area from the photo.

Anxiety building in her chest, Julia finally saw the obelisk beyond the side of a food stand, and she paused for a moment to pull out her compact. She put away her sunglasses and obsessed with her makeup and hair for a moment. Her heart was beating like crazy, but she was full of excitement. Never had she wanted to meet someone more in her life.

Finally taking one big breath, Julia pressed on. She weaved through the maze of tables, dodging people holding trays left and right. Directly in front of the obelisk was a single table where a bespectacled young red-headed woman sat casually reading a book. She wore a striped green sweater and a pair of blue jeans that stretched tightly on her crossed legs. Her face was heavily freckled; her hair was voluminous and curled gently. Julia slowed down and bit her lip, wondering if she could even approach someone so intimidating, but she did.

Julia stood there in awkwardly in front of the table for a moment, a nervous smile on her face. The woman noticed Julia and looked up from her book. Their eyes locked, and immediately recognition appeared in the woman’s face. Julia felt the same way, and a wave of emotion swept over her, resulting in her eyes welling up with tears.

“Julia?” the woman asked, putting down her book.

Julia nodded, unable to find her voice to reply. Standing up, the woman was a little taller than Julia, and she tilted her head up to continue to look into her warm blue eyes.

“Yes, I’m Mirabelle,” the woman said, repeating what Julia already felt she knew in her heart. “Can I give you a hug?”

Julia nodded again, shaking but smiling widely and wiping away her tears with her sleeve. As the two embraced tightly, Julia felt that she had found something she’d been missing her whole life.