It never seemed to Jennifer like Karyn's explanation had made sense. It was certainly possible for the stone to make everyone girls. There were lots of ways--maybe catgirls just reproduced in some strange way that let them be all girls, for instance. Besides, if all guys with children stayed guys but had catgirls as children--and all guys without children turned into catgirls--what happened to someone who had a living father and also had children? They would have to turn into a catgirl (because their father had catgirls as children) yet they could not become one (because they had children themselves).
Still, the stone did know enough to handle that case. That wasn't the real problem.
Steve Farber of the football team had stayed male. Fortunately, nobody except Jennifer and Karyn knew that that meant he had children--which meant that the rumors he was the father of Beth'ney's Brook's baby were true. But that wasn't the real problem either.
No, the real problem was that turning half of an entire town into catgirls wasn't something that could go unnoticed. A couple of hours after the change, people who were driving in and out of the town noticed, not to mention that the visiting high school marching band from Canada left the town as catgirls. A couple of days later, everyone noticed. People visting out of state relatives, people calling other people outside the town, anyone with long commutes. Policemen investigating missing persons, doctors whose patients from the town just changed sex and species, TV reporters--really, just about anyone.
Jennifer stared out the window at the two human soldiers standing outside her house at all hours of the day. It had only been five weeks of the year of catgirl-ness, and already the entire town was occupied by the US Army. There was no hope of a government coverup--the borders of the town leaked information too much. But in a town of 5000 people, there were now 10000 troops. Scared people, led by scared leaders, who didn't know if this was a new plague, or biological warfare, or an invasion by alien body-snatchers who didn't get everyone's sex or species correct. How could an entire town just become nonhuman, with even the books and newspapers all saying that they'd always been that way, and the inhabitants not noticing--or pretending not to notice--any difference? Three people--drunken catgirls who were dumb enough to sneak into an armed camp of soldiers who didn't know if they were people or monsters--had even been killed. Which set off a national debate about the proper use of force against extraterrestrials....
And nobody knew that this town--formerly called Pleasantville but now called Coventry after the Heinleinian city of outcasts--was just the victim of a little prank by two bored high school students named Karyn and (now) Jennifer. There were no aliens, no plague, no mad scientist, and no continuous threat from anything--but there was also no way for anyone to know.
Jennifer walked out her front door, hoping to get to the store and buy some milk--the town of catgirls drank quite a lot of milk for some reason. The cars and busses had been shut down on the pretense that the catgirls all had fake drivers' licenses, but really to make sure the "aliens" or "biological warfare virus carriers" didn't escape into the rest of the country. As Jennifer approached the street, the soldiers kept a close eye on her, leering and showing contempt at the same time--but as far as they knew, Jennifer was some invader from beyond, so it was understandable. But as Jennifer passed seven men with guns, she wondered... how was it possible to fix a mistake like this even with the stone, let alone without it for the next 47 weeks?
