The little grey cat looked at her reflection in the mirror and cried: sad plaintive meows, not loud but piercing. Anyone who cared for cats would have been touched at the sound. The cat paused after a few seconds and batted the glass gently, as if trying to touch her reflection. Then she sat still, just looking at herself, just thinking, deciding what to do.
Jane the cat, Jane who was an ordinary woman only a moment earlier, had the problem of her life. She didn't know how but she knew what had happened to her. She'd spelled out the word CAT with a set of children's ABC blocks and had been turned into a cat. Being a cat wasn't unpleasant and she was managing to keep herself under control but she was more than a little afraid, with her fear growing steadily. She didn't want to be a cat for the rest of her life; she didn't want to be a cat at all.
Her human intelligence was intact and working furiously. Since the blocks had gotten her into this situation, could they get her out? She trotted back to the blocks scattered on the floor and and swatted at one of them. It slid a few inches in response so she could move them. She could easily scatter the three spelling out CAT. Would that return her to her human form? Her other option was to spell out some other word, like HUMAN. Would she change into what she spelled out?
Jane wanted to think this through, not be hasty, but the fear inside her was mounting. She needed to do something with the ABC blocks, something very soon.
