"What are we going to do?!" Karyn said, trembling, panicking now that the reality of the urgency of their situation was clear.
"Calm down," Jon said. Jon pawed the stone and said, "I wish my mother would forget what just happened, and instead her memory would be replaced with a counterfeit memory of me being here in my male form, exchanging tender affectionate words with my mom, and then us wishing each other good night. There, crisis averted."
Karyn looked at her paws. At her ridiculous furry front paws. They were sexy as a novelty, but she was having an anxiety attack now, obsessing over the thought that she wasn't even a person any more. She started crying.
"Keep it down, Karyn! My family will hear you!"
Karyn tried to stifle it. As she sniffled, she was reminded of her feline nose, and the fact that a significant portion of her face that jutted further into view from her eyes than she had always experienced as a human, and this only made it worse. She mewed and sobbed as quietly as she could.
Jon hugged her and started purring. And the absurdity of that gesture got Karyn laughing bitter pouts of laughter. And before she knew it, she was purring herself, and no longer crying.
"No fair, being the emotional anchor when this has affected you more than me, physically at least. That just makes me feel like I'm even more hysterical and unreasonable. But seriously, Jon, what are we going to do?"
"It's not that bad, is it?" Jon asked.
"That's not what I meant. You said before that you would specifically wish that no one would remember me as always having been as I would be post-change. And then I wished that the same conditions would apply to you, until I changed back, which now we know isn't going to happen. Doesn't that mean we can't even wish for everyone to think nothing is the matter, since that would contradict that wish?"
"Hmm. I don't think it's as bad as you think. I did wish everyone would remember the old Karyn as she was, but that doesn't mean that their brains would be unable to learn the fact that she has turned into a cat, or that they would panic or shun you when they find out. We should be able to wish for everyone to be incredibly gullible and just accept that we have changed because of some strange and rare disease, for instance."
"Oh. How much can the stone screw with people's minds, anyway?"
"A lot," Jon answered. "I did an experiment with that earlier, before I told you about it. It was horrifying. For 20 minutes, everyone else in town thought they were Michael Jackson."
"I don't remember that," Karyn said.
"Be glad. Be very glad you don't remember that, Karyn. There were young Michaels, prancing around, singing, shaking their hips, dancing in perfect choreography like life was a fanciful B-movie musical, dancing around the streets dressed as zombies, singing Thriller, battling with an opposing army that was singing Bad. There were older Michaels, hanging around the zoo in large numbers, looking strangely at the chimpanzees. There were older Michaels dangling younger michaels over ledges, all of them trying their best to speak in soprano voices, and everyone who was black was crying, while trying to whiten their skin with chlorine bleach and hydrogen peroxide. It was a horrifying ordeal, fortunately it only lasted for 20 minutes and nobody remembered it or had any lasting consequences afterwards."
So you think we can probably pull it of then," Karyn asked.
"Oh, without a doubt," Jon confirmed.
After making some meticulously detailed wishes, Karyn and Jon fell asleep together in Jon's insufficiently large bed, wearing customized pajamas.
The next morning, Jon got up, got to her feet, and shakily walked to the bathroom. Jon was having a lot of trouble keeping balanced this morning, usually was not so out of it. Jon reached for her pajama bottoms and missed, when trying to reach inside them, her paws ineptly sliding over the fabric, not grabbing anything.
"Oh, right. Paws. And I don't have a dick to grab hold of anyway. That actually happened yesterday."
Jon was trying to figure out how to relieve herself without making a mess, and the situation was kind of urgent. She wasn't even completely sure where it was supposed to come out! And she had all that lush, soft fur around the area, and she didn't want it to be urine-soaked. So she managed to shed her pajamas and slipped into the shower. There was always that solution.
"Ahhh," Jon said, comfortable. "So that's how it works with girls. At least being like this hasn't caused some psychological aversion to water. Of course it's warm water, and discomfort is probably the only reason cats normally hate water."
About 2 minutes into the shower, after Jon was done with her most embarrassing business, the shower door opened up, sending Jon into a blind panic.
"It's me!" Karyn said. Jon sighed in relief.
Despite the superhuman hearing, Jon still had no chance of hearing Karyn's soft footsteps over the white noise of the water in the shower.
"I just thought it might be nice if, you know. Especially since you don't know any girl stuff."
Karyn gave Jon an anatomy lesson, along with a bit about hygiene, which wasn't a complete surprise to Jon, he had been a male with curiosity and access to pictures on the internet after all. They tenderly tended to scrubbing their and each others' bodies, and went through an entire bottle of shampoo. And at the end, Karyn tried to bring up a concern she had.
"Jon, I don't know how to say this, but, I kind of, need to..."
"You need to pee, don't you?"
"Yeah."
"I did it 2 minutes before you came into the shower. Go ahead, it doesn't bother me, it's going right down the drain after all."
"Jon! I can't! Not with..."
"Don't worry about it Karyn. You don't want to make a mess and drench all that fine fur with the smell of piss for the rest of the day. This is the best way. Come on Karyn, don't be embarrassed." Jon hugged her from behind, squeezed her top set of breasts and started purring, shaking Karyn's whole body. This act of standing together like this also made it considerably easier for the two of them to stay balanced on their back paws. "I'm closing my eyes, if that makes it any better. Just let it out, Karyn, I don't find anything about your body gross."
Jon felt a trickle of warmer liquid than the shower's water striking her back paws for a few seconds, and their mutual increased sense of smell immediately found the scent quite noticeable, before it too dissolved into the flowing shower water and disappeared down the drain.
"That was pretty sexy too," Jon said with a chuckle. Jon felt her nipples in her pawpads and said, "and I know you were turned on by that as well."
"Oh my god, Jon, I can't, I don't, I can't believe that just..."
"Relax Karyn, it's only me here. You're safe. You're safe here. Just relax. Relax." Jon's hypnotic words were accompanied by hypnotic purring, and Karyn soon was purring along with it. And a few more drops of warm liquid landed on their back paws as they huddled together like that, this time, some of them from Jon too. Some of it trailed down Karyn's tail too. She should be grossed out by that, but she wasn't, she felt honored that they were in such a state that they could do this. And Karyn's mood improved drastically. It occurred to her that she really couldn't help but love being like this with Jon. Hiding literally nothing, not even peeing in the shower. Just that the two of them had closened their relationship in this way was one thing, but with the transformation, it was hard not to think of it as like being wrapped in a blanket of happiness.
Of course after the shower, they learned quite abruptly that drying off was not going to be as simple a matter as usual. Fortunately, Jon had a blow drier with heating elements in one of the bathroom drawers, an old device that had not been used in years, but it did the job. At the end, the two of them were incredibly fluffy and soft.
They got dressed together in some of their newly created clothes and went downstairs to Jon's house's kitchen.
Jon's mom asked "so, are you two feeling better?"
"Feeling better?" Jon asked in confusion.
"You came down with feline flu. I can see the toll it has taken on you both!"
"Oh, yes," Jon said with disguised sarcasm, since she hadn't been sick, "I'm feeling much better."
"Me too. I feel like I could run as fast as a cheetah," Karyn said with a smile. Jon looked at her and shook her head at the ridiculous joke.
"But are either of you in shape to go to school? Even if you feel great, we don't want you passing it on to the other kids."
Jon and Karyn looked at each other. Maybe they ought to roll with it.
"By the way, there isn't a lot of information on feline flu online, but it all suggests that any physical transformation side effects are permanent, and the victims often need therapy in the more severe cases. And you two sure look like severe cases to me, especially you, Jon. I don't mean to invade your privacy on that matter, but it looks like you experienced a gender change too."
In wishing this made-up disease into existence, it had been made with a few rare cases of history and its characteristics were somewhat known. About 5% of the cases involved a gender change.
"Yes, mom. I guess I'm your daughter now," Jon confirmed.
"I'll leave it up to you, if you want to change your name, son. You're my Jonny boy and you always will be, but if you want to officially change that, I'll get the paperwork for it."
"No, mom, I'm fine. It turns out that, um, Karyn, can I tell her?"
"I'm a lesbian," Karyn announced. "I really really prefer girls, everything else being the same, though I liked Jon before. But now, we're both genuinely attracted to each other. So you see, we're kind of, not that upset by this, it's maybe a mixed blessing, but there is an upside to it that we're both happy with."
"Oh, I see. Well, Jon, I always wanted to see you closer to Karyn, I thought she was a catch for you, and this isn't quite what I had in mind, but if this is the only way that it could work, I am happy if you're happy. You're my boy."
"Thanks, mom." Jon pounced on his mom and cuddled against her and purred.
"Oh my goodness, if you're happy like this, I can certainly see an upside to it too, you're so adorable. I'm actually kind of jealous, I may not mind catching it from you. If it's still catchy."
"Are you serious, mom? Would you want to catch it?"
"I'm, I'm not sure. Especially not sure if I ended up your daddy," she said. "But also I have obligations and it would interfere with my work, even if it would be fun on a personal basis."
"Oh there's a disturbing thought," Jon grumbled. But she filed away considering the possibility of changing her mother into a spry catgirl, maybe wishing a few years off her biological age while she was at it, if it would make her happy.
They went off to school, walking on all fours as that was the only feasible way to travel such a distance on foot, wearing specialty shoes designed for their front paws in addition to differently modeled shoes for the back. It was even weirder for Jon and Karyn to be reminded that their front paws were designed for walking on, not primarily as hands, but it made it a lot more comfortable walking on hard concrete. They put their front shoes into their backpacks when they got there.
"Oh my god!" Sarah McMillan shouted at them. "Look what the cat dragged in! So the rumors were true!"
Karyn grumbled. "At least I'm not a female dog unlike some people, Sarah."
"Ha! Weaksauce comeback considering that at the end of the day, I'm still a human being."
"Assuming your biomass isn't in my digestive tract, being assimilated into my body, Sarah."
"Oh my god! Did you just threaten to eat me? Maybe I should call animal control, ah ha ha!"
Karyn sprung. And fear suddenly was on Sarah's face. She ran. But you should never run away from a big cat in fear, it triggers their chasing instinct.
"Karyn, what are you doing!?" Jon gasped in shock. At first she was afraid that Karyn had really gone for the throat and had actually killed Sarah, but nope, any feline instincts were tempered by a 3 pound brain. Karyn had pinned Sarah down, and was vigorously licking her face all over. Sarah was crying in fear, and silent unwillingness to admit that she was really getting off on being held down against her will and licked by Karyn as a catgirl like this, with her rough tongue.
"Gee, it would be a shame if someone caught my feline flu Jon, wouldn't you say? How long do you suppose it will be contagious?"
"Oh, a few days, I'd say," Jon said, looking away.
"When do you suppose it might take effect, if it happens, Jon?"
"Oh, I'd say by about an hour after the end of the school day," Jon said, ambivalent about a well-laid plan to wish Sarah into a catgirl, but narrowly deciding on doing it. Jon was not too fond of Sarah either. And the decision firmed her resolve to change her mother, too. Why not. She definitely wouldn't be changing her mother to a male though.
Sarah was inwardly elated to hear this. But they must never know, she thought to herself. They must never ever know.
