Mister Nibs and Mouse
copyright 2011 Faeriemage
Sometimes the most ordinary people are extraordinary. Sometimes they aren't even people at all.

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Author's Note: While waiting the strike of the clock so I could post my next chapter in 'I Joined the Center and all I got was This?!' and watching a new Anime. I had the strangest idea, what if cats could talk. All cat's everywhere.

So, I began to write. Don't ask me where Cthulhu came from, as I'll never talk copper, see.

Sorry, I'm a bit punchy. It's late. I'd intended to write a bit more before I called a first chapter of this done, but I think I should see first if it is at all well received. So, let me know what you all think.

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I had been turned down for a job again. It was something simple, but it seemed to take everything out of me. I loosened my tie as I collapsed into the sagging collection of fabric springs and backaches that I called a couch.

It had been another one of those days in a long string of days like that.

My girlfriend of ten years had left me on a day like that, taking my dog with her. She said something about the dog I won't repeat here, suffice it to say I didn't want him anymore after she told me.

Apparently I had commitment issues or something. I told her that she had intimacy issues. She really got pissed at that remark. She took my mom's china, my grandparent's silverware, and a good chunk of my dignity.

All I got left with was her cat.

Funny that. I'd never been much of a cat person. Still wasn't if truth be told. But there was no way I was throwing any living creature out on the street, and least not before I found myself there myself.

I really didn't think that was very far off at this point.

I'd been out of work for a year at this point, and I despaired of ever getting a job in my chosen profession.

I was a professional geek.

No, not a circus performer, a computer geek. In the past ten years I'd molded myself into a problem solving machine. A computer tech bar none. A real wunderkind. Too bad the wunderkind was more wunder than kind.

Yeah, I know. I'm old for the industry at 34 years. I had an okay phone demeanor, but I kept getting myself in trouble with my big mouth. I would tell one too many people what I really thought of their inability to double click on a #$% #@#$%@ icon on their. . .

Yeah, I've got anger issues.

I blame the testosterone.

I blame my mother.

I blame everything but myself, or at least I did until that day I'd been turned down for a job once again.

So, I slip of my tie and toss it across the room to hang from the front door knob. One of the things I've spent so much time practicing it looks, and feels natural. I think it is the years I spent putting a ball through a hoop in high school and college, well before I dropped out to become a computer geek.

I thought I was about to hit the big time. I got an MCSE in Windows 95, and I was the big man on campus. . .for a couple months until Windows 98 came out, and then ME and 2000 and XP. I never got another MCSE.

I figured they were worthless after the first one got me a job with people better qualified with less schooling.

I am rambling. Sorry. It's just, ok, let me start over. this was the day that everything changed.

So, I'd had an interview with an internet service provider, or ISP for those in the know, wink wink, and they told me I was under qualified for their entry level position.

I didn't think it was too much of a problem. I'd gotten to chat up the cute brunette who was sitting there waiting for the interview after me. I'd felt pretty confident going into the interview, because I knew my stuff so much better than the brunette, and it made me feel. . .hopeful.

So, I go out to my car, waiting for a bit for the brunette to come out. I'm there an hour and nothing. About this point I've had enough so I call her number, yeah she gave it to me. Yeah, I'm that smooth.

"I'm so sorry you didn't get the job. They offered it to me on the spot."

"Hey, maybe we could hang out sometime."

"Maybe not. I only gave you my number so you could put in a good word for me if you got the job."

Ouch, yeah, I'm not as smooth as all that.

So, I drove home without any further mood destroyers, sit on the couch, loosen my tie, and throw it on the door knob.

The cat comes in the open window, back from wherever cats go when they leave their domain, and hops up on my lap demanding attention.

"Well, at least you haven't abandoned me yet."

Human's are so stupid, thinking they rule this place.

"What?"

Um, Cthulhu. . . Meow.

"Ok, Mr. Nibs, I heard you speak."

Meow. He batted my hand with his head.

"Look, I heard you invoke the name of Cthu. . .

Human, if you know what's good for you, you wont invoke his name aloud.

"This isn't a Lovecraft novel."

No, Its reality. Lovecraft was a psychic, much like you seem to be becoming. He talked to his cats.

"I've finally gone insane. I'm talking to a cat about the great old one Cthu. . ."

Mr. Nibs scratched me. Unlike most humans, you've actually heard Cthulhu's name pronounced, even if it was only in your mind. You are now capable of giving it the proper inflection.

"You are looking at me like you really are speaking to me."

Mr. Nibs made a growling noise and then pounced me. He was big for a cat, but that makes him small to me. However, the shock of it all caused me to lie flat on the couch and next thing I knew I was looking up into his angry green eyes as he gave me the dressing down of a lifetime.

Listen up, Mouse. You are even pathetic by human standards. Of course none of you will ever achieve the perfection that is cat, but some of you come awfully close.

"Mouse?"

Yeah, cause you talk a big game but when push comes to shove you're mostly bones and skin and gone in a single bite.

The way he was looking at me made me shiver.

We give animal names to our humans. Makes them seem a little more. . .real to us that way. You have the second worst name we give a human.

"What's the worst?"

Do you even really have to ask?

He had a valid point.

Because I never listened to my mom, and took up swearing, I now have a problem on my hands, namely you. You have it within your ability to destroy the entire world with a single misspoken world. I think I'm just going to have to kill you.

"There's got to be another way," Notice my state of mind at this point. I didn't even question the talking cats ability to follow through on his threat.

Let me think on it. You are pretty good at living up to your only reason for existence, scratching me behind my ears. Much better than Dog. And to think I once almost considered calling her Cat. Foul betray. . .ah

I figured at this point if I let him get worked up, that I was screwed, so I scratched and rubbed as if my life depended on it, which at that point I believed it did.

I realized as I was scratching and rubbing that Mr. Nibs had a point. A pretty good point. A valid point.

I was impotent, I know, bat word to apply to a guy, but life makes things like that seem unimportant, and it is the most fitting word.

It was the reason I was angry. I was pissed at myself for letting the world have its way with me. I was not out going enough. I let others pump me for information.

I presented this manly image to the world, when in reality, I was just a mouse. A timid, worthless little mouse.

I then thought of the cute brunette who'd gotten the job today instead of me.

I continued to think through my problems as I skritched and scratched and groomed Mr. Nibs.

"At least if I were a girl, my mousy behavior would be accepted, and might even get me more opportunities."

That's IT! You're a genius!

A sudden feeling of dread came over me. What had I said? I reviewed my thoughts for the last thirty seconds, and my dread became a cold stone of fear in my stomach. I'd said the thought aloud, and never intended to voice anything like it.

I liked being a man, damn it. Really liked it. I didn't want. . .didn't. I looked over at Mr. Nibs, and his eyes were glowing green. They were hypnotic in a way, and I felt my eyelids getting heavier and heavier.

The last thing I heard before the darkness consumed me was, Damn it, Feracles. I've told you before that you are not to perform magic without supervision until you are at least a thousand years old.

Momma?

~~~
"What happened?" I said in a very scratchy voice. I put a hand to my mouth and too things struck me simultaneously: The first that my hand was really small and smooth. The second that my lips were huge.

A memory of the evening before burst through my consciousness and I screamed. It was a very girly scream, which tore another one from my throat.

"No, no, no, no, no. This can't be happening. I can't be a woman. What will my landlord think? What will my MOM think? I can't handle this."

At that moment, I realized that there was something else I needed to handle if I didn't want to turn my couch into a swimming pool.

I handled it as best I could without the man parts I was so used to, flushed, and just sat there not moving.

My life as I knew it was over. This all had to be a dream.

"Yes, it's a dream, and this freaky, and somewhat sexy, female voice I'm speaking with is all in my imagination."

It's not a dream, Mouse honey.

Now, since I haven't described him, you wouldn't know that the completely white Persian that walked into my bathroom at that point wasn't Mr. Nibs. Besides, the voice in my head sounded distinctly matronly.

Mr. Nibs is also a Persian, but with more orange and grey to his coloration.

My son the daft child he is decided to curse you.

"Can't you un curse me?"

Ok, cackling in your head is really creepy.

Unfortunately, he botched the fifth couplet of the fifth stanza. Basically, that means we have to await a greater convergence to be able to cancel this spell.

"And when is the next convergence thingy?"

If this were a story, this is the part where she would tell me that I have to wait a week, or a month, or six months or something and all will be right in the world.

Oh, there's not going to be another one in your lifetime. The last one was last night, which was the only reason he was able to complete the spell without killing himself.

"What!?"

My son named you well, Mouse.

I collapsed to the floor saying 'no' over and over.

I repeated it to myself, and kept hoping I'd wake up. I began to sob and I kept saying it.

There there, honey. I've given Mr. Nibs the worst punishment that cat kind can ever receive. I changed his true name to be his human name.

She rubbed her body against my bare leg and purred, speaking soothing words to my mind.

I had a funny though, which I shared with her. "You look like SPECTRE's cat."

I was SPECTRE's cat.

Wow, I had a real life Bond girl in my apartment. I laughed hysterically at my bad joke.

It'll be okay, Mouse. You'll see.

"How will it be okay, huh? I'm a girl. I have no ID. I have no proof of my skills. I'm done. My life is over."

Your old life is over, Mouse. Your new life is just beginning.

I shook my head and stood to run my face under some water. It felt flushed and puffy.

The face in the mirror was mine, and yet it wasn't. I could see the similarities to myself there, but mostly there were differences. Like my hair and eyes. They were my grandmother's red and green. I even had a bit of her complexion now. White as milk and smooth as cream she used to say in the long ago days of my youth.

Even at eighty when she died she hadn't had a wrinkle. . .

"Oh my. . .It can't be. Can it?"

What's that dear?

"My Gran was a Mouse, wasn't she? You turned her from a man into a woman too!"

Of course not. Never speak ill of the dead. Your Gran simply had great genes for a human. Some of you do. When my idiot of a son turned you into a woman, he simply tapped a bit into your inheritance.

"I can't handle any more of this. I'm leaving."

Wait, you can't go out like this. At least let me explain. . .

But I was done listening. Seeing my Gran's face in the mirror had given me an idea. If anyone would believe me, it was Mom, and two heads were better than one in coming to solutions about life's little problems.

I snorted at this. Only one morning as a girl and already I was calling it a little problem. As I began to dwell on it, I realized thinking it a little problem was a coping mechanism and moved myself mentally from the brink.

I slipped myself into my car, and spend the next thirty minutes driving my way to my Mom's house going no faster than the speed limit.

Luckily I got there without being pulled over, and went up to ring the bell. Usually I just walked in, but this time. . .

"Brad, you know you don't need. . .Mom?" Her eyes got wide, and I figured she thought she was seeing a ghost.

"No, Mom, it's me, Brad."

She fainted dead away. That could have gone better.