sex: 2/10
violence: 3/10
profanity: 2/10

Categories: Male to Hermaphrodite, Hybrid, PSI

Timeline: 2064

Author's Note: This is a kinda MORFS/Chakat crossover story. It was written to be canon to the MORFS universe, and treats the Chakat universe as fiction.

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Chapter One: Getting Ready For School

"Hello Moo," I crooned as I cuddled my gray and white tomcat. I had walked out into the back yard to pick him up. He looked lonely out there, doncha know.

Actually, he's my sister's kitty. Nobody told him that, though. Or, rather, he's not listening.

typical cat.

Sometimes you choose the cat, and sometimes the cat chooses you. I think that my sister is a little miffed that her cat loves me better.

I wanted to name him Graycloud because of his gray and white pattern. Suzie, my sister, decided that he should be named Moo because he has the patchy pattern of a holstein cow. The fact that his patches are gray and not black doesn't seem to matter.

Yeah, my little eleven year old sister is weird. I love her anyway.

Moo was starting to give me the strong paw. He can only take so much adoration before wanting to get away.

Typical cat.

Of course, getting the strong paw made me want to hug him even tighter. "Prepare to receive corporal cuddles," I told him. I laid my head on him and gave him snuggles. If he could have rolled his eyes, he would have.

Dad chose that moment to take a picture of us. It turned out to be the last picture of me in my pre-morfs body.

My nose started to itch, so I set Moo down and turned away.

I blew a mighty sneeze that lifted my feet off the ground. Grandpa always said that one should have a sneeze to be proud of.

I walked back into the house to the sound of my sister singing, "Jimmy's getting MORFS, Jimmy's getting MORFS."

"Am not!" I said, sticking my tongue out with great dignity. "It must be that scruffy tomcat of yours making me sneeze."

That's me, Jimmy Miller; a proud sophomore at Jenson High School. At the advanced age of fifteen, I am definitely ripe for a case of MORFS. I didn't feel nearly bad enough for this to be a case of the change, though.

My own cat, Sir Stubford Cuddlepurr, decided that it was his turn to receive some love.

Yes, Sir Stubford Cuddlepurr. You don't think that my sister is the only weird one in the family, do you?

I picked him up and gave him squeezie hugs. "Hi Stubby."

I call him Stubby because he has maybe an inch of tail. He was born that way. Apparently, there is some American Bobtail in his ancestry. I doubt that he is pure bred, but he definitely has the sweet disposition of that breed.

Sweet? Actually, he's positively needy.

"You had better get out to the bus," my mother called from her office.

Yes, I have a stay at home mom who telecommutes. Sometimes I'm happy that she's always here for us, and sometimes I would be happy to not be under her gaze all the time -- not that I want to make trouble or anything like that. Nope, not me.

To be fair, I can't accuse her of being a helicopter mom. Yes, she's around the house. No, she doesn't watch our every move or constantly hound us.

I gave Stubby a few more strokes, gently set him to the ground, and gave him some back scritchies as he walked away.

As I was approaching the bus stop, I saw my BFF Catniss. She claims that she didn't name herself after the main character in that old dystopian novel, but I know better. After all, shi's a lot like the fictional Katniss Everdeen.

I ran up to her and gave her a big glomp. "Mmmmmmmm Chakat hugs are the best!"

"I'm not a chakat."

"Yes you are. You're totally a biped chakat. Just look at that tail. And the..."

"Don't go there, Jimmy."

"Don't go where?" I asked with the best look of innocence I could manage plastered on my face.

She just snorted. I guess the ritual is getting kind of old.

What is a chakat? I'm glad you asked.

You see, way back before MORFS came to be, a guy named Bernard Doove started writing stories in a universe that contained all kinds of anthropomorphic furry type critters. They were genetically engineered originally to be used as super soldiers, slaves, and the like. There were aliens and star ships and all the fun things that we nerdy types love

Of course, the whole slavery thing didn't go over well. A huge war and lots of death later, the morphs were free.

One prophetic thing about the chakat universe is that there were lots of bigots that hated furs. It must be a universal part of human nature. Bigotry, that is. Not hating furs.

Oh, yeah. The chakats? They are taurs.

The furries in that universe are pretty much like our current absolute hybrids. Some of those morphs have four legs and two arms -- kind of like the classic centaur, except that the 'human' part is a furry with a muzzle and a furry hide and all the stuff that goes with it. There are wolftaurs, foxtaurs, equitaurs (like a centaur, but with a horse face,) and the like.

But the best of all is the chakat -- named after their creators, Charles and Katherine Turner. Chakats are awesome -- smart, strong, dexterous, cuddly...

Sorry, got carried away.

Their front paws are like hands with stubby fingers, giving them four hands to work with. They have a long prehensile tail that's capable of lifting quite a bit of weight. They are gregarious and huggy and kind and, did I mention cuddly?

Oh, yes. The author invented new pronouns for them because they are hermaphrodites. Instead of she and her, they use shi ("shay") and hir ("hair.")

So, when my BFF Carl morphed into a dual-sexed absolute cat hybrid with a long prehensile tail, I couldn't resist calling the newly dubbed Catniss a chakat. I also half jokingly use the pronouns from the Chakat universe.

Catniss has the sturdy build of a chakat. Due to her digitigrade stance, shi is six feet tall. Shi has the coloration of a cougar, complete with the black marks on hir muzzle.

And shi has soft, cuddly fur all over hir curvy kitty body.

So... hugging my friend, you say? Isn't that kind of unmanly, you say?

Well, I guess some may think so. My dad taught me that showing affection is not unmanly. Hiding behind the trappings of macho is unmanly.

Besides, who could resist hugging the big cuddly kitty?

I would like to be a bit more than friends with Catniss, but shi's still getting used to hir new form and gender.

Being an empath, shi knows how I feel. Shi hasn't said no, but neither has shi jumped head first into a new relationship. It's too soon for that, and we have plenty of time. Meanwhile, our relationship is pretty much the same as it has always been.

"We'll have to have that Antares Mercenary rematch after school," I said as I slipped out of hir hug. Just in time to avoid blowing snot all over hir, I turned around and gave another mighty sneeze.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I hope I don't get you sick."

"Nonsense. I seem to have inherited a resistance to everything. I haven't been sick since I morfed."

This time, I got that characteristic crackly feeling in my sinuses that I told me that I was actually coming down with something. I just sighed, figuring that I would have to grit my teeth and try to make it through the day.

Once we got seated on the bus, we played some networked games on our trans-cosmic open source portable game consoles. Between games, we talked about the game that we were writing to sell on that platform. People like to tell us that we have about as much of a chance of making it big in the game business as we have of making it in professional baseball or something like that, but we refused to be discouraged. Dad told us that the lowest people are those that try to destroy other people's dreams. Better than that, he sometimes gave us a little help with our programming.

By the time we got to the school, I was feeling better. Or, at least, I thought that I was feeling better.

As soon as I got up, my stomach rebelled. I held my hand over my mouth and ran for the exit. Most people got out of my way hastily -- all except Randy Steward. Randy gets his greatest pleasure from giving people grief -- especially morfs and morfie lovers.

Randy stood between me and the exit, spreading his arms wide and saying, "Where are you going so fast, dickweed?" He held out his hand palm first as I tried to come to a stop.

I almost doubled up in pain as my stomach hit the palm of his hand. My head leaned back as I fell forward and I projectile vomited my breakfast -- right into his face and chest.

Fortunately for me, the bus driver saw it and several students were recording it with their cell phones and eComs. I got taken to the nurse's office and Randy got to talk to the principal. Catniss collected my backpack and carried it to my locker for me.

Of course, the nurse did what she does for anyone who comes in feeling sick. She poked me, put my blood on the strip, and shoved it into the machine.

Ding!

MORFS.

Okay, so my sister was right.

You know the drill. Mom came and got me, took me to our pediatrician, then took me home.

It's a bit cumbersome stripping and putting on pajamas with that MORFS automatic IV thing locked on your arm, but it beats having to choke down those nasty stim pack bars. I don't know if my stomach would have put up with that. I'll take the interveinous stim packs any day.

Mom pushed the go to sleep button and I was out.

Chapter Two: Down For The Count

The next several days went by in a fevered blur. It was particularly bad when my body started stretching out and growing some little stubs of limbs. My dad had to pick me up and carry me to the bathroom, then shower me like I was an invalid or a baby or something.

But that middle set of limbs finally grew out and grew stronger, and my legs got all crooked. "Crooked as a dog's hind leg," as my grandpa used to say.

And they were. Crooked as a dog's hind leg, that is. Or, as I prefer to think of them, crooked as a cat's hind leg. Or a chakat's hind leg.

I'm not clueless. I figured that I was becoming some kind of a taur as soon as I started getting those middle limbs. I've studied the Doctors Martin's on line classes enough to know that our own personalities, desires, and thoughts can have some effect on our eventual change. I also know that most hybrid traits are picked up from our environment -- and I'm constantly cuddling my kitties.

Meanwhile, construction noises were going on in the basement. I had started hearing them soon after discovering that I was turning into a taur.

I won't bore you with the details. My front legs got longer and stronger. I grew fur all over my body, even my face. I got a muzzle on said face. I went through stim packs like they were going out of style. The shower was getting cramped. Fortunately, it was a bathtub-shower, so I still kinda fit. Getting one's tail caught in the sliding door hurts.

Chapter Three: A New Me

Finally, I woke up feeling refreshed and energetic. Dirty and smelly, but refreshed.

As I was heading for the shower, Dad intercepted me. He led me down to the basement and into spacious bathroom with a taur toilet, a huge shower, and a fur dryer. While I had been upstairs morfing, Dad was busy setting me up with my very own taur-sized bedroom and bathroom. I gave him my very first chakat hug. He wrinkled his nose, but smiled anyhow.

You never appreciate a toilet that actually fits and does its job until you have had to crowd yourself into an undersized room. And it was great to be able to actually move around in the shower. The multi nozzle fur dryer made short work of what would otherwise have been a long and onerous daily chore.

Yep, my daddy loves me. Why else would he go to so much trouble making sure that I have a nice place to live?

After drying off, I checked myself over. I knew exactly what to expect if I had, indeed, morfed into a chakat. There was no guarantee that I had, though.

Muzzle.

Check.

Head full of long white hair.

Check.

Luxurious White fur with gray patches from nose to tail.

Check.

Two hands with claws on the tip of each finger.

Check.

Two large furry breasts.

Check.

Two front legs with hand-paws.

Check.

Two digitigrade hind legs.

Check.

One sheathed human-like penis.

Check.

One human-like vulva.

Check.

One long prehensile tail.

Check.

Two separate heartbeats.

Check.

Yes, chakats have a stomach, a heart, and two lungs in each torso. Most of the digestive system is in the lower torso, so there is plenty of room in the slender upper torso for lots of muscle.

Alas, both of my stomachs were empty.

As I carried my famished self upstairs to raid the kitchen, Suzie gleefully informed me that Randy had come down with morfs. She heard it straight from the horse's mouth -- I mean Randy's little sister.

"Susan Quelita Miller! We do NOT laugh at other people's misfortune!"

"He deserves it! He's such an a --"

She cuts herself off just in time, earning no more than a nasty glare from her mother.

"Actually, it remains to be seen if he unfortunate. I'm delighted with my change."

Suzie gives me a weird look. "I never expected a boy to be happy about losing his dick!"

"Su --"

I hastily swallowed the last of my power bar. "I didn't lose anything! See?" I rolled on my back, exposing my underside.

"James Michael Miller! Just what do you think you are doing? Did you just flash your little sister?"

"Moooooom! Taurs aren't supposed to wear stuff on the lower torso. And chakats don't have any body modesty. And everybody deserves to know how I changed."

Mom just sighed and shook her head.

"We don't live on Chakona, dear. Please try to respect us bipeds' quaint sensibilities."

"What else did you gain?" asked my sister.

"Well, I have two hearts, two stomachs, --"

"Two boobies!" she interrupted.

"Speaking of which, don't you think you should cover them up?" asked Mom.

"They are covered up," I said as I stroked the fur.

"James Michael Miller! Quit groping yourself!"

" ... Four lungs, a very fine tail..." I used said tail to tickle Suzie's nose, causing her to giggle. " ... A sheath to keep things hidden. You know, because I can't wear pants? And a complete female reproductive system. And extra legs. And extra hands. And a luxurious fur coat!"

"Just like Moo!" Suzie said. She came over and looked at my hand paws. "How do you use them without falling over?"

"Like this!"

I reared up on my hind feet and used my hand paws to grab Suzie around the waist and throw her up into the air. Luckily, we have a tall ceiling in the great room. I caught her with my regular hands, gave her a quick kiss on the forehead, twisted my upper torso around, and deposited her on my lower back.

She giggled and held tight to my upper torso when I took off toward the sliding glass door. I flung it open and ran into the back yard, heading toward the woods at full speed. She screamed as I leapt up into our favorite climbing tree and scrambled to the top platform in seconds flat.

She climbed off of my back and went around to my front. She jumped, giving me a tackle hug. I wrapped my furry arms around her by reflex. "You're the best big brother ever!"

"Am I a good big sister, too?"

"Yay! I get a big brother and a big sister all at the same time!"

After a little while, we both got bored. She slipped down the tree like a little monkey. I just stared at the branches, trying to figure out how to lower my new quadrupedal body down the tree.

Suzie looked up at me with a smirk on her face. "Wutsa Matter? Kitty stuck up a tree?"

I stuck my tongue out at her and swung down, using my regular hands and my hand paws.

Mom called us in to lunch, which reminded me of how hungry I was. The power bar did little more than take the edge off.

Beef strogenoff! My favorite! I heaped a generous portion on my plate and ate in a reasonably civilized manner. I only earned one or two glares from Mom.

After lunch, Mom and I went to my old room and started cleaning it out. All of my pants went into boxes slated for the clothing swap store. After some experimentation, we decided that all of my regular shirts would go, too. I was just too well endowed to reasonably wear them. We kept my larger t-shirts, but they were really only suitable for casual wear.

Socks? Don't need them anymore, either.

Shoes? Boots? Gone.

Jackets and coats? They don't fit anymore. Besides, I have a built-in fur coat. I might need something once winter really descends upon us. Fortunately, that's a few weeks away.

Once we were done with the clothing, I put the sad little bit that was left into a single drawer. I threw a blanket over my lower back, then balanced my dresser on the blanket. A quick walk down two flights of stairs, and it was in my new bedroom. I wonder if it'll ever be full again.

After that, I made short work of my computer desk and book shelves. A final sweep to catch little things like posters, figurines, models, and stuff like that, and I was moved in.

I sat on my taur pad and relaxed for a bit.

For all that I look like a chakat, I realize that they are fictional creatures. I can't be sure that I match the archetype described in the various stories.

I have all of the external features. I can feel two heartbeats and feel two sets of lungs expand as I breathe. It kind of feels like I have two stomachs, but I can't be sure.

Then, there are the attitudes and culture of the chakat nation. We are gregarious and polyamorous. The concept of jealousy is pretty much unknown to chakats.

I thought about my friend Catniss. What if we developed the kind of relationship that I desired, and then she decided to share herself with someone else?

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine it. I think I would be a little concerned that we would leave me, but the jealousy that I could easily imagine when I was human just wasn't there.

How would I feel in a plural relationship? The thought put a smile on my face.

In the chakat universe, all of the Earth-based furs and a good number of the humans formalize their relationships in a three tiered system.

Companions are just that -- companions. Essentially, friends with benefits.

Den mates generally live together, and often share the raising of children. They provide a stable household for their kids.

Life mates have made a commitment to stay together for life. That doesn't stop them from having other companions, denmates, and lifemates. They say that love should be multiplied, not divided.

I wonder if I have empathy.

I reached out with my mind. Mom was relieved that my case of morfs was over. She was a little concerned; probably about the culture changes.

Suzie Q was petting Moo, and feeling happy about having a big sister.

Dad was also feeling relieved. And he had that warm glow that comes from a job well done. Probably my room.

I felt the underpinning emotion of love with all of them. That made me smile and purr.

I sat and thought some more. I needed to think of a good chakat name.

I was just starting a game of Antares Mercenaries when Mom informed me that it was time for me to go shopping. I wanted to groan about it, but I literally don't have a thing to wear to school. I suppose I could have gone nude, but that would be asking for trouble.

Chapter Four: My Best Friend Forever

Dad was letting Catniss in the front door just as I came up the stairs. She ran towards me full speed and gave me a tackle hug.

Glomp!

I gave as good as I got. "Hi! I'm Chakat Graycloud, daughter of Anita and Darren Miller."

Something inside both of us connected. It was that empathic feedback that chakats are said to need.

"Mmmmmmmm... Chakats give the best hugs," Catniss purred.

If I had any doubts about Catniss's feelings for me before, they were gone now. Shi tilted her head down and gave me a kiss full on the muzzle, complete with tongue wrestling. After a few all too short minutes, she disengaged and looked me in the eyes. "Will you be my companion?" she asked.

"Yes!"

And we kissed some more.

"Break it up!" Mom said, but there was a smile on her face. "Time to get some duds for your furry hide."

"Coming with me?"

"That's part of why I came," Catniss said.

"And the other part?"

"To see if you turned out as well as your mother described."

She followed me out the door, closing it behind us. This made me aware of the fact that my furry new taur body is undoubtedly going to cause me some problems. How am I going to close the door behind myself without awkwardly turning around?

Oh! Prehensile tail! That ought to work.

Mom went ahead and pulled open the sliding door to the van. "Ta-da!" There, in front of me, was a taur seat -- pretty much the way I had imagined in the chakat stories. Dad had been busy again. I love my daddy!

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