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John cried and held his cat. Rainbow the cat was confused and anxious at this but loved his master and comforted him as well as he could. He didn't understand the details of what was happening. That John knew something he didn't. That an insidious parasitic organism spawned from his own cells was growing inside of him and crushing the life out of him from the inside. Rainbow just knew his human was sad. He purred and tried to be cheerful for him, but knew something was wrong. He lived up to his name. John had named him that because he was such a paragon of cheerfulness.

To add insult to injury, John had to wait over a week to just meet with a veterinary oncologist to be provided with chemotherapy. As if it wasn't too late already by the time he even went in for the first appointment before the referral, which already had to be booked two weeks in advance. The system sucked so much. If they hadn't neglected him as last priority and had done the proper referrals and gotten on the ball when he knew something was amiss, the cancer might have been treatable. But John had to shortly say goodbye to his precious Rainbow.

"Never again," he said to himself. "This should never, ever happen again."

And so John found out everything he could about biochemistry. The approach of monoclonal antibodies seemed like the best one. There was a treatment that may have worked for Rainbow, if only it didn't merely work for humans, called Rituximab. But the research just hadn't been done for cats, because no one had bothered to. Well he would do it himself then. He broke boundaries, spoke to biochemists, bought materials on the dark web, and set up his own lab. And once he examined the problem, it wasn't hard for him to solve at all.

It turned out that John, though not the type of genius to do astronomically well on IQ tests, somehow had a knack for solving this particular type of problem in biochemistry, that no one else could. Once he put his mind to it, he produced something that didn't just kill lymphoma in cats, he made something that killed any cancer. A single injection, that would protect the individual for life, from any cancer. It was simply a matter of making it discern the difference between a cancer cell and a healthy one by DNA differences and the apoptosis genes being turned off, and make exceptions for cells that it identified as gestating in a pregnant mother cat so that it didn't kill kittens in the womb, and it was really hardly a nuisance at all. And then after accomplishing this astonishing feat, he went on to tackle what everyone would have thought impossible. Feline aging. By the end of the year, he had developed a single treatment which would make any housecat essentially biologically immortal.

Of course he astonished the FDA representatives with his results, not that the standards for veterinary medicine were very stringent, but it was fast-tracked and allowed to go forward with mass production and distribution. Before long, John was on the fast track to be a billionaire, with this product he invented and manufactured without even having any employees.

He was put on talk shows. The genius who cured cancer and aging. Except there was only one little thing. It still only worked for cats.

"So, this only works for cats then?" one talk show asked him. "What would happen if I used your drug myself anyway though?"

"Your immune system would destroy it. In fact, it won't even work on other species of cats, so it definitely won't work on humans. To that end, I'm working on alternate versions that will work for all the other species of cats, like lions and tigers, ocelots, etcetera, it should really help with their conservation."

"Well, how long do you expect it to be before you make it for humans?"

"Um. Until hell freezes over," he answered.

"Oh. So, do you not, think you can, is it harder for humans?"

"I'm sure it's no harder for humans. I could probably do it inside a week."

"But you're not going to."

"Nope. Fuck humans. Just did it for cats, I'll finish the job with the non-domesticated species, and then I'm cashing out my chips."

"You'd make hundreds of billions of dollars. Maybe trillions. What you got already would be pocket change."

"What I have already is 40 million dollars and at the rate I'm going, I'll get billions just by making more of what I already made. Do you realize that's already enough to fill the entire inside of a grayhound bus with hundred dollar bills? Having any more would lose all meaning. And I'm not doing it for the money. I'm doing it for the cats. I don't need to solve all the world's problems, and the world didn't give a shit about me or my cat when he was dying of cancer, I had to wait two fucking weeks to even get an appointment with a veterinarian that specialized in cancer when every passing hour mattered, why should the world expect any better treatment in return? Besides, doing it for humans would open up a can of worms I'm not interested in opening. Do you want an immortal despot? Imagine if Vlad the Impaler was still alive. Aren't you glad the vast majority of historical figures are dead? In fact, just imagine if Stalin had just lived a few years longer, he'd have nuked the world! He died JUST in time, if you ask me, right after Russia got the H-bomb, but before they had good missiles to deliver them. Probably just would have had to live two years longer, and he'd have fucked everyone. No, humans aren't worthy of this. Cats only. And I will die on that hill. No one's talking me out of it."

"But... Not even dogs?"

"I don't like dogs."

Boos came from the audience.

"Hey you people," John shouted indignantly into the crowd. "If you want it so bad, you can make it yourselves. That's what I did. Just do what I did. And I haven't taken anything AWAY from anyone, if you don't want what I'm selling, you don't have to buy it. I don't see any of you doing ANYTHING, who are you to complain that I'm not doing ENOUGH when you're all doing fuck-all with your petty little lives?"

The audience went quiet and the interview was concluded shortly after. He soon stopped appearing on talk shows as the glimmer of hope the people had started fading. Of course the cat lovers of the world rejoiced, and he certainly had plenty of supporters of his stance. But he settled into a life of quiet solitude. He was rich, but he was no longer the media center of attention. People came up to him trying to become his apprentice, to learn how to do what he did, and he always turned them away. It helped that he had always worn a face mask in all public appearances, so it was not publicly known what he even exactly looked like.

One day, as he sat on a bench in a park, he laughed to himself as he watched a woman walking a cat on a leash past him.

"I don't think he wants to be on that leash," John called out to her.

"He's a she," the woman said indignantly.

"Oh exCUSE me. That TOTALLY changes the issue."

"Hey I don't want her getting away from me and getting hurt, or worse," the woman replied.

The mocking smile disappeared from John's face. "That I understand, and respect," he said. "She's a beautiful cat."

"...thanks. I have another at home. Do you have any cats?"

"I used to," he said. "But he died. Cancer."

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that. Bad timing. A few years later, and he could have gotten that treatment, unless we're talking about a childhood cat from many years ago."

"No. It was, indeed, recent. A matter of a small amount of time. Though I also had a cat in my childhood I'd have liked to have saved too."

"It's not your fault," she said. It seemed like the right thing to say.

"Yes it is." I could have done what I did, years earlier, he thought. There's no reason I needed to wait for Rainbow to die first, just because I wasn't motivated.

"I don't know you, or your life, or the details, so it's not my place to say what is or what isn't, but it sounds like you have demons to wrestle with."

"Yes I guess so. Well, see you around." She waved goodbye and walked off with the cat.

The next day, she walked by at the same time with a different cat.

"Same bat time, different bat day, different, uh, bat cat," he said to her.

"Oh, it's you!" she said.

"That must be the other cat," he remarked.

"Yes, he's 18 years old. I thought, until a year ago, I was going to need to say goodbye to him soon. I guess I'm very lucky, that new treatment for cats is there."

"Yes, truly what the world needed, in my opinion."

"John Stannon. I wish I could shake his hand," she said wistfully.

"Well ok, if you insist," John said, holding out his hand.

The woman stared at him blankly before realization hit her.

"What, no, you're him?!"

"You didn't even know you were living near me?"

"I had no idea where you, I mean, they say you were just, a hermit now, I figured you were living in the wilderness or something."

"Well, that's a thought. I'm living on my OWN, but I still have my lab setup at home, and I have to manufacture the monoclonal antibodies, I can't exactly just relocate that easily. And I want to be near fedex and the post office."

"Oh shit. Wait, so, you're personally providing the entire world's supply all by yourself in your garage or something? And you have time to hang around on a park bench on top of that? How does THAT work?"

"I send it in concentrated form off to distribution centers, one bottle contains 50 thousand doses. They then dilute it, repackage it, and ship it all over."

"Oh," she said in wonder, realizing that actually made it plausible after all. "So ONE BOTTLE, how much would that be worth?"

"About 4 million dollars," he said.

"Holy SHIT."

"Of course that's not all profit, I have to pay a lot of that for the distribution process. Though technically, it's WORTH whatever I decide to charge for it. I was thinking of lowering the price, but you know, I stop and think about it, and I'm still not really gouging the customer, because that's still only 80 dollars per dose, with only one dose needed per 10 years, that saves thousands or tens of thousands in veterinary bills, and I'm going to more or less run out of customers before very long, so I need to get SOMETHING for it while I can."

"And you haven't even moved to a mansion or something? How big is your place?"

"2000 square feet," he answered.

"Oh my god, so you're not just a hermit but a miserly hermit."

"I prefer the term, cheapskate." That got her laughing.

"You COULD, you know, make a version for dogs. I know, just hear me out..."

"Look, I'm not out to save the world. My mission was to save the cats. Is there anything wrong with that?"

"No, I'm just saying, just for the money."

"Why would I need any more. What would I even spend it on. I'm not going to get a private jet. I'm not going to be one of those rich assholes everyone hates. I mean, of course people will hate me, someone's always going to hate you no matter what, but I'm fine with what I've done being my legacy. Just think. Cats could become like gods now, passed down generation to generation. In 500 years, someone could get the family cat, who was their great great great great great great great grandfather's cat, and that will just seem normal. That's a hell of a thing to be remembered for. I don't need to add anything to that."

"Hmmm. I see your point. But, I don't know, aren't you gonna kinda be, bored then?"

"Yeah, maybe."

"See, you need to solve a new PROBLEM. Maybe not cure aging and cancer in dogs, or humans, but just, to DO something of interest."

"Hmmmm. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm," he hummed loud.

"Can we, can I, take you out to dinner?" she asked.

"Ummm," he said suspiciously.

"What's wrong with that?"

"Women never showed interest in me BEFORE I was rich."

"Oh please. It's not about you being rich. I want to go on a date with the man who made it so that I wouldn't have to say any goodbyes to my cats for a long time, and even then, it'll likely be because of ME dying. Besides, I said I wanted to take YOU out to dinner. That means I was offering to pay."

"You can't be serious. Of course I'll pay. Unless you're super rich too, and you want to. What do you do for a living?"

"I'm a postal courier."

"A MAILman!"

"Mail PERSON," she corrected.

"Well my point is, you shouldn't be paying for dinner. Obviously I should be the one to pay for dinner. I don't care how grateful you are, that's just insane that you'd even consider paying given the circumstances. Besides, supposing you gave each of your two cats one dose, 160 dollars of my money was originally YOUR money, right? So really, you're the one who's going to be paying for dinner anyway!"

"My veterinarian charged me 220 dollars, EACH."

"Fucking markup! Fucking highway robbery! That makes me so angry... of course the joke's on them, they're going to be getting a lot less business from you now."

They went to dinner, and soon found themselves very much liking each other's company. They became not merely lovers, but best friends, and he was certainly friends with her cats. At long last he had actually found a like minded individual.

Weeks passed. Months.

"So, your birthday is tomorrow," John said to Sandra.

"Mmm," she said.

"You will be thirty..."

"DON'T SAY IT!" she begged.

"What's so bad about being 33? You know I'm 45, right?"

"Yeah, but you look really good for 45. Plus you're fit. You know, I have a conspiracy theory, that you actually DID cure human aging, you just used it on yourself."

"Ha! Look at my driver's license photo, that's from 6 years ago. Long before I even touched biotechnology. See? I've looked good for my age the whole time. Besides, if I had cured my aging, I would look like I was 18."

"You practically do..." she said grumpily.

"You want to see my high school graduation picture to see what I looked like when I was actually 18?"

He looked through the bookshelf in his living room and picked out a slim light blue book and opened it up. "There it is. Me 27 years ago. See? I have aged plenty since then."

"Jesus, you've aged like 10 years since then. You're actually not helping your case by showing me this."

"Well. I'm not going to deny I got a little lucky with my genetics. You didn't want to be married to a guy who looks much older than you though, right?"

"Yeah, but first of all, you already said you didn't want to get married, unless you changed your mind and that subtly was a proposal, and second of all, that just makes me feel worse by comparison, if I look like shit after 33 years."

"You don't look like shit."

"Thanks. That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me," she said in fake sincerity. "I don't, suppose, you could, make a cure for human aging, and just, keep it between us?"

"Heh. Well, I DO have a really great birthday present for you. It's not a cure for human aging, but you're going to love it, I guarantee it."

"Kiss me and tell me I'm pretty," she said. He did as requested.

The next day, she tried to pry out of him what her amazing present was. But he was tight-lipped. To her chagrin, he even made her go off to work without being given so much as a clue. On several occasions she had protested that she shouldn't still have to work when she had a rich husband slash boyfriend, but he reminded her, that a career was more than just about getting money. It was about having a purpose to one's life, about the satisfaction of a job done well. To which she had replied "Ok boomer." But she wasn't upset. It was only part time work after all. And it's not like he was entirely wrong. If she gave up working, she feared she really might lose all direction in life, not that delivering mail was some great purpose to be proud of in life, not when you're engaged to the man who cured aging and cancer in cats. She didn't want to just be living off of his resources, after all. She was no gold digger. She was no pet.

When she got back from work at 2 pm, because it was part time work after all, she could hardly contain her excitement over what her birthday present was going to be. Imagine her surprise, when he led her to the kitchen table, and she stood above a sandwich on a plate.

"I made this sandwich with all my love. Trust me, you will absolutely love it."

"You have got to be kidding me," she said.

"It's tuna salad. Personally made by me."

"Hmmm."

"You know, with how much you love tuna, you should be a cat yourself."

"Yeah, then your cure would work on me at least."

"Would you like to be a cat?" he asked as she sat down and took a bite of her sandwich.

"You know," she said, in between bites. "I think I really woul...." her sentence drifted off into a mumble as she fell forward. John quickly rushed over to catch her face in his hands to save her from smacking into the table.

He picked her up and carried her to the door to the basement and managed to open it. He should have opened it before picking her up, he realized. He carefully carried her downstairs and set her into the machine he had prepared. He put the breathing mask over her face and fastened it, closed the glass door to the machine, and pressed a button, causing it to fill with fluid. He couldn't wait to see how she would react when she realized what had been done. He had spent months working it all out. It was just like she had said. He needed to spend his time solving problems, if nothing else, just to fight the boredom. And it was perfect in so many ways. She was self-conscious about her age. She wanted to be a cat. And he didn't want to redo his treatment for humans. It was obvious what must be done.

He had designed a wide variety of new biotechnology for this task. He had accomplished what the human race on its own could have taken a century or more to do, through their painstaking process of peer reviewed discoveries and developments. It was all in secret. This was his technology. He sure hoped it all went without a hitch. It was no longer just about monoclonal antibodies, they were just too limited in their capabilities. He had developed genetically engineered viruses, to change the DNA of every cell of a subject's body all together. He had developed nanotechnology the rest of humanity could only dream of, some of which was capable of repairing damage to her body on a molecular basis, some of it capable of duplicating whole cells, some of it capable of changing the very shape of her body, some even of rewiring neurons in a methodical and controlled way. And currently, those nanomachines were entering her bloodstream. The tough part was that he essentially had to design the same thing twice, from different aspects. It wasn't enough to just rewrite her DNA. An amputee won't regrow their limbs even though their DNA says they should have two arms and two legs, living things don't just change to match what their DNA says they should look like, despite what TMNT may have misled you to believe, if a living thing gets its DNA mutated, it will not just automatically transmogrify into what its new DNA says it should look like. And if he only changed her body and not her DNA, not only would the anti-aging anti-cancer treatment not work on her, but her kids would just come out as regular humans too.

The first thing he did was reshape the scaffolding of her body, with the aid of adding biomass into her. Her body weight went up from 120 pounds up past 200, and then 300, and then settled at 382, as her body was reshaped to a proper feline form. He had contemplated the issue of her brain, and had decided the best option was just to make her into a large cat, rather than trying to deal with the issues of compressing her brain or worse, losing some part of it. In fact, her brain would be growing and end up about 30% heavier, as he kept all the previous neurons and connections, but added on the necessary brainpower needed for her new powerful olfactory sense. A cat wasn't a cat if she didn't have a superior sense of smell after all, or didn't have all the instincts and traits that truly made a cat a cat. Her skull was also being reshaped to not be like any cat seen in nature. That was one of the toughest parts. On the outside, it looked like a regular cat's head, but it needed to be able to accommodate a 3.5 to 4 pound brain. Which meant the skull needed to be redesigned and made thinner to make room for it. And then he needed to redesign the DNA to code for that shape too, entirely improvising it. What a pain THAT had been! With long trials and errors with computer modeling software to predict how the various changes to the DNA would physically manifest, he had finally gotten it to his satisfaction.

He rebuilt her muscles and peripheral nervous system, her organs. Another tough part was the voice box. He truly wanted to give her the full feline experience, and that meant that she shouldn't be speaking English, or however close a cat can come to making those sounds. But the way a nervous system grows and adapts and learns in the first place, meant that it would grow to allow her to talk if she understood the language and could make a reasonably close approximation of the same sounds. And anyone who has seen that old video of the cat saying "oh long Johnson" knows that cats really can make a lot of the sounds of human speech, they just normally can't learn to talk just because they just don't know how to, because the part of their brains that control speech doesn't have so much complexity allocated to it, and in small cats, because their hearing range also starts two or three octaves above the bottom of the human range. But what he worked out was, that the muscle memory of her voice box would not be persistent. So even though she would be able to understand language, things just wouldn't go right if she tried to speak, the output would just be scrambled and it would never be possible for her to learn to perfect it as the effects of practice would immediately wear off. Trying to talk would be rather like trying to thread a needle with her new paws, she would know how to do it in principle, but her voicebox would just essentially too clumsy for the job.

Sandra was starting to look very good and feline now. It was hard to believe she had ever been human from the look of her now. She was a large and powerful cat, with no uncertainty about her, from her face, to her body shape, her paws, claws and especially with her long, heavily muscled tail. She was going to be so surprised!

The DNA was the hardest part. Because then he was operating under several major constraints. It needed to match her new body physically, and not allow her to be able to make anything but cat sounds, and preserve all the human elements of her brain and give her new feline improvements on top of that, but it also needed to work with his treatment that would protect her from aging and cancer. That was a tall order, but he had done it. She was going to be a beautiful big cat indefinitely, and so would their kids. He he, their kittens! Her DNA was still technically human though, insofar that she would produce healthy offspring together with him. Most of the "cat DNA" was actually original compositions from him, as well as a few genetic markers to make it work with his treatment. So technically, she could be said to be a new race of human now, which simply very strongly resembled a cat. The best part was that all the traits were dominant, so they would continue to the first generation. As for their grandkids, well, it certainly wasn't too bad if they ended up looking like human-cat hybrids, like real life furries or cat-girls straight out of an anime. He had really worked hard to make sure that it wouldn't lead to any real problems when the new cat genetics were diluted as well. He didn't want to have their grandchildren or great-grandchildren run into very serious problems of incompatibility between the new traits and regular human traits. But all simulations had suggested that they would blend and dilute pretty nicely together with no complications. The anti-aging and cancer treatment would also work with 100% of their kids, 87% of their grandchildren and 47% of their great-grandchildren, but they could always take the treatment to become proper cats themselves rather than just hybrids to make that work.

At last, came the fur. She loved tuxedo cats the most, so what else could be more appropriate? She got a big soft white tummy, coming up to a white triangle on her chest, white tips of her forepaws and white going down to the ankles of her back paws, white whiskers on her face, and black fur elsewhere. She was absolutely beautiful.

He drained the chamber and slumped her limp body over his shoulder. She was really heavy now. 382 pounds, essentially a decent sized lion or tiger, that was really pushing him to his limits, but he was strong enough to gently carry her to the bed in the basement. Unfortunately her fur was still wet, but he had covered the bed with towels beforehand. He toweled her off a bit.

He sat there as she finally came to. She opened her eyes, to reveal her beautiful green and amber kitty eyes.

"How you feeling honey," he said. "Happy birthday. This was your birthday present by the way, not the sandwich."

"Rowra," she said back. "Raaaooowwwaaaa?" she said in confusion. Her eyes went wide as she felt something very new and surprising. If there was anything out of the ordinary that she was immediately made aware of from the first moment, it was her new tail. She gave it a good swish. It was so deeply a part of her and impossible to miss. What was the most strange about it was how natural and fundamental it felt, one moment it would have been impossible for her to imagine what having one would feel like, the next, it was impossible to imagine not having it, not feeling it with every motion, even with her eyes closed. It was so long, and strange, and wonderful. But it was only the tip of the iceberg of what was different. "Meowwww?" she said, starting to panic, looking at her forepaws, first at the fully furry side, and then at the pawpad side. "Meoww?!" she squeaked, and then extended and retracted her new claws.

"Don't panic, there's nothing wrong, I just turned you into a cat."

"Meowww?" she said, as if asking 'oh is that all?'

"Don't worry, you haven't lost anything, I didn't cut away pieces of your brain or anything, you're just, a big beautiful kitty now."

"Meowwwwww," she said in wonder, looking back at her forepaws. Then she swished her tail again. She got up and jumped off the bed and raced over on all fours to the big wall mirror to see herself. "Meowwwww!" she said, twisting and turning, looking herself over. She really was a cat. A tuxedo cat! A huge tuxedo cat! A gorgeous, huge tuxedo cat. She furiously swished her tail, while watching the cat in the mirror do the same. "Mewow mroowwwww meowwwwwww, reowwwwoww rowwwwaaawaaa?" she said, sounding increasingly frustrated.

"Hold on, I have a big keyboard ready for you on this computer," he said, pointing to the keyboard. It was already running, and the computer's desktop was displayed on a big projector screen.

She walked more slowly to the computer, admiring how natural it was to walk on all fours. This was so strange. She stood up on her back legs and sat down carefully to avoid sitting on her tail wrong. With minimal self confidence she reached for the mouse with her right paw and brought up notepad, and then carefully typed into it. It was tough, with her fingers being much shorter and wider, she didn't press the keys where she was expecting her fingers to impact them, but she started adapting to it pretty quickly and typed faster even as she entered in the first sentence.

"am i going to change back on my own?" She hadn't capitalzed the a in am or the word I, but hitting the shift and / key to make the ? symbol was not as hard as she feared at first.

"Nope. It's permanent," John said.

"Meowwwwww," she said, perhaps intending to say wow. "Could you change me back if I wanted?" she typed into the keyboard.

"Possibly, but only with months of research. I designed a process to turn humans into cats, not the other way around. But would you WANT to change back?"

She smiled and said "meowwww.... ehr neoowwwwww, mrrrr, nouwwwww, nooooooooo," while shaking her head no. And then she bounded after him on all fours and leapt and tackled him, furiously licking his face, her tail raised high, but tenderly hugging around him. Well I guess it's ok if human-turned cats can say that much, he thought, as her licking turned into a mutual kiss between the two of them. As they kissed, she purred and instinctually kneaded his back with her paws, but trying to be gentle and not hurt him with her claws. It felt so natural for her to do that iconic cat action. She was also satisfied that she was thinking pretty clearly, if anything, it felt like the opposite of being drunk, she felt she was hyper-aware and self-aware. This was better than the best birthday present she could have even imagined possible. If she had been asked beforehand, she would have preferred to be turned into a cat-girl, a hybrid cat and human of sorts, but now having this, being all the way a big cat with no mental incapacitation was actually even better, and besides, maybe being all the way was necessary to get the biological immortality agent anyway. But she was all the way a big cat now and she didn't WANT to be anything less. They both were so happy.

He had another birthday present ready for her. She was delighted to see the clothes he had prepared. Shirts for her new larger size, and pants with tail holes, pants with tail sleeves, longer pants, and two quadruplets of shoes, which fit her paws perfectly. That was really a relief. Even though she was a cat now, she wasn't just going to go around naked after all.

It was not quite as hard as they feared, getting the two cats to accept her. They were afraid, and one of them scratched at her at first. But she showed them patience and persistence. She rolled on her back and exposed her tummy to them and slow blinked at them and purred to them to try to ease their fears. It didn't seem like it was working at first, but that night, they both slept snuggled against her, in just the way they normally slept on her. It seems they finally realized who she was. Their acceptance was also a relief, because they were going to be joined by 5 to 8 friends in about 3 months. Just one litter though. In light of them being immortal, they couldn't be too irresponsibly increasing the cat population after all, especially with a variety the size of lions.

The next day, to her mild shock, he accompanied her to the post office. He was still expecting her to maintain her job, like this? Actually, that could be fun, possibly, she realized.

"Whoa...." a man said as they walked in together. Quite a strange sight, seeing a 382 pound cat wearing clothes and four shoes. "Service animals only. What, even, IS that?!"

"Oh, you don't understand. This is Sandra Collins. Soon to be Sandra Stannon." The cat lovingly rubbed against him with great force, and he barely managed to stand his ground. "I'm her fiancee. I turned her into a cat for her birthday yesterday."

The man looked at them open mouthed. "Sandra Stannon? As in JOHN Stannon? You're John Stannon?!"

"Yes, and Sandra's my girlfriend. She's a cat now, so she can't talk any more, and naturally she may have some more difficulty using keys to unlock lockboxes, on account of her big beautiful cute kitty paws, so it would be nice if you had something for her that de-emphasized those tasks."

"You, you still want to work?!" the man said. Sandra enthusiastically nodded her head.

The man stood there for a moment. "I know just what to do. I'll just change your route to the south side, all those houses have proper mailboxes, and not lockboxes. So you shouldn't need to fumble with keys very much. Do you think you can still do your job like that? Can you drive like that?"

Sandra nodded her head and looked at him brightly.

"She drove us here just fine," John explained. "Things like gripping a steering wheel aren't a problem."

"Well ok then," her boss said. "Let's just work out the details of your new route."

Sandra realized maybe John was right about all his 'job done well' nonsense. At the very least, she was actually very much looking forward to seeing the looks on everyone's faces when their mail courier was a huge cat. This whole thing was actually pretty fun, really. Her life had turned out pretty good.

"I also have to teach you every step of what I did," John whispered to Sandra. "So that you can do it to me." He kissed her on the forehead.

"Meowwwww," she said in wonder, at the implications of that statement, before giving his own face a friendly lick, her long fluffy black tail raised high, just the tip of it playfully swishing. She tried to imagine him as a cat too. She could barely wait.