Change is never an easy thing to go through, whether it be sudden or gradual. Humans are traditionally creatures of habit and when their lifestyle deviates from a fixed pattern, discomfort can often follow. In my case, the change in life I have previously experienced is the unfortunate death of my beloved cat Felix. Well, “unfortunate” I feel, isn’t necessarily the right word to use in this situation. The whole experience has been more bewildering than anything for me.

Now to fully explain the events of the past three weeks, I’m going to have to give you some context on the kind of relationship me and Felix had. The way me and Felix used to coexist was in a very mutual manner. I knew well, all that Felix wanted was food and warmth at the end of the day because like all animals he sought for the necessities to exist. All I wanted from Felix was the occasional cuddle and a respectful attitude towards toilet boundaries, i.e. no crapping and pissing inside the house. We each lived by these rules and were very happy abiding them, well I know I was, I never saw Felix in any distress so I guess I can say the same for him too.

The usual routine would be something like this: I would wake up at about seven in the morning for work, I would fill Felix’s bowl when making breakfast, mainly through force of habit, and then about three minutes later I’d hear the swing of the cat flap and he’d come scampering across the kitchen linoleum to eat his morning feast. He would then stay around the house all day sleeping on the first comfortable surface he could find, all the while I’d be slaving away at work behind a sixteen inch screen and a shoddy old keyboard. At night I’d come home and feed him again at about six and the same thing would happen. He’d usually stay for about an hour or two and sit on my lap for the warmth whilst I watched the nightly news; by eight at the latest he’d be off again for his usual night time prowl.

This had become an easy and enjoyable pattern for me and Felix to both partake in. Like all common patterns however, it had become as inevitable as clockwork. The overall monotonousness and unchanging nature of the cycle had made me completely ignorant to the subtle changes the routine was undergoing. It was around three weeks ago on a Tuesday when I realised that Felix had stopped staying around for as long on a night. Like I said, he would usually stick around for about an hour, but for some reason he had started leaving a little earlier. Not early enough to notice immediately, but early enough to snap you out of a peaceful state of normality once you realised it.

After about a week I had noticed the time was getting shorter and shorter each time, it went from leaving about twenty minutes early to only staying on my lap for about five minutes. Of course I didn’t really worry about this, after all it wasn’t like you could expect a cat to be true to a strict routine, but looking back on this behaviour with what I know now has helped me pinpoint when these change began. By the fifth night I had realised Felix was actually leaving prematurely, instead of loafing around til’ eight like he usually did.

To test my thesis, I looked all over the house for Felix after he had finished sitting on my lap the next night, but to my surprise I couldn’t find him anywhere. I checked all his usual spots like underneath the dining table, on top of the washing pile, on my bed and even behind the washing machine, God knows why he liked it behind there. But my search was fruitless, or cat-less. Thinking nothing of it I went to bed without too much concern and really thought that would be the last I thought about it, but boy was I wrong.

The next morning I woke up to the usual high-pitch bleeping of my alarm. I staggered downstairs wiping the sleep from my eyes and went about my usual business. I poured myself some orange drink and put a slice of bread in the toaster, got a pouch of cat food from the pantry and cut it open. I then proceeded to walk to the cat bowl, but when I got there I noticed something a little off. Inside the cat bowl there was what looked to be like some cat food. I know, big shock to find some cat food in a cat bowl, but what surprised me was that this was some leftover scraps from the night before. Now Felix is a very greedy cat and he absolutely adores his food, these pouches were his favourite, which made the situation seem all the more odd. I picked the dish up to see if there was anything wrong with it, you never know it may have been too gristly for the cat to chew up, but upon inspection there was nothing different about it. Just a couple of untouched chunks of cat meat sitting at the bottom of a metal cat dish. Again this wasn’t anything to be alarmed about, like the whole night time situation, so I just thought he had missed them.

Anyway, thanks to this distraction, my toast had gotten burnt, so I had a piece of al dente toast to chew my way through for breakfast, but the orange drink helped wash it down. I kept a look out for Felix and sure enough he came scampering through the kitchen to eat his food, so his appetite seemingly hadn’t changed. After breakfast I pushed away all thoughts of any unusual happenings and went to work where I was met with a mountain of paperwork to sort through. The day was pretty average and I managed to score a free candy bar at the vending machine which was pretty nice. I had forgotten all about the food issue, that is until I returned home that night.

When I got home, my first line of protocol was to get changed out of my work clothes, I always found it really good to get rid of any reminder of work as soon as I walked through the door because it always helped relax on the evening. I’m one of those people who if they cant relax they cant sleep, and unfortunately I’m also the type who cannot function well without anything less than six hours of sleep. After putting on some casual jeans and a really baggy t-shirt with a picture of a monkey on it I came downstairs to make tea; potato waffles with a side dish of egg and peas. I trudged through the kitchen with my mules making a rather piercing squeaking noise as they slid across the lino. Being the selfless person I am, I decided to get the cat its food prepared first, from a glance it looked like its water bowl needed a little refilling as well. I walked over to the two dishes and what I was met with was very odd. Just like this morning in the food bowl there was some left over cat meat, but this time there was much more left over than last time. This was the first time that my mind suddenly became aware of this situation of change, and also the first time in a while which I had been truly concerned for Felix. The only time Felix had ever left food was when he had either caught something like a bird or a mouse, or when he was sick. Either of which wasn’t really good, living in a city apartment you could never know what diseases the various vermin could be carrying; one infected animal could mean a dose of ringworm for poor old Felix.

Before worrying I decided to look at the situation rationally. I decided to give him an entirely fresh bowl of food and examine him when he ate the contents, as in to look for any sign of apprehension or illness. I slopped the contents of one of the pouches and waited his arrival; after about four minutes he showed up, doing his usual excited but well contained walk that he’d perform when he knew it was feeding time. As he ate, I examined Felix carefully, but nothing seemed to be amiss with how he ate, to be honest he looked like he was particularly enjoying every single mouthful. However, every so often he would hesitate slightly and look up to me, as if he knew I was keeping an eye on him. After about five minutes, Felix had fully finished his meal and had wandered over to dining table to find a valid seat for digestion.

Satisfied that the past couple of meals might just have been a one of occurrence, I looked began making preparations for my own meal. With the waffles and peas out of the freezer, all I needed were the eggs. So, you can only imagine my surprise and utter annoyance when I opened the fridge to find there were none sitting in the rack. I swore I had at least three this morning when getting the butter for the toast. I just dismissed this to misty eyes in the morning causing me to hallucinate. The night carried on with me eating some particularly dry waffles and ending the night binge-watching the Big Bang Theory on Netflix.

Now I would like to say that things went back to normal after that night, but they sadly got progressively worse as time went by. As the week progressed I noticed more and more of the cat food was being left in the bowl. Every morning I would come down to find that each different brand of food was getting as rejected, just like the last. Even the most expensive, high-end, nutritionally packed food was being turned down. This had now become a burrowing concern of mine, impacting my work and sleep schedules massively. I had also began frequently forgetting to restock on food and toiletry items around the home. The amount of times I had found myself without any milk or fresh out of toilet paper was alarming. I was even misplacing personal items like clothes, slippers and my wallet. It felt like I was losing my mind.

On the Wednesday of the third week I finally decided to take Felix to the vets. Like most pets, Felix despised the trip to the vets, just the sight of the cat box would send him into a frenzy, but this was for his own good. I had booked a day off work so I could fully prepare for the ordeal and I had decided to get an early night in preparation. I went to bed telling myself that by tomorrow Felix will be getting some professional treatment to help me rest. It helped ease my flustered state of mind.

It was a very hot night that night so I decided to put the windows on vent to let some of the city breeze flow around the flat. After about half an hour of getting comfy I eventually nodded off and slumbered peacefully for about five hours, thats when I was woken up by a funny sound coming from downstairs. It sounded like a very distant motorcar engine, revving on standby awaiting the eventual pump of the gas pedal. Initially I thought it was some late night taxi driver picking up someone near the flat, but after a couple of seconds I could hear that the sound was coming from downstairs, because it felt like the vibrations were coming from directly below me. My bedroom is above the kitchen so I immediately thought the fridge motor had decided to go on a meltdown which really was the last thing I wanted to deal with the night before Felix’s appointment.

Reluctantly I got up out of bed and threw my dressing gown on, tying the belt in a half arsed mannerism. Trudging down the stairs I tried to be quiet because the walls between the apartments are paper thin and the woman who lived next door hated being woken up past midnight by my “clunky” footsteps as she liked to describe them. After avoiding the creaky bottom stair I made my way through the hallway and went into the kitchen, but just before switching on the light I noticed that the revving had stopped. For some reason it felt eerily quiet in the kitchen, like there was some unearthly presence waiting in one of the darker corners of the room. I took a quick glance around from the doorway and made a steady turn back for the hallway; thats when something glinting in the light, caught the attention of my eye as I turned. I very slowly glanced back around and there from underneath the kitchen table were a pair of steely green eyeballs staring at me. I knew immediately that it was Felix, there was a green tint to them that you sometimes see when a ray of light hits the back of a cats retinas in just the right way, but what was he doing inside this late. I slowly crept across the kitchen and held out my hand as a gesture of friendship to Felix. “Hey Felix, what are you doing in the house this late?” I whispered wonderingly. I was only about three feet away from Felix when his eyes suddenly grew more fierce, the slits dilated into a thinner, meaner position, as if he was intent on attacking. My initial instinct should have been to just back away, but of course you don’t expect a cat you’ve known for seven years to suddenly turn on you.

I was about one foot away now, my palm outstretched in perfect position to rub Felix on the back of his neck, his favourite place to be tickled. Just when I thought it was safe to make contact he started purring. The sound he made was unlike any I had ever heard before, it was deep and guttural, like more of a growl. I immediately recoiled as a result. Had he figured out I was taking him to the vets or was he just in a huff, either way I got the feeling that he wasn’t in a stroking mood. I started to slowly back out of the kitchen as the purring was only getting louder and was growing a very harsh rasp. The further I moved back the more afraid I got, Felix’s eyes were now reflecting a deep shade of crimson and his pupils were are sharp as blade edges. He had even began to bare his teeth by which point I had managed to get past the door that lead open to the kitchen. Once fully past it I slammed it shut with unintentional force, like my body was reacting in an instinct of pure unfathomable terror. Once closed the purring hard stopped, but too afraid to glance back into the kitchen I made a beeline for the stairs. This truly was odd, I’d never seen Felix act like that before, almost like a wild animal in behaviour. After watching some Youtube, I had managed to relax again and I was asleep by about three in the morning.

I woke up the next morning with the odd events of last night floating around in the back of my mind. I was even a little afraid to go into the kitchen, but after realising that I could easily take on Felix if the situation got particularly bad, I decided to man up and marched down the stairs. I slowly opened the door to the kitchen and I found the area devoid of any felines, so I proceeded with a little more confidence. As I walked over to the fridge to get a drink of orange I shot another glance at the food bowl to see if Felix had decided to finish his meal, but sure enough the food he had left last night was still there. I hastily reached into the bread bin to make some toast, but realised there was no bread. “Damn it, not again!” I exclaimed in frustration.

Pushing past the annoyance, I got Felix one of his usual pouches, this was my final attempt to see if the food situation was just an irregularity. Just as I was about to begin pouring the pouch contents into the food bowl I was sidetracked by a view from the window. I saw Felix sitting on a large brick wall that separated my outdoor area with the neighbours. He was perched right on the very edge of the wall, he was so still you would think he was statue if it hadn’t have been for the fur. I’d never really seen what Felix did outside on his usually daily adventures, and more honestly I’d never really cared up until now. I don’t know why but something seemed a little strange about him, like we was surprisingly alert in his stance as if he had just seen a bird.

Anyway, I slopped the meat into the cat bowl and left it in its usual place and went back to waiting for my toast to brown nicely. It took about five minutes this time for Felix to come in for his breakfast. When he came in there was nothing unusual, just like the day before he made a beeline for the bowl and started eating. I carefully watched him as he gobbled up the various chunks of meat and aspic that were being caught by his tongue. Again, nothing seemed odd by the way he ate and there was no sign of hostility towards me like he had shown last night. Slightly puzzled I just decided to carry on with the days plans, a trip to the vet would surely allow me to pinpoint the problem, or so I thought, little did I know I wouldn’t even manage to get Felix to the vet.

After getting dressed I decided there was no time like the present to get Felix into the cat carrier. My usual method was draping a blanket slowly over him and then snatching him up in a bundle, this way he wouldn’t be able to run away or claw at his captor. I was never rough with him to a harmful degree, just as firm as you needed to be with a struggling cat. I was fully prepared with my blanket ready. Poised, I made a slow and seemingly non-threatening path towards Felix, but as soon as I got about three feet away from him he spotted me. This was the last thing I wanted, after all Felix was never afraid of using his claws and he was quite a slim cat so getting in a tight hiding place was never any trouble for him.

As expected, Felix immediately went into defence stance, his tail rose in the air like fuzzy TV antenna. He slowly tiptoed his way closer to the flat exit, but rather intelligently I had the foresight to close any possible means of escape before carrying out this procedure. Making a quick dash for the door I threw the big fluffy blanket over the top of him and it landed dead on target. Quickly realising my success I came over and proceeded to wrap him up in the confines of the blanket, being sure to avoid as much possibility of exuding any sort of physical harm on the cat. There was a mass of hissing and howling from beneath the blanket, the occasional scratch could be heard from the side of blanket but fortunately for me it was made of a very thick fleece material.

After about half a minute of struggling I was just about to secure my hold on the cat entirely, but then I heard a huge bone crunching snap come from beneath the blanket. When I heard this my heart sank, I immediately lifted off the blanket to reveal Felix lying there on the cold hard kitchen floor. I didn’t know where the breakage was but I could tell one thing, Felix was dead. I swear I hadn’t put any overwhelming pressure on the blanket or even him for that matter, but it seemed at the time it was the only possible explanation.

For some reason my first reaction wasn’t sorrow, it was mere disbelief, how could I have killed him? I was not exuding anywhere near the level of pressure it would take physically break any bone of a cats body. The wave of sorrow only hit when I fully understood that Felix really was gone. I know he was just a pet, but like anything you become codependent on it really hurts when you realise its gone and theres nothing you can do to get it back. Worse yet, we had ended on such a bad note.

Feeling utterly defeated with myself I slowly got up and trudged across the apartment to get to the phone so I could call the vets to cancel the appointment. I made the call and told them that Felix had passed in his sleep. I know its wrong to lie to medical practice but I the last thing I wanted was the RSPCA to show up on my doorstep for what looked like to be negligent abuse of an animal. After the phone call I made my way back to the kitchen so I could decide what to do with Felix’s remains, but when I got back Felix wasn’t there any more. At that instant my mind nearly melted, the only thing that stopped me from fully losing my sanity was the notion that this event might all just have been a dream, but this to my misfortune was reality. I collapsed onto my knees and held my face in my palms, my mind was just spinning with a flurry of endless thoughts. Where was Felix’s corpse? How could he have moved? And most importantly, where was he now? I began to sob silently and was just about curl up in the foetal position when my disparity was interrupted by a shuffle in the other room.

I slowly got up and made my way to the door that separated the kitchen from the lounge, and I craned my neck around the door frame. There, lying across the floor just outside of the door that opened to the outside patio was Felix. He was hauling himself across the shag carpet with his front legs, while the entire back half of his body dragged along behind him like a sack of fur and disassembled bones. He was huskily wheezing as he dragged himself further to the patio door and a low rattle from his ribcage could be heard with every breath he drew in. When he finally reached the door he collapsed limply onto the carpet letting his head and arms droop to a rest. By this point I was frozen with both terror and disbelief, but nothing could prepare me for the grotesque horror show that was about to begin.

Felix suddenly began to start twitching violently, his muscles twinging as if they were hooked up to an electrical current. After about ten seconds of erratic spasms, Felix suddenly let out a blood curdling shriek that almost sounded human. He then fell silent and his body lay limp again for a couple of seconds, but then his body began to produce a series of deafeningly loud snapping sounds, just like the one I had heard when he was under the blanket. With every snap his body would jerk in a different direction. Soon the snapping turned into the sound of splintering and cracking. I wanted to scream as I watched, but my lungs fell silent and all they could produce was a dry gasp. Felix’s body was now shivering violently; I suddenly noticed one of his forearms begin to stretch upwards into the air. His paw began to spread outwards and each digit slowly grow outwards and elongated to a finger like length. The claws began to retract form each toe and in their place grew a set of more rounded, human-like fingernails. Next to change was the fur, it began to slowly revert into the skin, leaving nothing but a bald fleshy layer of membrane.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, Felix’s paw had turned into a completely grown humanoid hand. The various snaps and splinters continued and before I knew it the other paw had grown into a hand too. After this Felix suddenly rolled over and all of his limbs started to contract in unison. Felix’s body was now keeled over and stretching longer and longer by the second. Another colossal snap came from what I presumed to be his spine and his shoulder blades abruptly widened with great force, this was met with a growl of pain from Felix, his voice echoing through the flat. By this point I could only watch in silence, tears of fear where streaming from my eyes and running down my cheeks, cooling the blistering surge of warmth that was surrounding my mind. Felix had now fully stretched out to about the length of an adult human male, his limbs had accurately stretched to the portions of a bipedal humanoid and his fur had receded to reveal his naked body, Felix was now fully transformed. With one last scream and a gut-wrenchingly long series of splinters he had managed to assume the form of a human, immediately after, his body fell limp on the floor and he lay there gasping heavily, drawing in breath after breath of stuffy lounge room air.

By this point I was sat in a huddled mass of body and tears, gazing onwards at the newborn man child that was once my beloved Felix. He slowly began to heave his body up off the ground and raised himself to his knees, then like a rabbit reacting to an owl call, he turned his head to directly face where I was sitting. An ugly grin was plastered across his face and he began to slowly get up and laugh, of course it didn’t take a genius to know what he was planning on doing to me. For any normal person their reaction would have been to run, but I was still transfixed in an aghast stasis, for you see the man Felix had assimilated looked incredibly familiar. It was a face I had seen every day for the last seven years, not at work nor on the drive to work, but in my bathroom mirror. Felix had transformed into me, and my mind still couldn’t quite comprehend what it was seeing. A completely naked, matted, sweating clone of myself was slowly making its way towards me with the intent to harm.

The “other me” slowly began to stand up and it was clear from how he walked that he was having trouble remaining verticality, acclimatising to its freshly formed physique. It took three shaky strides across the length of the lounge and on the fourth it had reached the end table in the middle of the room. Just as I was about to collapse unconscious from the fear, I was suddenly snapped out of my period of inactivity by an ear-splitting scream of pain. I suddenly looked down at the “other me’s” leg and noticed that the thigh bone on the left leg had suddenly given way like a rotted joint of wood. I figured that the newly formed bone must have been incredibly brittle and the creature had overworked it too early after the transformation phase. As the other me collapsed on top of the end table I took the opportunity to regain my stance on the situation, I sharply rose from my undignified position on the kitchen floor and started rifling through the draws for a weapon of choice. As I frantically scrambled through the contents of my utensil drawer, I could hear an array of angry moans and grunts followed by some shuffling coming from next door. I found myself a large metal mallet that I usually used for tenderising meat, for now it would have to do. In my haste I ran over to the kitchen door and waited for my clone to eventually come through the door. With beads of sweat accumulating on my brow, I watched as the door handle began to turn with an achingly slow tremble. The door jarred open and a familiar clammy palm grasped around the doorframe. Then, a tuft of mated bright red hair emerged from behind the door like a furry sunset; it was followed by a pair of bright green, the whites all bloodshot and misty.

At this point I recoiled and wound up my arm with mallet in hand, ready to take a sharp swing at the familiar face. You would think there would be some hesitation, and it shocks me that there wasn’t, but thinking back my instinct knew that this thing was nor me, nor the beloved house cat I had once been so attached to, and now was the time to act. I swung down with my eyes closed and my teeth gritted, the mallet whistled through the air and landed its mark squarely on the frontal lobe of this freak. What followed was the sound of shattering bone. A spray of blood splattered across my face and the walls of the kitchen. I opened my eyes and gazed upon the figure, its head had completely caved in, as if its skull were made of soggy cardboard.

Initially I was aghast at the sheer mess I had made, there were bits of bone and brain matter scattered about the floor. A river of blood and loose body tissue was flowing from the cavernous hole left in the ‘manimal’s’ head. Looking at the devastation should have made me wretch, but this thing was still alive, it pushed against the force of me holding the mallet in place in an attempt to stand up. I however, immediately pulled the mallet from its head cavity knocking it off balance, to then immediately swing down on the back of its head, right where the spine links up to the skull. There was another spray of splintered bone and scrambled tissue, this time I managed to completely sever the things head, the head of the mallet snapping from the handle as it collided to the floor. The ordeal was over, I don’t care what you say, that thing was dead. The general rule I live by is: if it doesn’t have a head, it isn’t alive.

I slowly stood up gazing down at the decapitated figure, a pool of blood slowly crawling its way from the nape. My ears were ringing and my mind filled with static, there were streams of tears from my eyes and mucus from my nose running down the sweating grooves of my face. I had brutally beaten an identical copy of myself to death, and the realisation was only just setting in. Something I realise now is how caught up you can get in an act of survival, no matter how barbaric, it always seems like the natural thing to do, just so you can carry on living. I dropped the shattered mallet handle to the floor and collapsed onto my knees. Through a mix of mental and physical exhaustion I fainted and remained that way for about what I think was four hours.

When I came to my entire kitchen was filled with the rich scent of blood and flesh, to my relief the body was still there, so I knew the ordeal was other with. The hours after my coming too were a blur of cleaning and the occasional vomiting from the ghastly smell of rotting flesh. I dug a huge hole in the back of the garden and buried what were the mangled remains of my duo’s corpse. I didn’t really worry about neighbours seeing, I was too driven to put all reminders of this horrendous escapade behind me. Luckily, no such instance arose and the corpse was buried by sunset. There was no worries of a missing persons case, after all the body was a duplicate, the original was still alive and kicking. Sure, I would have to explain the incidence of my pet dying to the vets but I was fully prepared to come up with some cock and bull story, after all, I think spouting word of my cat turning into a human would land me in a mental institute.

Things since then have slowly gotten back to normal. I wake up every morning and make breakfast, get ready for work and leave the house, come back after 9 hours, slowly wind down for the evening and go to bed. The only real change is the absence of Felix, there are no bowls or pictures left to remind me of him, because quite frankly I’m worried any reminder of the experience will give me a mental breakdown. Its now been about another month since all this happened, and I wasn’t originally going to share this experience with the world, but something happened the other day that changed my mind.

I was taking a brief coffee break at work the other day at mid noon when I noticed there was no milk left for the coffee. Obviously annoyed, I went around the building in a slight strop to look for some more milk. When I walked into the downstairs kitchen I caught one of my colleagues with her head stuck in the fridge, all I could hear was a frantic scramble of containers and food packets on the other side of the refrigerator door. Before I could make a witty comment, she slammed the door shut with jug of milk in hand. She then proceeded to rip the lid off with immense strength and down the contents within seconds. It was only until she finished she realised I was stood there, at my presence she responded with an icy cold stare and a sheepish positioning of posture. My mind was immediately taken back to the missing food from my fridge at home before the whole transformation incident, but of course I acted like nothing was amiss. “Guess that means I’m having this coffee black then” I nervously chuckled, with a fake smirk plastered across my mind.

I made my way back upstairs, completely forgetting about the milk. The girls name was Emma, maybe it was just a craving I kept thinking, but the fact she was a strong lover of cats didn’t fill me with confidence. So, because of this I warn you, if you have a cat and suddenly find things amiss around your home, act quickly. Before you know it, you may be being hunted down and brutally slaughtered by your feline companion. I don’t know how big the population of humanoid cat people actually is, hopefully not large enough to instigate any kind of power around the world. It may be too late, either way just keep spreading this message, as the more people know about this the more chances we have of stopping this revolution of the furred kind. One things for sure is I’ll never look at any animal, wild or domesticated, the same way again.