Burying Myself In Work To Ignore My Dysphoria So Hard I Don’t Even Notice I’m Growing Cat Ears!

 Please enjoy this non-lewd story that I wrote for an antholo-jam thing!

https://leaftilde.itch.io/burying-myself-in-work-to-ignore-my-dysphoria-so-deep-i-dont-even-notice-im-grow 

Content Warning: This has a person currently presenting as a boy coming to terms with inner feelings of being a girl. This includes all manner of denial and self-deception, so be careful of that if it’ll make you uncomfortable. Rest assured there’s a positive ending to this, so don’t think I’m gonna leave you hanging or feelin’ blue. ♥

*** 

“This damn NEKO junk,” Max muttered under his breath. “Why won’t it work?”

Dark brown eyes jittered back and forth as he looked for the flaw. Misplaced semi-colons, bad variables, an improperly formatted comment...anything! It hurt that his work at Cali Co had to be written in this weird proprietary coding language that he’d never heard of. NEKO was apparently designed by someone who had never even seen code in their lives! But it’s what his bosses wanted.

Looking at the deadline circled in a red pen on his cubicle’s calendar made his heart sink. He had two weeks to get this whole project complete. His team were all decent coders, and if everyone pulled together, it could probably get done on time. But Max would do it himself. He had to.

His phone buzzed. He looked over to confirm that it was just Emily again, then tapped the Ignore button. Not tonight, he told himself. Not tonight. His eyes drooped by the time he slid away from the keyboard for a moment. It was...almost 2 AM. He needed coffee.

Cali Co’s 11th Floor held, among other things, a cubicle farm for their on-staff programmers and software engineers. Far from the worst place he’d worked, it still had the hollow ring of corporate camaraderie he often chafed at. A coat rack holding a collection of cat ear headbands for some kind of themed event reminded him he felt about as much an outsider as he had when he’d started at this darn outfit six months ago. At the least, Cali Co supplied a little cafeteria nook where one could get vending machine foods and beverages available. One of those perks that tech startups usually have before the crushing realities of venture capitalism crush them into a ball of stress and resentment.

Before he got himself a cup of dark black caffeine, his eyes wandered over to the bathrooms. There were three: male, female, and a unisex/accessibility one in the middle. He looked at all three. Something at the back of his mind clawed its way forward, trying to get recognition. He crushed it down and entered the male facilities.

He pressed his palms into the sink countertop, feeling the hard, cool linoleum under his hands. This was reality. This wasn’t some fantasy world. He had to get his head together. Max splashed a few cupped handfuls of water on his face, the cold breaking through his fog of fatigue. He almost got away without repercussion, but at the last minute his eyes locked onto his face. He jerked his head to the side, balling up his fist. His unshaven jawline, his enormous forehead, his...his whole everything. It’s not what he wanted to deal with right now.

“Everyone hates what they look like,” Max chanted, wiping his hands off with paper towels. “Everyone does. It’s normal. I’m normal.”

He legged it over to the coffee machine. Taking a large cup of black tar back to his desk, he arrived to see Emily’s number calling him again. That had to be the 6th attempt. Or maybe more, he hadn’t really been paying attention. Max set down the cup and, after a moment’s hesitation, hit the Answer button instead.

“Max!” the strained voice said through the phone, “Oh God, I thought something had happened.”

“Just busy,” Max lied.

“Oh. Alright...you okay?” she asked. Max tried not to notice the genuine concern.

“Fine.”

“It’s just...we had that blowup on the weekend. I wanted to know if we were okay.”

Heat rose up in Max’s throat. A magma-like bile threatened to spill out and irrevocably ruin his relationship with someone who he had considered to be his best friend up until very recently. With effort, he swallowed it back down and rephrased his reply.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Emily.”

The long, pregnant pause made it clear that his friend expected him to elaborate on that, but he refused. 

“Are you still working?” she asked.

“Project due. Have to.”

“It’s 2 AM! Please, let me take you home.”

“No. Talk to you later,” he said, then hung up the phone before she could reply. He tossed it onto a stack of contradicting memorandums and guidelines and went back to digging into his code. It was all his work, so he had no one to blame for it but himself. Something was wrong here, and he wouldn’t leave the building until he figured it out.

As that thought entered his mind, he felt a gentle tingle throughout his body. Like every part of him had fallen asleep. He shook his fingers out of habit, but the strange feeling went away on its own. Not thinking anything of it, he got back to work.

His first sign that something was wrong was when he encountered difficulty reaching the keyboard without resting his wrists on the table. He pumped up his little chair, only to find it was at its highest elevation. Now even his chair was messing up on him! It seemed like all the world was trying to get him not to focus on his work. The problem only got worse, so he grabbed the keyboard and set it in his lap. He tried his best to ignore the strange changes in his furniture.

An hour passed, as did three more cups of coffee. The tiredness never fully left his body, but he could stay one step ahead. Stepping down for a fourth, his pants and hooded sweatshirt felt significantly more baggy and ill-fitting than when he started the day. He hadn’t eaten anything in a while, but weight loss didn’t work like that. He pulled at the waistband of his pants, seeing the sudden lack of extra flab around his tummy. Weird...

“Max?”

His body locked up. It was Emily’s voice. She had her own Cali Co keyfob and could access the office anytime she wanted. Max cursed himself for not thinking of that.

Rolling the office chair to the edge of his cubicle, he peered out into the mostly dark floor. There must have been more light than he thought, because he could easily see the shape and detail of his coworker and former friend coming down the corridor. Emily wore the same clothes she’d been wearing on Sunday. Her hair, normally done up in some cute fashion or another, was hanging in a hastily gathered ponytail. She looked like a nervous wreck, and that realisation jabbed into his guts.

More unwanted feelings. Max forced them down. His heart felt like an overfilled pressure cooker, and here was Emily to test his structural integrity.

He pretended to be back at work trying to find the bug. “What do you want, Em? I’m busy,” he said over his shoulder. He heard the footfalls stop at the door of his cubicle. Emily was there...but he couldn’t turn to face her right now.

“I was just...just wondering if you wanted to talk. About earlier. I-“ She halted mid-sentence. “What’s that on your head?”

He spun around in his office chair, arms folded. He still kept his eyes down, away from hers. “Not funny.”

“No, seriously, why are you wearing cat ears?”

That made his eyes widen. Had someone slipped a pair of those dumb things on as a joke? He reached up to tug them off, then yeowled in pain! He...felt them?!

“What the hell?” He turned off his monitor to examine his reflection in the screen’s reflective surface. Sure enough, two black floofy ears puffed out on either side of his head, looking for all the world like a pair of cat ears. He also noticed that his hair had gotten significantly longer, going down to his chin and completely obscuring his human ears. He remembered the bagginess to his clothes, his chair’s conspiratorial lack of height, and even his ability to see better in the dark…

“Something terrible is happening. You’re taking on aspects of some kinda cat!” Emily declared.

“Not just a cat,” he said, his own voice shaking. “I’m shorter, my skin is softer...I think I’m turning into a catgirl!”

They looked at each other in suspended animation. The unsaid words waiting to spring out of each other’s mouths were nearly identical in structure, but different in tone. Something like: ‘wouldn’t that be great?’ Before either of them could voice it, Max switched topics.

“There has to be something in the employee manual about this. I remember seeing something about curses, but I thought it was some weird form of trolling the new guys!”

In the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet, he retrieved a giant tome. The cover was a black leather whose surface looked glossy, almost as if it was sweating. Swirling patterns crossed the book’s surface, drawing the eye in and practically begging the reader to gaze at its strange, Non-Euclidean art. A dull hum barely audible to the human ear began once he’d opened the drawer, and only increased when Max flipped through the pages.

“Let’s see...Purrcedures, no. Maine Cooncerns, no. Meowfeasance? Why are these all puns?! Ah, here it is! Cat-tastrophic Events!” He sped through half the manual, only allowing him occasional glimpses at the pages in between. Each seemed to be written in a different language. The pictograms and strange characters morphed as the parchment slipped through his fingers, reconfiguring into legible, if a bit theatrical, English.

The panic prevented Max from marvelling at the text’s strange behaviour, however. As soon as he found the right section, he slapped his finger down and started scanning through the different listed calamities. Em looked over his shoulder, hoping to find clues to help her friend. Even if they weren’t close right now, she’d go to Heck and back for Max.

“There’s a whole subsection on Nefurrious Curses, maybe it’s in there?” she asked. He nodded, thumbing through those and finally hit the jackpot.

“‘The healthcare of our employees is a top priority. At Cali Co, we’ve commissioned the installation of several failsafes to ensure the wellbeing of those who work on premises. Sleep deprivation, for one, has been a critical problem for our staff in the past. That’s why to ensure that everyone gets plenty of rest, the harder someone works while on Cali Co grounds, the more feline attributes they will take on. The curse won’t stop on its own until the employee has become a sleepy cat.’” Max looked up from the old book to stare dumbfounded at Emily. “Is this for real?”

She poked his floppy right ear on the top of his head. “I’d say so. Just go with it. What does it say about undoing it?”

He flipped up the hood of his sweatshirt to cover his new fuzzy ears. They were sensitive! His finger tracked down the page, tapping when he found the answer. “It says here that ‘in order to reverse the curse’s progress, the affected employee must fall asleep for at least eight hours.’ Eight hours?! I got work to do!”

“You’re turning into a cat, you dummy!” Emily chided. “There are slightly more important problems than your work schedule. Oh, what’s that there!” She leaned over his shoulder to point at a pictogram on the side. It depicted a person in a similar state as the one Max found himself in. Short, pointed ears, a rather cute catgirl in all honesty. “It also says on the side there that ‘the curse’s progress, like any magical affliction, can be halted by saying the employee’s True Name out loud.’”

Max’s mood immediately brightened. That was easy!

“Max!” he declared in a proud voice. Nothing. “Maximilian Franz Bücher.” He paused, waiting for something to stop or feel like it was slowing down. By the tingling sensation that persisted and the tickle of lengthening hair onto his nose, he determined it hadn’t worked. “What now?”

“Maybe I have to say it?” Emily asked, and said the name in drawn out, deliberate syllables.

“It’s Bücher,” he corrected, “Not ‘Booker’. Honour the Umlaut.”

Emily pouted. “I’ll honour YOUR umlaut, Mister!”

“That’s...that’s what I just said I wanted you to do.” He threw up his hands. The manual had to be lying to them then, which left everything up for grabs. “If saying my full name doesn’t help, what will?!”

Max frantically flipped through the pages looking for another answer. Emily’s response landed on him like an anvil.

“Maybe it’s because it’s not your real name?”

He didn’t even bother looking up, continuing his search. “That’s absurd. What are you talking about?”

Emily reached over and pulled a chair from the cubicle next to his. She sat down and put one hand on Max’s knee. “Maybe we should try talking about that conversation we had at my place. The one where you told me-“

He shook his head, snapping his hands up to cover his ears. “Lalalala! Not listening!”

She continued talking. “You got cat ears too now, dummy. I think you can still hear me.”

His arms drooped. “Shit. That’s annoying.” Max sighed, spinning around in the office chair as he tried to assemble his words. This had been the conversation he’d been dreading ever since that night. The one he’d spent long hours working here to avoid. “All I said was that I might have...at one point in my past...thought I would like to be a girl. That’s nothing, those are worries every guy gets!” Max saw Emily’s jaw tighten, holding back a reply. But to hell with her, he thought, steeling his resolve. She wouldn’t see him crumble. She wouldn’t!

“And that’s okay. I didn’t mean to push you into doing anything prematurely. You know that, right?” Her hand on his knee patted him, squeezing his leg gently. A wave of calm exuded from that gentle pressure, partially extinguishing the fiery outrage he’d stoked. That, in turn, made him turn inwards and start playing the broken record of questions he had about his identity.

Why do I like wearing bright colours so much?

Why do I wish I could cry with my friends as well as laugh with them?

How come I feel pulled to the Women’s section of the clothing store?

What if I am really a girl?

He shut his eyes til they ached, chanting that mantra that got him through every day since Grade School. ‘I’m fine. I am okay. Boys can like pastels and be emotional with friends. Nothing about my desires are exclusively in the female domain.’ It’s not like he played with dolls as a kid. Well, he didn’t play sports or anything, always preferring to play pretend or build vast worlds out of Lego. But he liked plenty of male-coded TV shows and movies growing up! That meant he couldn’t be trans.

Surely.

Probably.

Hopefully.

When Emily had pressed for him to admit he was trans, Max had bolted. He stood up and left the meal they’d been sharing at her place and caught a ride share back to his apartment, where he’d stewed and grumbled the entire weekend. To open himself up like that, and to have her take it and want even more from him had felt like a gut punch. And now, stuck in a situation where he might have to follow through on her request, Max felt as if the universe was conspiring to drag him out of the closet...or make a terrible, embarrassing mistake.

“All I’m saying,” Emily continued, “Is that I think you might want to consider that the reason that your True Name didn’t revert the transformation is that you yourself have a name you’d prefer to be called, and that’s keeping you in Cat Mode. And if you don’t stop denying yourself, you’re going to become a cat! And then where will you be at? I didn’t mean to rhyme there, but that doesn’t lessen the severity of my warning.”

Max grumbled under his breath. “It’s not your problem. Just leave me alone and let me focus on something I can handle.” His new tail thrashed against the backrest. Tail? Reaching back, he squeezed at the fluffy light blue appendage. Max was running out of time!

“But this is something you can handle. Especially with help!”

“I tried to get your help! You jumped on me like a big...smothering...what’s big and smothering and you want to get out of it right away?”

Emily’s features fell. “I did? I only...oh, jeez, I’m sorry Max. I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.”

Oh no. Genuine remorse! Max didn’t know how to handle that! Emily had been his friend for years, even before they’d both worked at Cali Co. She’d been with him through several bad breakups, and he’d helped her when she went back to school and finished her degree. They were simpatico, so the sudden blowup between them had stung him hard. It twisted all his feelings with his gender issues, and it made thinking about them as painful as the fight with Em had been.

The tingling was only getting more pronounced. Max could already feel himself shrink even more. Emily no doubt saw it as well. “This won’t get any better until you deal with it. If not with me, then on your own terms. But please, for goodness' sake, do it fast!”

Max felt the walls closing in on him. He wanted to shout, to get the feelings to go away and leave him alone. But looking at the claws that were growing out of his fingers, he knew there was only one way to end this.

He closed his eyes. “You’re right.”

“I can put my hands over my ears,” Emily said.

“No. You might as well hear this. You know everything else.” He centred himself, taking in every feeling and sensation. The dry air that smelled of copier ink, the worried look on Emily’s face, the pervasive tingling in his body that heralded more feline changes to come if he didn’t...

It was time. Taking in a deep breath, he shouted: “MY NAME IS VALERIE TERESA BÜCHER AND I AM A GIRL.”

A single wet pop heralded...something. The tingling faded from Valerie’s body, and she noticed no more changes.

“I think it worked!” she said, leaping into Emily’s arms. Her friend was now slightly taller, but that only made the embrace feel more cuddly. It was nice being this short, she thought.

Wait, she was still mad at Emily! Valerie pulled back from the hug and flopped back into her chair, lost in a sea of conflicting feelings. This was the exact scenario she’d wanted to avoid, and yet, here she was.

“Oh God, what have I done?” she whispered. She’d said that deep truth that had been lurking at the back of her thoughts since before she’d left preschool. “I...I don’t know what to do now.”

“Come back to my place. You can sleep there, and we can talk in the morning,” Emily said, her voice soothing. Valerie’s mind was still spinning out, trying to find a way to take back the admission while still reconciling with reality. The pieces didn’t fit. Nothing made sense. She caught her head in her hands. What was she going to do? Who was she going to be?!

The moment Emily’s hand touched Valerie’s hood-covered head, her fight was over. A beautiful, transcendent euphoria spilled down her spine and settled in her limbs, instantly dissolving the tension. Valerie’s new floofy ears flattened, and the steady patter of tail wriggling turned to light paffs against the cushioned backrest.

“I’m sorry I upset you,” Emily said in that same relaxing tone. “I should have thought more about your feelings before pushing you into anything. Just know that I’m here for you. When, or if, you want to talk more, I’ll be here for you.”

Valerie’s heart swelled. She could feel something build at the back of her eyes and she struggled to fight it down. But the hand petting her felt so good, and she was so comfortable now, that she...let go of control. A sniffle turned into a full-on cathartic cry. She pushed her face into her folded arms on the desk and shuddered, taking deep raspy breaths in between unrestrained sobs. Emily was there, never wavering. She switched her attention to Valerie’s back, rubbing it in circles as much to let the catgirl know she wasn’t alone.

An indeterminate amount of time passed before the sobbing tapered off. Emily squeezed Valerie on the shoulder. “C’mon. I’m parked outside. Let me take you home and sleep this off. If you want to forget it in the morning, that’s cool with me. But let’s get some sleep into you, yeah?”

Valerie smiled. It felt like the first genuine smile she’d had in years. A titanic weight that had squished her down had lifted just an itty bit. Enough to roll out of the way for now and into the arms of her friend. It might all come crashing down again, the contrarian part of her mind said. But for now, it all felt okay. Things might actually be okay.

Valerie took off the hoodie, showing the full extent of the changes. Her once dirty blonde hair was a lovely light blue that came down to just under her chin. Those strange fuzzy ears and floofy tail were of a similar azure colour. Valerie’s irises, now that they weren’t drooped and moored to a monitor, glinted with an almost ethereal silver colour in the fluorescent lights. They glowed when her eyes opened wide, the catgirl’s breath catching in her throat.

“Oh! I figured it out!”

She spun around, scrolled up a few hundred lines, and changed the wording of her entry around.

“Figured what out?” Emily asked.

“My coding conundrum. It was a simple error. Nothing major. Anyone could have made it.” She fixed the problem, looked it over, and saved the file. She stood up from the chair, turning off the monitor in the process. “Huh. Turns out the answer was staring me right in the face this whole time.”

Emily wrapped her arm around Valerie’s shoulder. Like her friend Emily was there to protect her from anything. The sleepy catgirl nuzzled into her friend for a long, tired hug, then let herself get steered toward the elevator to get some well-deserved rest. As they whisked down to the ground floor, Emily could hear the catgirl purring against her chest.