After sitting idle for a fortnight, the Bug coughed blue smoke at ignition, and it kept wanting to stall at stop signs for the first few minutes – but at last, I was off. Curiously, however, I found myself turning the other way onto the main road; rather than heading directly up Hwy. 49 to what passed for "downtown" Sutter Springs, I was going further into the foothills. I wasn't really sure why; I just…felt like roaming, a bit.
The weather was starting to turn, this late into February, and the morning was crisp rather than cold; the skies were clear and the Sun shone bright, with the Sierras coming into view over the treeline at this or that bend. A buzzard wheeled lazily on some distant thermal, but it was too far off to trigger my new instincts; let it land, my brain told me, and we'll worry about it then.
The further I got from town, the more it felt like I was leaving human territory behind. Not entirely; there were still tiny quick-stop markets every few miles, and I passed a little Italian place with patio dining on the right (had I been there? I couldn't remember,) but as exurban sprawl gave way to vineyards and orchards dotting a sea of pines, it stirred something in me that I couldn't quite put a name to.
You could really smell them, up here – most of all in the summer, when the heat slow-roasted the sap like incense, but even now the air was full of it. The pines back east had a clear, fresh Christmas-tree kind of scent; it was muted in my memories, recorded by my old, human sense of smell, but still distinct from the warm, arid scent of California pines, like a campfire waiting to happen. There was something magical about it…
The road forked, and I followed the jog right; I didn't know where I was going, I was just…going. This way went down into the river gorge, and the road began to twist and turn more sharply as it descended; come summer, there'd be cars parked on the side of the road as people went down to fish – fish, I thought – but for the moment, it was deserted.
The Bug's steering fought with me a little on one particularly hairpin turn – there was a gap around the 12:30 position, I'd have to get that looked at – but I recovered with no real trouble; then I was across the river and heading back up. Several roads intersected up ahead, in a tiny island of civilization; turn to the south and you'd head down into one of the local wine regions, keep eastward and you'd pass a little winery with a rusted-out Karmann Ghia out front before the long haul out to Grizzly Falls.
I wasn't going either direction, though; for whatever reason I was doing any of this, I hooked a left and headed north, up towards Pleasant Grove. There was another crossing, upstream from the first, a little ways on; then it was back into the forest. Off on the right I could see cleared space and outbuildings for another vineyard, but no signs beckoned me into anybody's tasting room.
Suddenly, I was back in town, another outpost of the Sprawl springing up out of the trees like a bad mushroom. Normally this didn't bother me – it was nowhere near as noisy or crowded as Rancho Dorado – but after the tranquility of the last half-hour, it was almost shocking. I turned and crept along the main drag like a covert operative in enemy territory, then turned right, heading back into the wilderness with a palpable sense of relief.
There followed a long stretch of road without anything much on it; somewhere off to the north, I knew, was one of the local reservoirs, and I vaguely recalled the Forest Service having a research center in the neighborhood, but as far as I could see it was just me and Nature…
Well, me, Nature, and some lunatic driving a rattletrap Jeep that must've had a bent axle by the way it juddered and bucked as he screamed up out of nowhere to pass me at 70+ MPH, but we got these types, out here. You learned to distinguish between normal crazy and asshole crazy, and I could tell he didn't mean any harm, though I was glad that if anything did happen to him, it'd be at a very safe distance ahead of me.
And then, to my surprise, I found I was driving past the mobile-home park at the far eastern end of town. I hadn't consciously planned to end up back here, any more than I'd planned any of this, but somehow I'd managed it…?
Maybe I shouldn't complain, but I felt a twinge of regret at re-entering human territory; still, I did have stuff to take care of. I switched on the radio as I headed back into town, just a few bars into "Red Barchetta;" secure in the knowledge that nobody could hear me, I sang along. It was still strange to hear my altered voice, but Geddy Lee was no longer just outside my range, at least.
The local Wal-Mart was right out; not so much because I found it gross and distasteful (although it was) as because this was about the smallest town they'd bother to put a Wal-Mart in, and it was perpetually out of stock on everything. I didn't know whether the local supermarkets would have appliances, but it was still a better bet. I parked the Bug outside the Save-Mart and grabbed reflexively for the face-mask I kept in the glove compartment, before it dawned on me that there was no longer any point to it. After taking a moment to steady myself following that realization, I got out and shut the door,° squared my shoulders, and took a deep breath – time to do this.
° (I never bothered locking it; it wasn't a collector's piece, and I didn't keep anything worth stealing inside. The locks were more of a suggestion, anyway.)
It was never as crowded as Safeway, but it was still a Friday, and I felt like every eye in the store was on me as I entered. I knew that was absurd – it wasn't like I cut a more distinctive figure than any other newly-minted catgirl – but nothing makes you self-conscious like switching sexes and becoming a whole other species into the bargain. I was out in public in a skirt and blouse, fully transformed; could anyone tell I'd been a guy? Was being approximately woman-shaped and wearing the right camouflage all it took to escape notice, as a single face in the crowd, or was I giving myself away in ways I didn't even realize? How did they see me, and how did I want to be seen…?
I skirted warily around the edge of the store to the very back and stalked from aisle to aisle, trying to remember what was where. Chips, cereal, salad dressing…I got sidetracked for a long minute at the meat counter, staring at filets of raw fish that I could smell from behind the glass as clearly as I could've picked them up right in front of me before, then caught the pricetags and was startled out of my reverie. There'd definitely been a surge in demand lately…
Ah, there we were – diapers, feminine products, hair care – and yes, they did have a basic, cheap blowdryer in stock. I had no idea if I'd need anything heavier-duty, but it'd do for a start; I grabbed that and a hairbrush and went back to the refrigerated section. But while I was pondering over beer selections, I felt one ear twitch and re-orient to face a presence I sensed at the end of the aisle.
It wasn't as weird as I'dve thought. I think humans experience it, too; it's that odd feeling you get when you just know someone is in the room with you, even though you haven't seen them or noticed any obvious hints (creaking floorboards, etc.) Noticed is the key point; human senses pick up more than the brain consciously realizes, but there's some survival instinct from æons past, down in the monkey-mind, that processes that stuff. And you're just a lot better at it when you've suddenly got independently-mobile acoustic mirrors mounted on your head.
The interloper was a man – I caught his scent before I even saw him – in what looked to be his mid-thirties; clean-cut Young Professional type, not pompadoured and manscaped in the manner of the chronically insecure, but definitely someone who fancied himself a Serious Person despite the fact that he was making a beer run on a Friday morning. He didn't quite jump at the sight of me, but I could see him tense up when I turned to look his way.
We stood there, neither of us quite sure how to react. Was I in his way? I didn't think so; even my tail was behaving itself, for the moment. He wanted something either past me or in my vicinity, I guessed, but it wasn't like I was stopping him. There was no reason I should have to move, even ignoring the part of me that felt like folding my paws and silently daring him to encroach on my territory…
But it was galling when he actually backed up to the opposite shelf and sidled past me, trying (badly) not to look like he was doing it – even moreso than with the JWs the other day. That was just primal fear, whether or not it was justified; whereas this dickweed was obviously in a position to make rational evaluations, and still chose to treat me as less than a person, despite my posing no danger to him…!
My ears flattened out, and I could feel my tail puff up a bit. I tried to temper my irritation, reminding myself that this was maybe not a million light-years removed from some of my own behavior, but…no, I was still pretty miffed at it. Remember me as you pass by/As you are now, so once was I, I thought peevishly, but kept it to myself. Sic transit virtus mundi, pal!
With a sigh, I added a couple four-packs to my basket° and headed for the registers.°° It was better there, in that the people in line didn't treat me like a walking avatar of disease, but it did mean having to remember how doing people stuff went, after two weeks of not even leaving the house except to go to my neighbor's, a month and a half of lockdown, and a lifetime of never exactly getting it in the first place.
° (With only four items, I'd normally have carried them, but I was leery of clutching anything to my chest right now.)
°° (Well, register, singular – inevitably, only one lane was actually open.)
But I couldn't deny the subtle, quasi-illicit thrill of anything resembling social interaction. There were people here! And I could just stand around next to them vaguely not-quite being together, without any masks or social distancing or anything! And if I stood there saying nothing, it was just normal awkwardness, and not because I was literally trying not to breathe any more than necessary! Hell, I could even engage in physical contact with someone, without putting either of us at risk! And maybe if I hung around and insistently nudged up against them just right, they'd get the hint and scratch behind my—
I power-cringed and glanced around uncomfortably, wondering if anybody'd heard me think that. Casting about for anything else to focus on, my gaze drifted across the tabloids racked up by the conveyor belt, and the cover photo of some random celebrity bimbo showcasing her new triple cleavage.° Guh, I thought in exasperation, I didn't know who she was before – why am I supposed to care now, just 'cause she's also a catgirl!?
° (Of somewhat greater interest was the blurb about a stray mouse disrupting some royal wedding reception.)
But it did hold a sort of train-wreck fascination; not as the photographer intended, but as a stark warning that the virus wasn't in the business of fixing chronic plastic-surgery addicts. The poor woman had been through so many nose-nips, cheeklifts, eye-tucks, and God-knew-what-else that, ironically, she reminded me of a terminally fancy-bred Persian – only she'd paid for the privilege of going under the knife, rather than getting selectively mutated by neurotics with terrible ideas of what a Cat should be…
Happily, I was distracted from having to look at that. Less happily, it was by someone grabbing my tail and nomming on it. I turned to see a child of four or five – the face was so cherubic as to be indeterminate, and the playclothes and frizzy blond bowl-cut were no help, but I could tell by the scent° it was a boy – employing the Shark Method for determining the properties of the thing in front of him.
° (Somewhere underneath that Play-Doh smell all grubby little kids have, anyway.)
He seemed a little old for the just-put-whatever-in-your-mouth stage, but he was on a leash, which suggested that he was one of those kids who march to a different drummer – the kind of child who, in a couple years, would be wandering off from elementary-school field sports to ponder whether ants get dizzy when they're climbing on the underside of a branch or see what happens to a leaf when you pick out all the little bits from between the lattice. As somebody who'd been that kid, I felt a certain amount of sympathy.
As someone whose fur was getting saturated with spittle, however, I was less than thrilled. I stared down at him, trying and failing to figure out what combination of eyebrow position, mouth shape, and head cant counted as The Look; he met my gaze with a placid stare, showing no hint of awareness that this wasn't perfectly reasonable behavior on his part. I felt flummoxed; what was I supposed to do here? I didn't want to snap at the kid, but seriously…!
As I was starting to get properly flustered, the boy's mom glanced up from the coupon flyer she'd been perusing. She was also frizzy and blonde, and full of a nervous energy which "mother to this critter" explained perfectly. "Oh, ah, honey," she said, with a harried expression, "let's not do that, okay…?"
Kiddo said nothing, but let go of my tail, with some hesitation and no trace of guilt; he then proceeded to wander over to the rack of candy bars below the tabloids and began methodically turning the topmost one in each column upside-down. His mom gave me a weak, please-don't-hate-me kind of smile. "Sorry," she said, picking up her feet to step out from the loop he'd made around her legs. "You know how they can be."
Do I…? I thought, feeling all weird and uncomfortable at her assumption that I could relate. I found the leash thing a little off-putting, as well; but I doubted she was inviting me to critique her parenting style, and it wasn't like I had to deal with him 24/7. And he wasn't biting, I thought, trying to get a handle on myself, just…gumming a total stranger's intriguingly fuzzy body-part, as you do when you're a Weird Kid. I offered a weak little chuckle and half-hearted grin of my own, and she returned to her flyer, satisfied that she wasn't, I didn't know, at risk of Shunning or whatever.
At last, the elderly woman ahead of me finished counting out exact change for her Marlboros° and Wild Turkey and hobbled off to the exit, and I stepped forward to the register. The clerk was a certifiable Pimply-Faced Youth, and while I couldn't hold that against him, I couldn't stop remembering that phase myself as he rang up the beer and looked me up and down. Was he looking at me as an oddity? A woman? A piece of meat? Or just a Fungible Customer Entity…?
° (Trust me, if you think standing next to a life-long chain-smoker is An Experience as a human, you don't know the half of it.)
I shook my head, trying not to dwell on it. I didn't want to be all passive-aggressive – I could empathize with customer-service types, and there was no call to be an asshole to them over trivial matters – but I was already feeling out-of-sorts, and part of my tail was now wet, slightly sticky, and getting cold. Go on, I thought irritably, just ask to see my ID…
But he didn't, no doubt sensing the waves of psychic intimidation emanating from me…or possibly just noting the way my ears ticked back a bit. "Birthday?" he prompted.
"November 15th," I sighed, "1992."
He nodded and slid the Controlled Substances onto the other belt, then rang up the rest. I paid, went out to the car, and spent the next few minutes taking a shop towel to my fur until it was only mildly damp, and then smoothing it back out 'til it no longer bothered me to the point of distraction.