4. Jenny Starts Feeling Kind of Catty
Sunday Night
Madelyn stopped at her apartment to change clothes and pick up the sheets she had laundered that morning, still feeling kind of numb or shell-shocked. While she had initially found the physical transformation the hardest thing to accept, upon further reflection she was even more frightened that the remote could apparently make everyone in the world ignore the oddity of Leila's lapine features. Or so it claimed. Perhaps it was able to affect the relatively small number of people Leila encountered, or who happened to be looking at a picture of her, but what if she was on live TV or streaming, and millions or even billions of people were watching at the same time? Madelyn didn't think that was likely to come up, or that she could be connected to Leila's transformation even if the remote did fail to keep it under wraps, but it still gave her some anxiety.
When she got to her late grandfather's house Madelyn suddenly realized that she had not checked the remote for a couple of hours, having been too spooked to feel her usual lust at the thought of what she could do with it. She expected it to be up to about 5% at most since it should have been drained after zapping Leila, but found that it was at 9%. Did it charge faster when it was low, or was there something else at play? For now all she could do was keep checking periodically and try to work it out.
Calling out to her mother and sister as she walked in the door, Madelyn followed the sound of their greetings into the living room where she stopped in her tracks with surprise. Jenny and Allie were on the floor playing with a cat, trying to entice it to chase a small fluffy thingamajig on the end of a string. "Uh, why is there a cat in here?" she asked, nonplussed.
"Mom adopted her today!" replied Allison happily, scooping the cat up and giving her a hug, which the animal did not seem to especially appreciate. "Her name is Bubbles and she's just the cutest thing ever!"
Madelyn felt a twinge of worry, wondering how this was connected to the remote. They'd never had any pets growing up other than a few goldfish that hadn't lasted very long, so it seemed extremely unlikely that the arrival of this cat the day after her mother had developed a fetish for being a submissive sex kitten could be a coincidence. But other than looking a little flushed, which could be from laughing at the feline's antics, her mother seemed completely normal. Maybe this was Jenny's way of trying to cope with the unfamiliar urges that had been instilled in her mind? Madelyn felt her arousal starting to wake up again, ever so slightly.
"So, are we still going through boxes or did you finish everything already?" Maddie asked, trying to head off her arousal before it built up.
"Uh, well, I'm sorry to say that we haven't gone through nearly as much as I was hoping, we kept getting distracted by the cat!" Jenny explained, apologetically, as she held her arms out to Allison and beckoned her to surrender Bubbles. "I guess I should feed her and then we can try to crack on for a couple of hours."
The two girls murmured their assent to the plan and headed into the dining room while Jenny took the cat into the kitchen to give her some dinner. A few minutes later she joined her daughters and brought them each a bottled water and some snacks before settling down to resume combing through papers.
Madelyn was being more attentive to the job than before, wondering if any of them would stumble across another mention of the remote or whatever her grandfather might have been doing with it. Surely he wouldn't have limited his correspondence to his daughter to that one short letter? After more than an hour of rifling through papers, though, Madelyn had found nothing of interest, and apparently neither had anyone else. Glancing up, Madelyn was confused to see her mother staring intently at Allison. Frowning, Maddie glanced back and forth between the two until Allison also looked up, eyebrows raised in question. When Allie made eye contact with her mother Jenny slowly reached out and, without breaking the stare, pushed Allison's water bottle off the table.
"Mom? What the f... Why did you do that?" asked Allison, utterly baffled.
Jenny blinked finally, looked at her arm as if it belonged to someone else, and stammered, "I don't... it... I was... thought it might be... a joke?"
"Uh huh," said Allison, deadpan. "Really funny joke mom. Hilarious."
Blushing, Jenny got up from the table to retrieve the bottle and said, "Well, I might as well get us some more drinks while I'm up. Do you want anything Maddie?"
Madelyn, who was also blushing but slightly less baffled than the other two about possible reasons for her mother's bizarre behavior, shook her head and said, "No, I'm good." She wasn't exactly thirsty, at any rate.
Their mother went back to the kitchen and returned a few minutes later carrying two bowls of water and said, "Here you go!" while setting both bowls on the floor near the table. While her daughters stared at her in mute amazement, Jenny got down on her hands and knees and started drinking noisily. Allie gasped, while Madelyn pushed her legs together very tightly, as her mother's vantage point from the floor would otherwise allow her to see the hand her eldest daughter was teasing herself with, but remained silent.
It was almost a minute before Allison asked, in a very weak voice, "Mom, are you okay?"
Jenny froze in shock, tongue still stuck out to lap at the bowl of water. She slowly closed her mouth and sat up, blushing furiously and unable to meet her daughters' eyes. "I'm not feeling well, I'd better go to bed," she said quietly as she stood and went upstairs without a backward glance.
Allison looked to her sister, who tried to not reveal just how turned on she was when she returned Allie's gaze. "I don't think she's been drinking tonight. I'm worried. Do you think she's having, like, a stroke or something?" she asked in a worried voice.
"I don't think that's how strokes work," replied Madelyn, "But something definitely seems off. Maybe it's just stress or something?"
Allison made a noise that was half laugh and half scoff, responding, "I don't think I've ever been so stressed out I wanted to drink from a bowl on the floor like an animal!" as she looked upstairs toward their mother's room. "Maybe mom just needs to get laid." Madelyn swallowed nervously but said nothing.