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."