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    I’m so confused. I have no idea what happened. But this bio-metrics lab is where I know I met my doom, or at least my body did. It’s a pitch-black night here at the university. Dr. Henry Fairgood is the top researcher in his field. I came to him tonight for my own research when I entered this weird chamber.

    Without realizing it, I must have tripped a spring or something, because suddenly I’m all diced up and mangled. I see my own body, like it had been shattered. I stand outside of the body, like a ghost or something. Am I really dead? I don’t feel dead. Of course you wouldn’t know that from looking at my physical body. I can see some of the vital organs are functioning, but I don’t know how that is.

    I can sense my brain still firing out signals, though it has to be futile and pointless now. It’s as though my body was run over and crushed by a cement truck. I’m like roadkill in this lab. I want to ascend to heaven, but it’s like something is holding me back. It’s like either I still have unfinished business on Earth, or there’s not a place for me up there. It’s as though this wasn’t my time to go. I’m a ghost, but not exactly. It’s like I’ve got a solid form still. But how is it like that?

    I race down the hall towards Dr. Fairgood’s office to see what I can do. He sees me like nothing out of the ordinary just happened, but then I explain to him what happened. I tell him I need a new body right away, and it must be a female body. He tells me there aren’t very many to choose from now, in fact there’s only three. I tell him I don’t care, as long as I get one. Can you blame me? I know that’s the only option I have. I can’t very well return to my own, as mangled as it is. I don’t even have a face anymore. There’s not even skin there, just the face of my skull, and that’s it. Bloody, too. There’s blood everywhere. There’s no way to recover from that.

    Then Fairgood asks me to follow him into a major surgical-type lab, the kind you see at a hospital. But this is no hospital, just a weird science lab. He shows me three specimens each in a giant tube filled with lime-green liquid oxygen. The bodies are female, but none are human. The first tube facing me on the left contains a weird llama-like creature. It’s so ugly though, that I pass on it. The second is some sort of rare giant spider; one that they cloned from the Coniferous era. But again I pass on it. The third tube contains a white Persian cat. I ask Fairgood why there aren’t any human bodies to be put into. He says this is all they have now. Reluctantly I choose the cat’s body to be placed into.

    Immediately he opens the tube and retrieves the unconscious animal. I see one of his colleagues return from my disaster area with my brain still intact and incased in a tub of ice. They place the cat on an operating table and immediately open the top of the cat’s head. I watch as the professor runs diagnostic cables through the animal’s head, and remove its brain. As soon as the cat’s brain is removed, the professor and his staff take my brain from the ice tub and implant it into its head. Immediately they inject drugs to allow the cat’s body to accept my brain.

    Slowly, I begin to awaken and peer through the eyes of the cat. At first I see nothing but blurry images in front of me. I feel weary, maybe from what the cat senses. Then just as I’m getting settled, my eyes see the room with crystal clear vision. I hear the professor’s voice, though at first it sounds like I’m listening to him under water. Finally I can hear him talk to me. Through the cat’s voice, I can talk to him fluently, like somehow I’m a talking cat. I know it’s not even close to normal, but there’s little I can do about that. Slowly I start building my strength and leap off the table.

    As I walk out of the lab, I can still smell the odor from that chamber where my old body remains. It’s like the doc had the room sealed and refuses to clean it. I don’t know why he’s keeping it like that. It’s so bloody and gross, that I feel my stomach convulse. The scent alone is enough to make me throw up on the carpet in front of me. However it appears that the cat I inhabited hasn’t had anything to eat yet, so the vomit is mostly made of water and air. The chamber is sealed, but my old blood oozes from under the door and across the black and white tiled floor. I can even peer under to see the bloody remains. It looks like the body has been literally ripped to shreds, almost like a bloody pulled pork sandwich. I pull myself away from the door, just in time to hear the professor call my name.

    He hurries me quickly into a large testing room, much like a playroom from when I was a small child. He wishes to test my skills in my new cat body. Is he testing if I can behave like a cat, or if I retained the mind and motor skills of my human abilities? I ask him if it is feasible to operate a computer, despite me being a cat. He says, “We’ll see. As soon as you can perform certain tasks for me, then I’ll see if you can’t operate a computer or program a mouse.”

    During his test, my mind still wanders between myself as a cat and the mangled heap of my old human body. In the middle of the test, I ask him for a restroom break. He allows it and I immediately scamper on all fours to the women’s room. I immediately crawl under a stall door and leap onto the toilet seat. As I start to pee, I see my reflection upon the shiny metal door. I peer upon it, used to seeing my human form. After I finish, I flush the toilet and leap down from the seat. I slink back from the stall door and scamper towards the row of sink basins. I leap onto the counter and glance into the mirror. Again I find my reflection both foreign and strange. I touch my white paw to my tiny pink nose and feel whiskers jutting from it. Still I can’t get the image of my old mangled body out of my head. I open up both taps from the sink beside me and run my face through it. I try as hard as I can to flush the disgusting vision out of my head, but all attempts fail. So I shake my head, trying to dry it the way I’ve seen other cats do it.

    I don’t know what to say to anyone about this. I don’t even know how to tell my parents, my brother, or my boyfriend what happened to me tonight. What do I say, that my human body was crushed by something unknown and I ended up bound inside this Persian cat’s body. More to the point, are they going to understand a talking cat? My dad in particular isn’t even fond of cats, calls them dumb animals. How would they recognize me in this state? Could they? The only one I can talk to now is the professor. What do I do now?