Chapter Text
The cure doesn’t work as quickly as they’d hoped. An hour later, the Tower is in full-blown chaos.
Peter darts down the hallway, chasing after Steve—who is, unfortunately, still a cat and currently running away from him for his feline life. “Steve! Come back! I was just talking about it hypothetically!” Peter pleads.
Tony sighs, rubbing a hand down his face. “God help me,” he mutters before setting off to find them. He eventually tracks them to the lab—where Peter is holding an unimpressed white cat in his arms, animatedly explaining something.
“So if we just made a tiny robotic suit for a cat—” Peter starts.
“Peter,” Tony cuts in, “I know you’re a genius like me, and you’ve got a thousand ideas, but Steve doesn’t want to participate in that.”
“But he’s purring,” Peter says, confused.
“That’s because you’re rubbing his head, Pete. He can’t help it.”
“Oh.” Peter shrugs. “Okay.” He passes Steve to Tony and immediately moves on to another project.
Tony looks down at the feline soldier in his arms. “I’m sorry, Steve,” he says as they walk out of the lab. Steve meows sharply, clearly unimpressed. Tony bites his lip to keep from laughing. “You, uh… haven’t eaten today,” he says.
Steve looks up at him with those blue eyes—now round—and Tony’s mouth twitches. What stupid thing have I done to deserve this, Steve thinks grimly.
They end up in the kitchen, where Natasha is waiting with a bag and a can in either hand. “Got either the wet food or the solid,” she says, holding them up with a straight face.
Steve meows in annoyance. I will not be eating that! he yells in cat language.
“It’s a chicken and veggie blend,” Natasha says.
“MEOWWW!” Steve screams, tail puffing up.
He bites Tony’s arm in protest, and Tony yelps, dropping him. “Steve, that’s not fair!” Tony argues. “You haven’t eaten all day! Cat or human, you need fuel—and it’s not safe to feed you human food right now!”
Natasha calmly starts scooping both types into a bowl. “Maybe he wants a choice,” she says, setting it beside a water dish.
Steve is still meowing angrily when the smell hits him. Its a glorious scent. His meows fade as his eyes dilate and he licks his chops. Tony turns away, trying desperately not to laugh, while Natasha hides a smile. Steve approaches the bowl, sniffs once, and then—cat instincts win.
He devours it.
The only sound in the kitchen is his sharp teeth crunching and smacking against the bowl.
“Well, I’d say that worked out,” Natasha says, putting away the cat food.
“We hopefully won’t need that tomorrow,” Tony mutters, still grinning.
When Steve finishes, he starts licking himself clean. They try to give him privacy, but it’s just too funny. Tony snaps his hundredth picture that day, already imagining how much blackmail material this will make when Steve’s back to normal and gets on his nerves.
Halfway through grooming, Steve freezes—realizing what he’s doing. He just ate cat food. Like a fein. And now he’s cleaning himself with one leg in the air.
He slowly lowers his hind leg and looks around. No one’s there. He lets out a small meow to test the waters. Silence. He sighs. Fine. He’s exhausted anyway. He should find somewhere to sleep.
For some reason, his room doesn’t sound appealing. He wanders the halls in search of a good spot.
Bruce runs into him minutes later and lights up. “There you are, Steve!”
Ten minutes after that, Steve is back in the lab with his shield sitting beside him.
“I wonder if you can still hold the shield in this form,” Bruce muses, hand on his chin. “Maybe there’s some resonance…”
Steve meows furiously. I am not holding a damn shield!
“Maybe a mini one,” Bruce mumbles thoughtfully.
That’s it. Steve launches himself across the table and onto Bruce’s face.
“Hey!” Bruce yells, trying to pry him off.
Tony bursts into the lab just in time to see Bruce wrestling with a very fluffy, very angry Steve. “God, Bruce, what did you do now?” Tony groans, pulling the hissing cat off his friend’s face.
“I just wanted to see if he could still—”
“Yeah, yeah. Come here, Fur Soldier,” Tony mutters, rubbing Steve’s back until he calms. He carries him upstairs. “Look, I’ll get you anything you want when this is over, okay?”
He sets Steve down gently. For a second, everything’s peaceful—until Steve starts making that awful noise cats make before vomiting.
Tony’s eyes widen. “Steve—God—”
Too late. Steve coughs up a hairball, looks Tony dead in the eyes… and walks away.
Tony stares after him, expression blank. “…I asked for that.”
——————————————————————————-
After the hairball incident, Steve disappears.
The Tower grows unusually quiet for a few hours—quiet enough for everyone to start worrying. Tony paces the common area, muttering, “He couldn’t have gotten far. He’s the size of a football.”
“I checked the vents,” Natasha reports. “No sign of him.”
Bruce sighs. “He’s probably just hiding somewhere dark. Cats do that when they’re overwhelmed.”
Peter’s brows knit with concern. “I just wanna make sure he’s okay…”
Thor looks unusually solemn. “The feline is very precious. He must be protected at all costs.”
“That feline is Captain America,” Natasha reminds him, though even she can’t help but agree with the sentiment.
After another half hour of searching, Clint finally calls out, “Uh, guys? You might want to come see this.”
They follow his voice to the storage room. There, in a dusty corner surrounded by spare tech crates, Steve is sprawled on his back inside an empty cardboard box—fast asleep, his little white paws twitching as if he’s chasing dream-mice.
Peter clasps his hands over his chest. “Aww…”
“Shh,” Tony says, though his smirk gives him away.
“Why did he choose a box?” Clint whispers.
“He’s a cat, Clint,” Bruce says dryly.
Natasha crosses her arms. “That’s still Steve we’re talking about.”
Thor tilts his head, smiling. “Even mighty warriors deserve comfort.”
Tony snaps another picture. “For scientific purposes,” he claims, earning four simultaneous glares.
They quietly leave the room, letting the tiny soldier sleep in peace.
⸻
The next morning, Steve wakes slowly. His eyes flutter open, and for a moment, he forgets everything—the mission, the serum, the curse, all of it. He yawns, stretches his limbs, and instinctively goes to lick his chest… when he freezes.
He doesn’t feel fur.
He feels skin.
His eyes fly open. He looks down at himself, then around the dim closet-like storage room. He’s sitting half-curled on top of a box, human again.
And completely naked.
“Oh, come on…” he groans, burying his face in his hands. “It’s just one thing after another.”
He peeks out the cracked door, checking for movement. The coast is clear.
“FRIDAY,” he whispers. “Can you send one of the bots to grab me clothes from my suite? Please?”
“Sending one now, Captain,” the AI replies cheerfully.
For the first time, Steve feels an overwhelming love for modern technology.
A few minutes later, a clumsy, squeaky bot rolls down the hallway—carrying a neatly folded set of clothes in its claw-like grip. The sight would’ve been ridiculous to anyone else, but Steve is too relieved to care.
“Thank you,” he says sincerely, taking the bundle from the bot. “You’re a hero.”
He slips into his boxers, sweatpants, and a soft T-shirt. Standing up feels strange—his legs still a little shaky after days on all fours—but he’s not about to complain. With a deep breath, he steps out of the storage room.
“I’m back,” he murmurs to himself.
And he means it. But the relief quickly sours into dread as the memories hit him—the meowing, the food bowl, the shield experiment, the….hairball.
And worse the photos. He can feel Tony’s blackmail folder growing by the second.
Still, he can’t bring himself to be angry. They’d taken care of him. Looked after him. Fed him. He’d even gotten to see the team through a different lens—a warmer, funnier, more feline one.
Time moves forward.
The “Steve the Cat” incident becomes a running joke around the Tower, one that resurfaces whenever Tony wants to lighten the mood—or irritate Steve into doing what he wants.
And every time someone brings it up, Steve just sighs and says, “If I ever turn into a cat again, I’ll still handle business like I did before.”
⸻
Weeks later, Tony quietly hangs a framed photo in the living room—a picture of a white cat curled in a box, sleeping soundly. The team walks past it every day now, smiling a little.
Steve stands in front of it one evening, arms crossed. “I don’t even remember you taking this,” he mutters.
Tony grins from the couch. “You were a natural model.”
Steve shakes his head, a small smile tugging at his mouth. “I was a cute cat,” he admits under his breath.
Tony snorts. “You said it, not me.”