Chapter Text
Max hates witches. Hates their sloppy use of blood, their bony knickknacks, their poultices, and their aversions to showers and deodorant.
Witches are all the things Max despises in this world. And as bad luck would have it…he happens to have one living on the floor below him. Max hates her and her stupid pruney face most of all. She boils rabbits and mice with little regard for his sensitive sense of smell, and sometimes his apartment is almost uninhabitable because of the stench.
Max has tried to have her evicted several times but humans, with the singular exception of his secretary, are incredibly dumb. Every time the landlord shows up, he claims not to notice the foul stench wafting up through the ventilation from downstairs. And on the one occasion that Max had actually convinced the man to visit the witch, he’d come back with a dazed expression and assurances that all was just fine. But Max had smelled the hex bag in his pocket as it stunk up the whole hallway. Hag!
After the endless stream of assaults on his olfactory nerves, Max has retaliated by buying the least fuel-efficient car he’d been able to find on the market. Best investment he ever made! Sometimes he leaves the engine running outside the building just so he can hear the witch screeching from inside her apartment.
If he were to calculate his carbon footprint, Max is probably solely responsible for shortening Earth’s lifespan by several years, but he considers that a worthy sacrifice to get back at that Wiccan nightmare.
Max thinks perhaps he’s gotten the last laugh with that because for a few days the air is pleasantly void of the smell of boiling pets.
Then he meets her in the elevator one evening. She glares daggers at him with her beady little eyes and he hisses at her.
”Careful pussycat,” she sneers and when he turns his back to her, she mumbles something he can’t quite make out, but her sandpaper voice sends a shudder up his spine.
When the elevator doors slide open on her floor, she pushes past him with her flowing and dirty skirts. She turns to face him again once she’s out in the hallway.
”Enjoy your weekend,” she says with a smirk. Max rolls his eyes.
”Go choke on a hamster,” he tells her before the doors slide closed again. The smell of her still lingers in the small space and he covers his nose with the lapel of his suit jacket to breathe in the expensive scent of his own perfume instead.
He showers as soon as he gets home and pushes all thoughts of the witch from his mind… until he wakes up the next morning.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
He immediately notices something is wrong as soon as he feels consciousness return and stretches. His expensive silk sheets feel completely different against his body and for a moment he wonders why he decided to fall asleep with clothes on. Then the way his limbs moved as he stretched registers too and max realizes that his body feels very different too. He blinks his eyes open and notices that everything looks bigger and that when he tries to look down at his own body, instead of toned abs, he’s met with brown fur.
“What the fuck!?” Max tries to say but the sound that comes out of his mouth is very far from human. It’s a squeaky and indignant mewl.
He tries to stand up and immediately topples over, unused to his new body. He manages standing on the second attempt – but only on all fours, which is always an undignified position to be in, unless it’s for sexual purposes - and walks over to the edge of the bed. The distance to the floor seems swindling but Max steels himself and makes the leap. He lands ungracefully but thankfully this new body he seems to be in is soft and so he doesn’t hurt himself on the landing.
Being a vampire, Max has no use for mirrors in his apartment. Mirrors are for people who need to assure themselves they look okay. Max is not one of those people. And even if he were, his reflection wouldn’t show up in any mirror anyway. So the lack of mirrors has never been an issue before. But now he curses the lack of them as he desperately needs to figure out what the hell is going on. He’s covered in fur and when he walks, he’s pretty sure he feels a tail whipping angrily back and forth behind him.
In the end, he remembers the chrome finish trashcan in the bathroom and hurries over on wobbly legs to stand in front of it to look at himself. The reflection is a little blurred and distorted but there’s no mistaking what he’s seeing.
Max has turned into a fucking cat!
He roars with rage but the sound that leaves his mouth is the most pathetic sound he’s ever heard.
There’s no doubt in his mind who’s behind this and he vows to claw her beady little eyes out next time he sees her.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Max spends the better part of the morning trapped in his apartment, trying to figure out the next course of action.
He comes up with nothing.
Moving around an apartment that was designed for someone several times his size - and with opposable thumbs - is endlessly frustrating. He attempts to get to his laptop to start it up and send a distress email to…someone. But through some cosmic sort of bad luck he’d moved the desk chair to take down a shoebox from on top of his closet yesterday and without it, there’s no way to get his tiny useless body onto the desk to reach the computer. He does try, but scaling the stainless steel legs of the desk proves impossible. He should have gone with the fucking oak desk after all, despite Architectural Digest warning him against it. The wood would have been so much easier to dig his claws into and climb.
Max searches for his phone for a couple of minutes, before he remembers where it is… right next to the laptop. As if on cue, it rings and there’s nothing he can do about it. He hangs his furry little head in defeat, discovering that yes, cats can apparently sigh.
The day passes in a frustratingly uneventful fashion – with the only interruption being a couple of more phone calls that he can’t answer - and by the time 4 pm rolls around, Max is no more human than when the day started.
He has managed to turn on the TV at least, and zaps through the channels before settling on one of the porn channels. He watches as a large man picks his maid up to fuck her against a wall, and finds that it does nothing for him besides making him miss his own body. He twists his tiny furry cat body into his best impression of a cinnamon roll and falls asleep to the sounds of fake moans and balls slapping against skin.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
A sound startles him awake a while later and he’s on all fours, hissing loudly from the fright before he realizes where the sound is coming from. It’s not the TV, where the porno is over and a beautiful lady is now trying to sell him lube – for a good price too, Max notes - but the sound of his doorbell. It rings again a few seconds later, followed by someone calling his name.
”Max? Are you in there?” the voice calls and Max’s heart immediately starts beating faster when he recognizes who that voice belongs to. You, his secretary. The only person Max actually looks forward to spending time with. He now remembers he’d set up a date with you today to go through a few pitches for the meetings with the shareholders next week.
No, not a date! he reminds himself. Although Max might have prepared a bottle or two of red for the occasion. But that was just him being a kind boss for making you work on a Saturday evening. Nothing creepy. He wasn’t about to scare away the only worker he could actually stand to be around for more than two minutes… even though he might have entertained a fantasy or two about you and him, in his office, with the blinds closed. So what? He never claimed to be a saint.
Max tries calling your name but only manages a weak meow that he doubts will be heard through the door. He realizes that if he doesn’t get to you, you will leave and he cannot have that. Max has spent enough sleepless nights watching Animal Rescue to know that’s not a fate he wants to suffer. If he’s gonna be a cat, he wants to be the cute kind, not the half-starved kind with his fur falling off! He will not end up dead and abandoned, trapped in his own home!
Desperately, he looks around the apartment before he remembers the window that he’d cracked open last night to air out the stench of the witch’s midnight rabbit-boiling. Max runs over and manages to squeeze out through the opening and out into the free world. Success!
He clumsily makes his way down the fire escape, stumbling and falling down the last few steps before he rolls over the edge with an undignified meep, and lands in a bush. It manages to break his fall just as he hears someone say ”Oh my god!”
At ground level, the world suddenly feels incredibly loud and he feels the fur on his back stand up as the cars whirring past creates a thunderous roar in his twitching ears. Momentarily, he forgets what brought him here and he curls up under the bushes, too scared to move. There’s a rustling sound and Max can feel himself shiver with fear. He’s not ready to die.
Then someone parts the branches of the bushes in front of him and he sees your worried face, framed by the green leaves of the bushes.
He immediately runs from his hiding spot towards you, calling your name. At the sounds that his furry new self creates, your worry morphs into an expression of softness that you’ve never directed at him before. It does a funny little thing to his heart, but Max reasons, it could also be the monster of a truck that just ran past them, almost giving him a heart attack.
“Hey there,” you coo at him and crouch down just as he runs to safety next to you. He has the strangest urge to just push his face against your leg and - too distressed to care - he does.
You laugh and the sound is music to his ears. Then you reach out to pet him and oh…that’s a sensation he could definitely get used to! Max pushes up so hard against your gentle fingers running across his back that he almost falls over. It’s a little undignified, but to Hell with dignity, Max reasons, craning his neck when you scratch under his little chin.
“Are you okay, little one?” you ask softly. ”That was quite the fall you just took.” You pick him up and gently try moving his legs to make sure he’s not injured. There’s a whirring sound in his head and Max thinks perhaps he did hit his head, before he realizes with relief that it’s not head trauma, he’s just purring.
The relief is short-lived, however.
”Excuse me…”
Max blinks his eyes open to see who you’re talking to and immediately tenses as he spots his least favorite hag stopping on her way up the stairs.
”Yes, dear?” she replies, and when you smile in response Max is both surprised and slightly disappointed that you’re not seeing through the obvious Nice Lady act. The fake niceness makes him want to cough up a hairball right then and there.
You seem to be swallowing the act hook line and sinker, however, and before Max has time to even attempt to warn you about the gross old woman, you’re holding him up in front of you for the witch to see. Max isn’t really listening. Something about if the hag knows who this cat belongs to (though you don’t call her that). What he’s really concentrated on is glaring daggers at the witch, who is now watching him with the creepiest smile he’s ever seen. She fucking knows it’s him. Of course, she does! She’s the one behind this.
The witch tells you that she doesn’t think the cat belongs to anyone but that she’s seen it hang around outside the building a few times. Fucking liar.
Her bony fingers twitch at her sides and Max is suddenly struck by the horrific thought of what would happen if you were to hand him over to the witch. Max does not want to end up being turned into cat stew and a furry slipper for her smelly feet. He growls low in his throat and tries to press his body back towards you, and away from the witch. You notice and make a soothing sound while stroking his head.
The witch chuckles and turns. She is about to leave when you call for her again. She turns, her smile slightly less patient this time. If you notice, you don’t let it show.
”There’s a man living on the fifth floor… Max Phillips. You wouldn’t happen to have seen him today, have you?” There’s a hopeful note to your question, and Max isn’t the only one to notice.
The witch smirks, when her beady eyes flicker down to look at Max before looking up to meet your gaze again.
”Left this morning, hon. Said he was going away with someone for the weekend.” The witch schools her features into an expression of fake concern. ”Why?… did you two have plans?”
”Oh, no… I was just dropping something off,” you lie but Max can hear the slight hurt to your voice and he wishes you would hold him out to the witch again… so he could slit her throat with his claws.
It stings a bit that apparently you think that he would ditch you like that.
”Have a good weekend, dear,” the witch says before turning again and heading inside.
You remain standing out on the sidewalk, unmoving for another few seconds before Max makes a concerned meow and you snap out of your thoughts. You look down at Max, and that soft smile is back again.
”I guess you’re coming with me then.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~
You bring him back to your apartment, in a car that’s way too loud but smells pleasantly of your perfume.
The same scent softly envelops him when you carry him into your apartment a little while later, and it takes Max a few seconds before he realizes he’s purring again.
You set him down on the floor but trail after him as he explores the two-room apartment. It looks absolutely nothing like his own. Much of the furniture looks like it’s older than you are, and not in the cool vintage kind of way but rather in the ”My grandma actually died on this couch and I inherited it” kind of way. Had it belonged to anyone else, Max would have suggested burning it for being a crime against humanity, but the personal touches sprinkled throughout the home are so very you that Max for some reason feels willing to forgive and let live.
Once he’s done with his tour, it’s Max’s turn to trail after you. You declare it’s time for dinner and head for the kitchen.
You move with ease and familiarity through the motions of preparing dinner. Perhaps Max shouldn’t be so surprised by that. Even though he’s never seen you cook, you must have fed yourself for several years.
Soon, he smells salmon, and there’s a rumble in his small kitty tummy. Max realizes that he hasn’t eaten anything since last evening, and he is starving. Thankfully, you haven’t forgotten about him and when food is done, you place a small plate of salmon on the floor next to the kitchen counter. Max jumps on it as soon as it’s within reach.
Chewing with his new mouth feels a bit odd, but he quickly gets the hang of it. The salmon tastes fantastic and he can’t help the high-pitched growls that he makes as he chews. He hears a chuckle behind him but he’s got his priorities sorted and keeps his focus on the food.
It’s only when the plate is completely empty, that he turns to find you looking at him with a small amused smile. Max suddenly feels a little self-conscious. He licks his paw so he can use it to clean his face and make sure there isn’t any salmon left stuck to his fur.
You pick Max up and sit him down on your lap before scratching him behind the ear. It feels impossibly good and the purrs vibrate through all of Max’s body as he slowly kneads your thigh with his paws.
Your soft touch almost has him falling asleep sitting upright, and then you lift Max up and tuck him into the hood of your shirt. Your hair tickles his nose slightly and he sneezes, but he likes the scent of your shampoo and soon settles in for a nap.
You wake him a while later and he makes a protesting little mewl.
”Sorry, little guy. But I just wanted to show you… I still had this from when I looked after a friend’s cat a couple of months ago…”
You set him down on the floor and he stares at the box of sand in front of him.
”Go ahead,” you say encouragingly and pat him lightly on the butt to urge him forward. While generally not opposed to having his butt slapped, this is the farthest thing from okay and if he weren’t a fucking cat, Max would call HR right away. Because there’s no fucking way he’s pissing in front of his secretary! Especially not when said secretary watches him like it would make her day if he did. Nope.
He sniffs the edge of the litter box before quickly darting to the side in an evasive maneuver that allows him to run past you out of the bathroom and towards the living room. He can hear you laughing behind him as he hides under the couch.
He waits until he thinks you’ve forgotten about the potty training before he dares to crawl back outside.