Once upon a time, Park Chanyeol had been happy. He’d had a loving family, supportive friends, and a great job.

Now, he has none of those things.

After his parents died, depression hit Chanyeol hard. His friends couldn’t cope. He lost his job and his home, and ended up living on the streets in a tattered old work suit; the last thing he’d been wearing before he’d been evicted from his home and his belongings repossessed. Chanyeol gets two meals a day on excellent days, but usually he’s lucky if he can scrounge together enough coins for a loaf of bread. The bread doesn’t usually last the night.

It had been hard at first to live on the street, but since he began, Chanyeol has gained ample survival skills. But he knows that he can’t live like this forever. One day he’s going to die out here, and nobody’s going to miss him.

There doesn’t seem to be anything for Chanyeol to do about it, though. The hostels are full. He can’t get a job, because he can’t have a wash or get a clean suit for interviews. He can’t afford anything.

And then, one day, The Magician comes.

He visits all the homeless in the streets around by where Chanyeol lives. Chanyeol doesn’t communicate much with the others unless he has to, but the rumours are clear to hear. The man can do real magic, and bring real luck to the homeless.

Chanyeol is the last person The Magician visits.

He’s an old foreign man, stooped, with a cane. He wears a tall top hat and, to Chanyeol’s starved eyes, looks like heaven.

“Dear boy,” the old man says, his accent thick but his Korean clear, “I have come to bring you happiness. I will grant you one wish. One of your greatest desires.”

There are plenty of things Chanyeol wants. Food, money, a roof over his head, love. He wants his parents and his friends back. But yet he knows instinctively that this won’t fix him. He’s broken inside, and he’s not sure he’ll be able to keep anything he wishes for. He doesn’t want this to be wasted.

He thinks about his childhood; his family had been loving and kind. They’d had a puppy; a tiny thing called Inhyung; his little doll. She’d died long before Chanyeol’s parents, at the ripe old age of fifteen. She’d had a happy and fulfilled life, and Chanyeol had loved playing with her.

Dogs are dependent on humans for a lot of things, but cats aren’t. Cats can adapt well and survive on their own for huge stretches of time. Chanyeol was never able to have a cat because he’s allergic, but he’s always loved them. And other people love cats, too.

“Can you change me into something else?” Chanyeol whispers, his voice rough from disuse.

“A different person?” The Magician asks.

“No,” Chanyeol says. “A cat.”

The Magician seems surprised by this request. “Yes,” he says simply. He reaches out a hand to touch Chanyeol’s cheek gently. “Go to sleep, child, and in the morning everything will be alright.” He guides Chanyeol down under his cardboard blanket.

A strange tiredness sweeps over Chanyeol even though he’d been alert just a moment ago, and he falls asleep instantly.

---

Chanyeol feels different when he wakes up, and he doesn’t just mean mentally; his body doesn’t feel like it usually does. Chanyeol is tall, over six feet, and gangly, with limbs that often seem too long for his body.

This feels nothing like his usual body. He feels…small. Small and warm—warmer than his suit, in any case.

When he opens his eyes, the cardboard is lying beside him, like he’d kicked it off during the night. But it looks…wrong. Bigger than it usually seemed. Chanyeol reaches out a hand to touch it, and discovers that his hand is actually a paw, attached to a very furry arm.

This discovery shocks Chanyeol into exploring himself. He has four legs, all with paws at the end; he has a very large number of toes on each paw. His brain is a little fuzzy but he thinks he counts eight.

Lifting a paw to touch his head, he can feel whiskers and ears in a very different place to normal, and with a glance, he finds his tail; long and furry. From looking at his tail he can tell he’s long-haired, which is annoying, because it will probably get in the way a lot. He can imagine that long-haired cats are not suited to the dirt of street-life.

So The Magician was an actual magician, and Chanyeol is a cat.

Chanyeol is pleased with this. He’s pretty sure that more people will care about him if he’s a cat. It’s sad, but Chanyeol’s just being a realist. He’s known for some time that his human self is unlovable.

Maybe being a cat will work for him.

---

Chanyeol explores his surroundings, using his new cat form to travel. He has to get used to walking on four paws. It’s tricky to do it with his human brain; he starts moving like a toddler; both front paws moving at the same time and hind paws dragging behind him. Once he’s got the hang of moving them independently, he tries to move all four paws at different speeds and times and ends up falling over on the side of the street.

“Look, Umma,” a little boy says. He looks enormous to Chanyeol, who suddenly realises just how small he is. “That kitten doesn’t know how to walk.”

Chanyeol mewls in protest, because this is hard. The little boy seems pleased that Chanyeol’s noticed him, and tries to him, before he’s pulled away by his mother, who is a towering giant.

“He probably has fleas,” she says. “And he might bite.”

Chanyeol isn’t going to bite. He also doesn’t have fleas. Chanyeol sits down ungainly, hind legs stretched out in front of him, front paws between them, and grumbles plaintively. This is not fair. He can’t even protest!

“But he’s cute!” the little boy says.

Chanyeol smiles, or as best as a cat can smile. He hasn’t been called cute since he was twelve years old and his grandmother had been cooing at him for still having a baby face. This feels a lot better.

“And he understands me!” the boy continues.

“Don’t be silly,” his mother says. “Cats don’t understand humans. Anyway, come along, before we’re late.” She and her little boy hurry off and Chanyeol smiles after them.

He could definitely grow to like this.

---

It’s a lot harder to live as a cat than he’d thought.

He hates rain—even more than he had as a human. It’s built into his cat DNA to be petrified of the rain, and he runs to hide under the nearest overhang, be it a dustbin or a car, the moment the heavens open.

He constantly lives in fear of being run over by a car, because even if he uses the crossings, they don’t always spot him. And then people think he’s weird for using a crossing.

It’s just as tricky to find food as a cat as it had been as a human, and this time he doesn’t have money to buy with. He can’t exactly go into a nearby corner shop andbuy food. Plus bread is not good for cats, even he knows that. He doesn’t know how to hunt, either. The other day he saw a mouse run across the street towards him. He threw himself at it, tempted to just eat it raw, but it ran away from him, and then he almost got run over again. Not fun.

In the end, he usually just scavenges dustbins for leftovers, like he had as a human, and hates himself for it.

His only comfort is that he doesn’t have fleas. That would just be the cherry on top, if he’s honest.

---

As the weeks go on, he becomes braver. He starts climbing through open windows into houses at night, when families are asleep. If the families haven’t cleaned their plates, he up what’s left. If there are food crumbs on the floor, his nose finds them. If they have pets, he helps himself to their food.

It works quite well until one night he’s caught by a dog, a little yappy thing that once upon a time Chanyeol would have been able to lift easily. To Chanyeol’s kittenish form, however, he’s easily twice as big as he is, if not more.

The little dog barks and Chanyeol mewls, begging the dog to let him go. But the dog just continues barking until a little girl runs into the kitchen.

“Stop that, Billy,” the girl hisses. “You’ll wake up Daddy.”

The dog doesn’t stop until she grabs his collar, and that’s when she spots Chanyeol.

“Kitty!” she says, and dives at him.

He’s so scared that his fight-or-flight response breaks and he just sits there with wide eyes as she comes running towards him. She scoops him up into her arms and just gives him a cuddle.

Chanyeol lets her, feeling loved for the first time in years.

The little girl shakes out some dog biscuits for him and gives him a bowl of water, letting him have his fill. Then she scoops him up again and takes him to bed with her, the little dog following. He seems to have decided that if the little girl likes the cat, then he’s okay, because he jumps onto the bed and curls around Chanyeol, keeping him warm.

Chanyeol smiles, purrs, and goes to sleep.

---

It’s alright for a week, during which he eats and sleeps comfortably, the girl’s father mostly ignoring him or just giving him the odd scratch under his chin, until the little girl’s mother comes back from wherever she’d been.

“Haneul!” she calls, when she sees him play with Billy, who is an incredibly docile dog once Chanyeol interacts with him. He’s very happy to let Chanyeol ride on his back. “Where did the kitten come from?”

Haneul explains how she’d found Chanyeol, picking him up in her arms so that his legs dangle in thin air, and holding him close to her chest. “Can’t we keep him?”

“No, Haneul,” her mother says. “Maybe he’s someone’s lost pet. You wouldn’t want some other girl to miss her kitty, would you?”

Haneul shakes her head. “Sorry Kitty,” she tells Chanyeol, whispering into the top of his furry head. “I hope you find your owner.” Chanyeol mews at her, because she is his owner, but she just seems to take it as a goodbye. “Bye-bye Kitty,” she agrees.

Then she hands Chanyeol to her mother, who takes him to the back of the house and, when Haneul isn’t looking, throws him out.

“Mangy cat probably has fleas,” she says, watching Chanyeol fly through the air ungainly.

Chanyeol is a cat though, and he manages to turn on his cat instincts to turn himself in mid-air so that he lands on all four paws. The moment he’s landed, he runs away, not wanting to provoke that evil woman any more.

---

This time, out on the street, he does get fleas. Fleas are evil. They are so uncomfortable, biting at him, that he can’t walk more than a few paces without scratching or biting at the spot. He ends up scratching himself raw and ripping out fur in his discomfort.

He’s really lucky, then, when the RSPCA picks him up on a call-out.

They keep him in isolation, and only approach him in strange plastic clothing. They brush him and give him these strange-smelling drops that make the back of his neck sticky for a few days after. Slowly, the fleas die, and after a week he feels alright again.

Then they take him to a white lab, where everyone is dressed in white. Chanyeol suddenly gets the horrible feeling that something major is going to happen. He twitches, trying to scratch the person who’s holding him.

“Don’t worry,” they say. “You’ll be right as rain in a few hours. This is for your safety, and for some good.”

This doesn’t make him feel any better about the situation, but there’s nothing he can do about it as there’s a pinch at his neck, and then a jab of pain and then—

Chanyeol wakes up.

He wakes up with pain in what he would have called his “lower regions” when he was human.

He’s still a bit dozy though, so he can’t check what they’ve done to him until he feels more awake, a few hours later.

He sits inelegantly, one leg up in the air, tail out behind him, and looks between his lower legs.

They’ve neutered him.

Chanyeol mewls plaintively, because even if he wasn’t planning on having kittens, being told you can’t have kittens is just unfair.

His meows are responded to by other toms, who feel his pain, and Chanyeol smiles a cat smile, thinking that at least he’s in good company.

---

Chanyeol likes the animal shelter, because that’s what it is. He gets fed and watered every day. He has a comfortable bed, and a toy mouse that’s all his own, which he cuddles when he sleeps. He gets to play with the other cats, who look after him and play with him and make sure he always has something to do. He gets played with by volunteers and people who work with, including a nice young boy who gives Chanyeol the best ear scratches of his life. Chanyeol never purrs so much when he isn’t around.

Chanyeol really feels like it was the right decision, to become a cat. He had to go through hardships to get here, but now it’s all worth it.

But Chanyeol knows he can’t stay in the animal shelter, where there are hundreds of other cats, dogs, and other animals. He knows that nobody there loves him because he’s himself. They don’t show special interest in him. He needs to be somewhere where he’s the only cat, and he can be lavished with love and affection.

A few people show interest in him, but nobody takes him away. He dreams about going to a house in the countryside with a big garden and two children who play with him every day. He dreams about going to a little warm cottage where he can sleep in front of the fire or at the end of a heated bed each night. He dreams about being loved by someone.

And then one day, a young man comes.

To Chanyeol’s human mind, he’s handsome. He has an ugly perm atop his head and terrible taste in fashion, but his features are feline and sharp, and he has a very nice smile. Chanyeol instantly knows that he wants to go home with this man.

The young man seems interested in saying hello to all the cats, as he tries to find one suited to his needs. Chanyeol waits his turn impatiently, as the man whispers his name to the tortoiseshell female a few cages over. Her name is Tally, and Chanyeol likes her because she treats him like her own and gives him nice tongue baths, but he likes this young man more.

Finally, it’s Chanyeol’s turn.

“My name’s Jongdae,” he whispers to Chanyeol.

Jongdae, Chanyeol thinks, is a nice name. He meows in response, I’m Chanyeol. He leans his head into the cage door, trying to coax those nice long fingers closer.

Jongdae does as Chanyeol wants, and slots his fingers through the bars to scratch at Chanyeol’s head. Chanyeol purrs so loudly and so happily that it surprises the girl, Jinhee, who had brought Jongdae to see him.

“He must really like you,” she says. “He never purrs like that.”

Jongdae smiles. “I like him, too,” he says.

Chanyeol smiles back as best he can, feeling happy and contented.

Jinhee runs through how old they think Chanyeol is (eight months) and how long he’s been there (three months). “He’s good-natured, so you won’t have to worry about the stereotype of grumpy ginger cats. And he’s been neutered, so he should be easy to manage,” she says. “He may not even wander far.”

I don’t want to wander anywhere, Chanyeol thinks, staring up at Jongdae with happiness and desire in his eyes—desire to be loved, desire to have a forever home. I want to stay with you.

“I’d like to take him home,” Jongdae says.

And for the first time in a long, long time, Chanyeol feels well and truly happy.