My story is a bit convoluted and my life changed with the birth of my first child. I had thought my life had settled down by that time, but, no, it took a couple of years for things to be "right".

My first child was almost my last child ... and the last of me, too.

I changed worlds, in a way, though it wasn't by choice. That the world I live in now is more full of love makes it hard to think of the time before, but, to tell you my story, I have to dip back into that thankfully dead past.

At this point in my life—my fifties—I tend to prefer telling people I had been "raised by wolves" to deflect people from learning my true shame, having grown, through adolescence, as a "Pure". Purity, dear friends, is over-rated.

All right, so, in this post-MORFS world, the phrase "raised by wolves" may have somewhat different connotations from the time of my parents.

The Pures I was associated claimed to be Christian, and, really, Christianity has been wrapped around a lot of horrible mind-sets, but, then, I can't think of a religion that hasn't been warped and wrapped around repugnant political ideas due to human greed. As I've gotten older I have more and more doubts about religions because the majority of them seem to miss the point of the original message. I am sure there are many of you who find some self-proclaimed Christians to be rather unforgiving...

Here is an important datum that will not make immediate sense to you, all right? It will make sense to you, eventually, I promise.

I was twelve when I suffered from a month-long bout of the flu. It was miserable feeling hungry yet not enjoying anything I ate. Given that this was back in 2010 and I was finally entering puberty, the worry that it might have been MORFS turned into relief when it seemed I had, somehow, dodged the bullet. What made it tough was that my older sister and younger brother all had suffered the same bug I had and we all breathed a sigh of relief that none of us had caught MORFS and died.

You don't see a connection? It may take a while, as it did me, but there is a connection.

A year later my cousin Fred caught MORFS and died. His twin sister Camille survived, as a hybrid, showing everyone that her cat had provided some genetic material for her change. On witnessing the aftermath of Camille's change due to MORFS, my parents basically wigged out completely.

I swear, now, that they went completely looney, and, as part of their insane acts, decided to switch us from a nice comfortable church (don't ask) to one of the churches that saw those who went through MORFS as somehow "unclean". All of a sudden we were isolated from our other cousins, aunts and uncles ... and surrounded by the most impure Pures it was to be my misfortune in life to meet. Admittedly, a lot of the preceding assessment is from having 20/20 hindsight. At the time I was merely disgusted but still remained unwilling to rock the boat.

Can you pronounce culture shock?

I was old enough to recognize that we transitioned from a church where our God was a Loving Parent to ... to...

You've read stories elsewhere covering the ugly claptrap that gets taught by these sects, though, perhaps, "sect" is too respectful a term, "cult" might be a more accurate but still too flattering.

In order to avoid punishment I had to act as much like a believer as I could stand, even if I was, in my mind's eye, holding my nose. It was a necessity to hide my doubts and disdain to avoid charges of apostasy and heresy. I had transitioned from a Loving God with roots in the New Testament to one which concentrated, instead, on the Old Testament, with a focus on an angry and abusive God.

Don't ask me why I was so blind, but, in a move that I now recognize as purest insanity, I married a girl from the church. That Marie and I were being pushed together was not immediately obvious to our eyes and, in hindsight, the "inattention" of our parents in supervising our interactions allowed us to feel like we were "getting away with something together". This "easy avoidance of supervision" led to our relationship became more and more intimate, not that we could tell that both our sets of parents were engineering this relationship. Eventually—or is it coincidentally—she became pregnant by me, shortly after we graduated from High School. Our wedding was put together so fast our heads spun.

That Marie miscarried due to a stupid incident—a fight—with her mother actually bought us more time for us to get more comfortable with each other. We also chose to take better precautions to avoid having a child "too soon". At the same time, she wasn't about to piss off her parents—or mine, despite my irritation with my own—by switching to another church that taught of a Loving and Caring God.

I dunno what kind of God the BioTerrorists had but it sure sounded like the same kind we had in our church. Nowadays I consider ironic.

Given that Marie and I jointly decided that we should use contraceptives at every conceivable opportunity so that we could get through college—the local Community College—to get better paying jobs was a help. I thought we were getting closer together at the same time, bonding to each other, but, I think, continuing to attend church with our folks probably did not really help our relationship with each other. I certainly wanted a lot more distance from our parents—hers and mine—but it didn't look like that was going to happen.

So we were twenty eight when our first child, a daughter, was born ... and all hell broke loose.

To me, my daughter was a beautiful baby ... even if a cat hybrid. She was still my baby and I thought she was absolutely adorable once she got past the immediate trauma of being born. To me there was little doubt that she was ours. That the baby didn't have the regular human ears, hands or feet and included a tail implied that there was something extra going on.

I didn't care what our baby looked like. I did care that Marie pulled her daughter off of her breast and told the doctor and nurses to "Get rid of this animal!"

Now, admittedly, I may not have been the sharpest tool in the shed at the time, but this slap at our daughter felt like it was a rejection of me, too. If you didn't think this hit me in the gut, think again.

Once Marie was allowed to go home after the standard 24 hour post-partum testing, things got worse when I was putting little Kitty—I gave her the fitting name after my wife had rejected her—into her car seat to come home with us. Marie didn't want an "animal" in the same car with her.

I begged Marie. "She's our daughter, hon. Our daughter. She needs us."

She shook her head. "That thing is not coming into our house. Never!"

There was little to do but shrug. "Will you let me drop her off somewhere?"

Getting an unhappy-sounding grunt from the woman who'd been, up until our daughter came out with cat ears, the light of my life, broke my heart ... and hardened it against her at the same time. That made the only decision I could make that much easier.

My cat-hybrid cousin—Camille, or Cammie—had (obviously) not become one of the loonies. I brought Little Kitty to her house, and, leaving Marie sitting in the car, spent some minutes explaining the situation to Cammie, summarizing it with "Expect me to return here within two to three hours. Once I get Marie home, we're separating. I will be filing for divorce and full custody ASAP."

Cammie helped when she told me "Sure thing, I've a friend who's still nursing her baby, maybe she can help. I'll also see what I can get for you."

I nodded and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

When I left Marie—her parents were waiting at what had been "our" house—I didn't look back. I packed up what I could and got out.

¬-

Kitty grew like a weed in her new home. I'd gotten a legal separation from Marie and the divorce filed, with affidavits from the hospital attached, for full custody of my daughter. Temporary custody had been assigned to me immediately given Marie's rejection of our daughter and the divorce was expedited with the help of Marie and both of "our" families. It may be interesting to note that MORFS had forced the need to handle these changes more easily than they had in the past, so the legal system had, at least, partially adapted to the post-MORFS reality.

Marie and her lawyer did try to hit me for alimony, but, given that both Marie and I held good paying jobs—and Marie's actually paid better than mine—gave me an advantage, especially with my decision to retain custody of Kitty, by offering to not require child support from Marie for a child she didn't want. This one step helped ensure agreement.

We signed the final divorce decree and, just to complete my day, my own parents officially disowned me, as if losing my daughter was worth staying in their good graces. What kind of drugs were they on? Kitty was, to me, the future ... and worthy of my love. My nutjob parents represented the past ... a dead past.

Cammie and I shared her home with Kitty and I was, if not happy, content. Cammie's boyfriend and I got along well and I was happy to attend their wedding, Kitty as the flower girl (even though she was still being carried by me). I moved out of the house I had shared with Cammie by the time she and Carl came back from their honeymoon.

I brought my daughter with me almost everywhere, especially when shopping. I did witness mixed feelings in those seeing my darling daughter and it fed some of my worries. Countering the worries were the happier people who loved the look of my daughter and who obviously found her as adorable as I did.

One day, when Kitty was 14 months old and chattering happily like a little magpie from her seat in the grocery cart, I ran across another woman who, like my cousin Cammie and my daughter Kitty, had had some cat genes mixed in by MORFS. She caught my eye, looking like a sweet little cat-woman. Originally of Japanese extraction, she had acquired many aesthetic features of a Siamese cat.

I don't know about you folks, but it had been a while, for me, and my body responded. Having a shopping cart in front of me made it easier to keep my body's reaction covert, though there was some worry that my drool might give me away. It took some effort to try to work away from her ... and then she spotted Kitty.

There's the old saying of "if looks could kill", right?

This was almost the opposite. That adorable cat-woman damn near melted on the spot. I saw her look me over and her glance at my hands, before her eyes met mine.