Yuuri was dripping wet and smelled like toilet water. The stench of bleach and unmentionables soaked through his clothes and into his fur, matting it down uncomfortably. Wait – what? Fur?

"Fur?!" he cried. Or tried to, only it came out as, "Mrowr?!"

Yuuri got up, albeit unsteadily, and shook the water off his little black paws. He staggered out of the sopping mess of a school uniform that had once fit perfectly. His mind was all in a haze as he surveyed the surroundings. Not only had he landed somewhere foreign-looking, but his body was unfamiliar as well. He'd halfway convinced himself that the bullies had knocked him unconscious on the toilet – and now he was dreaming – when he encountered a lady cat carrying what appeared to be a basket of purple fruit.

"Hello, miss," Yuuri said in a series of meows and mews. His mother had taught him to be polite, even if he was in a dream and he had no idea how he knew this cat was a lady cat. Maybe it was a cat thing? If he was a cat – a boy-cat, a tom? - then it would totally make sense in dreamland that he could sniff out other cats. More importantly, what was a cat doing with a basket of fruit? Weren't they carnivores?

While Yuuri's internal monologue was running along, the lady-cat had yowled and dropped her basket. Yuuri was awakened to the situation by the decidedly unpleasant sensation of fruit smacking him between the eyes.

Then came the rocks.

...Then came the cats with pitchforks.

Yuuri's tiny kitten legs wobbled at the worst moment, and he figured that at least he'd wake up if he were speared by rusty farming equipment. But that was when a giant cat, shaggy and blond, dropped out of the trees between him and the attackers.

"Th-thanks for that," Yuuri mewled. "I'm sure it's all a misunderstanding."

But the giant cat growled something unintelligible and smashed Yuuri's head into the ground with its oversized paws and it hurt! God, did it hurt, having his head smushed around like that. It felt like his brains were going to leak out of his ears...

...And suddenly, he could understand Cat. Well, their version of Cat since Yuuri was pretty sure that, as a cat himself, he had been speaking Cat all along.

"Demon cat! Demon cat! Kill the demon cat!"

The jury was still out on whether this newfound understanding was a good thing or not.

"Now wait just a minute," Yuuri protested. "It's only superstition that says black cats are bad luck. You don't have to be so rude!"

"Silence!" hissed Big Bad and Blond. "You, kitten, know nothing of our world."

After that, the giant cat started growling something or other about feudal politics, and the cats behind him were still hissing for Yuuri's death because they thought he was a demon cat, and then things really came to a head.

"Myuuri! Myuu~ri!"

A legion of soldier-cats descended; their leader a feisty brown alley cat with a scar above one eye. He engaged the larger blond cat in a cat-fight. It was the most vicious cat-fight Yuuri had ever seen outside of Black Friday news reports, only this one had actual cats in it.

Scar-cat won the battle and introduced himself as Conrad, or "Con-nyad", as it were. They traveled to the castle at the heart of this country's capital where Yuuri met prince-cats and queen-cats and got engaged to a prince-cat by smacking the prissy Persian across his fluffy, fluffy cheeks.

He was crowned Meow-ou, the king of the Meowzoku of Shin Meowkoku.

Cat-people. He was the king of the friggin' cat-people.

A/N: Gwendal is a Russian Blue, and every time Yuuri sees him, he has to struggle not to ask Gwendal if he would like a cheezburger. I was thinking of the overabundance of animal transformation fics when the image came to me of Conrad-kitty shouting for "Myuuri" and my cuteness gland exploded. Yup. That's how this came to be. (I have no idea when I wrote this, though. I just found it while cleaning out old docs.)