Scene and character names subject to change. No relation to my past original characters

Pearl's ears stood on end as she was startled awake, the sound of something glass shattering the feline's culprit. Her eyes blinked as she adjusted to the mixture of dark and light, an yellowish glow basking over the bed where Alan slept. Pearl turned her head behind finding that the bedroom door was mysteriously opened a crack, the source of the glow streaming through.

"But Alan had the door shut when we went to bed," Pearl thought, clamoring to her paws as she leaped from her resting spot of blankets her human companion had folded and placed for her onto his mattress, racing to the end to wake her beloved friend and investigate the light and noise. Instead; Pearl found nothing but his pillows, her nose picking up the strong odor of perspiration soaking both the case and the mattress's sheets around it.

"Then it must be Alan making that noise," Pearl wondered, looking to the cracked door and glow as she hurried from the bed to the open door. "Is he alright? Is he sick?"

Pearl had waited a whole week for her human friend to return from his camping trip with his fellow humans, ecstatic hearing his car roll up the driveway from the backyard. But her human didn't look well, and when she got close for the first time Pearl was taken back by a very strange scent coming off him. The rest of the evening Alan had been in a tiring somber mood, talking about nearly being some wild animal's meal during the trip and vowing he would never hurt her...why he would say that was beyond her. Perhaps his ordeal had left him ill and frail, reveling unsettling quarrels his body had trouble dispelling normally. Either way; Pearl desired only to stay by her beloved friend and do whatever she could to comfort, even if it meant possibly catching whatever Alan had caught.

Peaking through the crack; Pearl stepped out with forepaws in the hallway only to pause petrified with what her feline eyes were witnessing.

"A-Alan?" she almost uttered vocally, stunned and distressed to worry about her human friend discovering a fraction of her secret.

The glow was coming from the bathroom across the bedroom, the light switched on and clear and red mixed liquid oozing over the countertop of the sink. Her eyes trailed to the bloody hand next to the mess, a hand deformed as its skin had turned a strange brownish hue; a light fuzz of similar yet darker brown hair covering the flesh, that flesh stretching strangely as its digits grew puffy and round, thick dark claws protruding from underneath cracked and torn fingernails.

To Pearl's horror, the deformed hairy hand belonged to her beloved friend, Alan convulsing and panting as he fought to remain standing, but his misshapen human body was stealing away this ability. Glancing down; Pearl held back a gasp as her friend's feet stood on the balls of his toes, deforming like his hands; elongating from the arches as her ears twitched to the sickly sounds of bones snapping and muscles stretching. Her eyes shook like her lithe feline body, taking note that Alan had stripped himself nude, as she was baffled by the bizarre growth of a thin brown pelt consuming the human's tanning skin.

"What's going on?" Pearl exclaimed mentally, head lowering to her chest as her body lowered taking a step back into the bedroom. "What's happening to Alan!?"

The earlier strange scent become much more profound to her sense of smell, detecting very little of what most humans were supposed to smell like. It smelled more like the canines she kept her distances from in the neighborhood, but it was much more wild; more fierce and primal than any normal dog. And yet; Alan began to behave and sound like one, his posture shifting more to wanting to drop to the floor on all fours; his tongue lolled into a heavy slobbery excited pant; his voice deepened and growlish as he inhaled and cried out in a beastly howl.

"He...he changed," Pearl whispered in a odd awe tone, her heart skipping faster and her excitement growing as she continued to watch her human companion slowly succumb to this canine transformation, questioning herself in the back of her mind as part of her found this riveting. "Alan can shapeshift into an animal form too?"

Pearl's fascination was shattered as feral yellow eyes turned viciously to her, the large wild dog version of Alan having appeared to finish his transformation and setting his sights on a frightened feline. Pearl's thoughts went to her instincts as she dashed back into the bedroom darting underneath the bed, curling up at the back of the wall as she waited to see what the canine Alan did next. Was this what Alan worried about earlier? Should Pearl be afraid for her life? A soft mew escaped her voice as she covered her maw with her paws to keep quiet, watching the shadows across the carpet floor as Alan stepped into the room, hearing him sniff her out.