I tried to mew my terror but only a human shriek emerged from my lips when I caught site of myself in my devoted slave's dressing table mirror. Horror of horrors, all my beautiful ginger fur had vanished and I was covered in ugly pink human skin with only a few ginger hairs adorning my bare chest to remind me of my former glory.

The strange cat stirred, uncurled itself and gave a loud agitated mew. I realised then what had happened, somehow my devoted slave and I had changed places and I was now a human and she was a cat! I had often heard her say, she wished she were a cat and when I was sitting on her lap the night before, she'd been looking at a site about magic spells on the Internet. She must have found one to change herself into a cat and somehow transformed me as well!

My mother Queenie, was awake by this time and was hissing and spitting at the sight of a strange human and a strange cat in her bed. I had changed so much that even my own mother didn't recognise me!

I was hungry and wanted my breakfast but didn't know how I was going to get out of the room as my devoted slave always opened the door. I leapt off the bed and landed in a crumpled heap hurting myself in the process as my jumping ability had vanished with my fur but I struggled to regain my dignity using the ploy known to cats for generations, when in doubt wash, but my new hands seemed too large and my skin had a horrible salty taste. Meanwhile my devoted slave was leaping up and down on and off the bed, revelling in her new found ability but then she tried vainly to put on her nightdress when she saw me, she mewed again and dived under the bedclothes. Didn't she realise that she was already fully dressed and ready to face the world ?

I realised that the human hands I now had were good for opening doorknobs but it was very hard to walk on two legs instead of four and took me a long time to navigate the stairs.

A dish of cat food, Felix with sardine was still on the floor from the night before. Good I thought as I got down on all fours to eat it but the food tasted horrible and after one mouthful I felt quite queasy. The strange cat was also looking for food, but trying to scoop it up with her paws. I tried to explain how we cats ate but she didn't understand what I was saying. I found some human food, which my devoted slave calls cereal but found eating it was far harder than it looked. I put my head in the bowl as I always did to begin with ,only to find it almost choked me, then I tried eating it with my paws ,or rather hands only to find they got all sticky, finally I remembered seeing humans use what they call spoons and found one on the table.

It was hard to use and took me a very long time to eat my breakfast and not only was I hungry, I was cold too and kept hurting myself when I bumped into things and the hard floor hurt my feet. I decided to go outside to walk on the grass but it took me a long time to work out how to unfasten the bolt on the door ,now I could no longer get through the cat flap.

My sister Josephine sat watching me and for the first time in her life didn't hiss at me, which proved she didn't recognise me. I finally got out onto the grass but I didn't enjoy walking on it as it was cold and wet and I kept treading on nasty slimy things. Several birds flew away when I opened the door but strangely I felt no interest at all in chasing them and what use would it have been if I did as I was so slow and clumsy ?

A woman and child came out of the house next door, I recognised the neighbour as she sometimes gave me scraps if I mewed a friendly hello to her but today she screamed "How disgusting !" before rushing inside dragging the child behind her. I wandered aimlessly round the garden watching the efforts of my former devoted slave who seemed unsure about the finer points of cat behaviour, I saw her disappear into the bushes looking anxious in case she were seen. Then I heard the ear piercing wail of what my devoted slave had told me was a police siren. I knew the police caught criminals and wondered had their been a murder as I'd watched lots of murder mysteries while sitting on my devoted slave's lap. I supposed I would still be able to watch them now I was human but I'd always been bored by them before.

Then several policemen rushed into the garden and grabbed me. One of them said, "I'm arresting you for offending public decency. You are not obliged to say anything but anything you do say may be used in evidence." They started to drag me towards the police car and I remembered worrying who would feed the cats.

......

"Leo, you're on my leg !.Let me get out of bed !" The familiar voice of my devoted slave woke me. The policemen had gone and so had the salt and pepper cat. I raised a tentative hand and much to my relief it was my usual fur covered paw. I looked at my devoted slave, who was stroking me fondly .She looked as she always did, yawning and clad in a voluminous floral nightgown. "I could see your eyelids twitching." She said "Were you dreaming ?" If only you knew, I thought as I joyfully leapt off the bed delighted to be a cat again!