Micheal, a young man just out of uni

This story is set in present times and for once will focus on a male perspective in a world that is quite similar to ours but contains pet girls in their many forms.

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"Yes mom, I'll come home for the holidays... No, I won't bring a girl along....

...Yep, lova ya too!", Micheal ended the call and shook his head. He'd left home almost six years ago to attend university and even now, having finished his degree, his mother still pestered him like he'd only left a few weeks ago.

Not to mention the constant questions about his relationship status.

He looked up from his desk and checked the clock on the wall. It said 5:46 pm, hight time to check out of work and get on with dinner. For a moment, he thought about cooking something, then he ditched the idea. Too much work, too long a wait. His stomach was calling for food now.

Going out for dinner it was.

Standing up, he closed his laptop and left his office to get dressed. Working from home had its benefits. No commute, no office drama. It did limit his opportunities for meeting people. Which, he thought, was one of the reasons for his enduring status as a single. And the needling questions of his dear mother.

As he slipped on his shoes, his phone vibrated and he checked to see a message from his boss.

'Just looked over the draft. Looks good, gj.'

As per usual, she was informal in her messages.

'You done for the day?', a second message popped up. Michael hesitated for a moment. Hopefully this wasn't about a time sensitive project that he needed to finish asap.

'Yep, going for dinner.', he finally replied, trying to match her casual tone. While he waited for a response, he grabbed his jacket and got ready to leave. His phone vibrated again and he checked to see if his evening was going to be ruined or not.

' Wanna meet up at Liz's?', his eyebrow rose. Emi was a casual boss and did like to hang around her employees after hours. It was just that, aside from himself, all of her employees were female and she'd never invited him out, at least not on a one-on-one.

Then again, he was probably overthinking it. His mother banging on about relationships must have made him more self-conscious than he was comfortable admitting to himself.

'Sure. Be there in 10.', he sent back despite his inner conflict. Emi was a good boss and, if he was honest to himself, he liked her quite a bit. If he were to be entirely honest to himself, he would admit that he thought she was hot. He decidedly wasn't that. Which was probably another reason why this sudden invitation made him feel unexplainably nervous.

Then again, he'd been single for almost his entire adult life. Not many women went for a digital designer, not when it was a female-dominated field where anyone who wasn't an agnesian pet was seen as in denial and men were assumed to be femboys or trans.

Shit, it really was getting to him...

His head full of doubts over his questionable life decisions, he left the flat, quickly took the steps to the entrance, and made his way towards the dinner. The streets were fairly empty. His part of town was fairly quiet and it was a little early for the evening crowd and too late for the students coming from the nearby highschool.

The only people he saw were an elderly couple. The husband holding a leash as his wife followed behind him. Micheal couldn't help but smile at the cute display. They'd probably lived their lifestyle all their life and while it was quite common for petgirls to quit all together once the 'girl' part became too much of a stretch, many simple toned it down a lot.

His mother was the same. When she was young, she had lived the full agnesian lifestyle. Collared, leashed and naked on the ground, working her job as an accountant at a large firm. When she'd gotten him and his siblings, she had switched to a home-office job and become more of a traditional pet wife, before giving up most of the lifestyle once she had gotten to her later thirties. These days she still wore her wedding collar and his father still held her leash when they went out for dates, but other than that she lived a decidedly non-pet life.

Crossing the corner, the area became a bit more lively.

A couple of restaurants lined the street and attracted a steady amount of foot traffic. Young people, old people, couples. Micheal spotted a few pet girls crawling behind their masters, though unlike a couple of decades ago, they were a small minority.

The latter half of the 20th century and the collapse of the aristocracy with their stranglehold on the institution of petgirls had seen pet culture almost completely overwhelm the budding emancipatory and feminist movements. The burgeoning middle class hungered for symbols of their new prestige and eagerly adapted what was seen as high culture. Women who weren't pet girls had been seen as uncultured and vulgar, to the point that seeing a grown woman without a collar was scandalous.

The liberal movements of the late eighties and nineties had softened things up considerably. Collars and leashes were still popular symbols of relationships, though even the use of leashes had sharply declined in the past two decades. The portion of women who didn't want anything to do with petgirl culture had also increased significantly,while the spectrum of what was acceptable or normalized had expanded to new and flexible archetypes.

So while he spotted at least two couples who were obviously in an ultra traditionalist pet-master relationship, complete with the customary nudity, ears, tails and crawling on the ground, they were the dwarfed by the number of women who didn't. Some of which still wore collars and ears while others didn't at all.

As he closed in on dinner, he quickly spotted his boss. Emi was waiting in front of the dinner in some nice casual wear. A jacket over a nice top and a plaid skirt. Under the skirt a long, feline tail curled to the side, reacting to her happy expression as she caught sight of him. He heard her greeting and saw the pair of cat ears on her head twitch in concert.

Returning the greeting, he hurried up while taking the rare chance to observe her in her entirety.

Working remote, he most often only saw her face through a webcam. And while her face was cute enough, watching her waiting for him he couldn't deny that she was hot. She wasn't drop dead gorgeous or anything. More like a strange, mature cute. A childhood crush that's grown up and blossomed into an reasonably attractive woman. That said she was fashionably petite. Which was likely the reason why she had chosen to be a cat girl.

Even in her heels, he felt like he almost towered over her.

"You left me waiting!", he heard her complain playfully. Her eyes crinkled, drawing his attention to her meticulous eyeliner. Huh, weird. He hadn't noticed her wearing makeup when they met in person before.

That said, he was a man. They tend not to notice these things.

"Yeah, sorry. I didn't think you would be this fast.", he replied, honestly wondering how she could have gotten here before him. Especially in her heels. She grinned at that.

"Honestly, I was already going to ask you out for dinner and on my way here."

"Huh?", he blinked in confusion. His boss was really behaving strangely today. It was almost as if-

"How did you know I would accept your invitation?", he decided to ask instead of following the useless thought. She shrugged with a cheeky grin.

"Why wouldn't you?"

"Fair... I guess.", still a bit unbalanced by the strange situation Micheal didn't know what else to say.

"Shall we...", he began.

"Head in? Sure, its my treat by the way!", before he could protest Emi turned and headed into the restaurant, leaving him even more out of sorts than before. Surpressing a sigh, he shook his head and followed.

Whatever this boss of his had planned today, he would have to wait and let it play out.

Inside the restaurant, a waiter quickly approached them and, after asking how many people they were expecting, he led them to a small couples table at the edge of the terrace. Trying to at least keep up the illusion of being socially adept, Micheal helped his boss with her seat before sitting down himself.

All the while, nervousness was building up within him. He wasn't totally daft, even though others might dispute that. This was a date. A date, initiated by his hot catgirl boss who, to his knowledge, had never shown any special interest in him.

Something strange was going on and he couldn't figure it out.

"So...", they had just ordered their drinks from a pretty waitress with dog ears when Micheal finally managed to ask the question. "What exactly is going on?"

He grimaced as soon as the words left his mouth, realizing how he sounded. Emi let out a small chuckle and shook her head. She clearly didn't mind his social ineptitude.

"You really need to work on that.", she stated with a grin. "But it is understandable, you are somewhat of a weirdo after all.", blinking her eyes she quickly added.

"I don't mean weirdo as an insult, though! I consider most in our line of work to be at least a little weird. It comes with the work." He smiled at that, not having taken her words as an insult and sharing her sentiment.

"But I get why you are surprised.", she continued, pursing her lips. "Other than being a friendly boss, I hope, I haven't shown you any romantic interest. "

"That... is true.", he confirmed. "And this seems rather forward and out of nowhere...".

"That it does.", Emi agreed. "But I can assure you that I am not playing any games, nor am I just acting on a whim." She stopped and took a moment to breathe and gather her thoughts.

"We have known each other for... three years now?"

He thought about it for a moment before nodding in agreement. "I joined right after Uni, so that should be right."

"Well, for the last two of these three years I have been considering you as a possible partner.", she said with a matter-of-fact face. He simply stared, waiting for her to continue.

"And as I said, I know I didn't show it. Though that was mainly because we rarely saw each other outside of work and I didn't want to drag you out for staff dinners. I understand that you face some prejudice and get why you might want to avoid it..."

Micheal was surprised by this. He suspected that people considered him a loner and somewhat antisocial, though he hadn't expected Emi to guess the reason for it nor for her to take it into account.

"To be honest, I always figured you wanted a ladies only night...", he said with some embarrassment. Emi paused for a moment before laughing.

"Oh well... to be honest that might have also played a role. Though you are always invited to our dinners.", she looked him straight in the eyes. "I mean it when I say that you are a valuable part of our team and even if some people may give you grief for your choice of employment, I want to make sure you feel like one of us."

It was a nice sentiment, he figured. Though it didn't change that most people thought him effeminate for taking such an artistic profession. Even though society had progressed, there was still the expectation that men take physical or leadership work while thinking and art be left to women.

Digital design especially, was still almost entirely the domain of agnesian pets, as was demonstrated by his cat eared boss.

"Anyway", Emi brought it back to their original topic. "I was slow and methodical about it, since I had some unfortunate experiences in my youth, but I've come to a conclusion about you.", her words suddenly enticed nervous anticipation within Micheal.

"As you might have noticed, I am a cat girl.", she gestured to her ears and tail. "Yet, something is still missing.", at that she showed a shy grin and motioned to her neck.

"I've wanted to be a proper agnesian pet since... I guess ever. But as I said, there were some experiences that stopped me from living it out until now.

So I want to offer a trial run.

If you accept, I will be your pet for a week and you will be my master."