The beaded curtain clatters as you walked into the old thrift shop. It’s been ages since you went downtown, and despite only being in the area for lunch, you just happen to notice the one place that’s rarely open finally flipped its sign around. The store owner greets you with a smile, though you can’t help but notice their attire. A black feline earhood covers their head, while a matching connected half-mask conceals most of their face, with even their nose and upper jaw hidden behind an attached cat muzzle. It looks almost like someone took one of those therian masks you sometimes see on TikTok and sewed it onto the hood to keep it in place. You give a wave, and they tell you to feel free to look around, and ask them about anything if you need to.
The place looks practically spotless, with a large area for clothes in the middle, some shelves for random knick-knacks and collectibles off to one side, and a massive collection of book-filled shelves off on the opposite side. You wander, casually browsing through anything that catches your interest, when you notice an archway behind the books. There’s a ramp leading up into a back area that doesn’t appear from outside, making you wonder if maybe the next building over is part of the store. Given your perusing takes you into that space, what you find within is something of a curiosity: racks and shelves of nothing but costumes.
Everything from cheap Halloween tat, to hoods and half-masks, to full-out mascot suits and what look to be fursuits of some sort, meticulously placed for customers to see them. Another section has partial mix-and-match pieces, and a space with many materials to potentially create your own, along with crafting tables set up for the purpose.
The shop owner walks up behind you, almost making you jump out of your skin with their absolutely silent footsteps. As they bring up their love of costume-making, you notice they’re wearing black furred fingerless gloves, similar foot coverings over their shoes, and a matching tail swinging behind them from what you assume is an unseen belt. They definitely match some of the quadrobics videos you sometimes see in your feed.
You look along the walls and aisles, and one outfit in particular grabs your interest. The metallic flakes of its dark rainbow colors remind you of something out of a Lisa Frank picture, while the opalescent sheen along the rubbery surface looks almost like holofoil from a sticker or collectable card. It isn’t normally your sort of thing, but the cat-ish hood and its matching parts seem to call out to you for some reason.
You hear the shop owner welcome you to try everything on, and despite having not eaten yet, you feel that can wait. The footpaws come off the shelf as you pull off your shoes, slipping your feet into them with a soft sqrk. While the soles and underlying boots are rubber, the legs are covered in rainbow fur leg warmers that rise up over the knee, settling just past the edge of your short pants. Walking around in them, the padded interior walls feel snug against your legs, and the molded paws don’t feel all too bulky.
Paw-like hands go with them, having matching fur sleeves that disappear up under the arms of your t-shirt. The textured silicone paw pads give you a much better grip, and provide a bit of girth to your digits without being too excessive, unlike some of the more toony options you’d been seeing. Just enough to feel like paws-turned-hands, and nothing more. Even the molded claws at the tips are appropriate, looking as if they’d been painted for a rave or something, and being just the right size for the job.
The tail, or rather tails, attach to a belt that you loop through your shorts, securing them into place. All three have a bit of weight to them, each one wrapped in neon kandi bead bands that wouldn’t look out of place in a high school. One has scene kitten spelled out along two of its loops, while the others have fish, heart, and star beads in haphazard patterns. You notice other similar stacked bead bands with the outfit for your wrists, and slip them on before they get lost or knocked around.
That leaves the hood and a collar. The rainbow neck scruff opens along with the back of the head, granting you access to the space within. Like the rest, there’s a soft padding that keeps everything feeling almost skin-tight without making it uncomfortable, and the eye openings fit perfectly with your own. In fact, they’re practically seamless as you look yourself over in the mirror next to the rack. Even without any sort of lenses or coverings, something gives you a pair of shifting rainbow irises that have a slight glow, and your pupils look like stars instead of their usual rounded selves. It’s odd that they don’t alter your own vision, but with everything else, you chalk it up to the suit giving off a bit of an illusion.
You take a moment to open and close your mouth within, slipping your tongue into a silicone extension that practically makes your real mouth disappear from the outside. In fact, your maw and nose look like something out of a vaporwave art piece, slightly glowing with neon hues of pinks and yellows and whites.
All that remains is the collar. You pull the neon-rainbow leather band around the thick furry fluff that covers your neck and part of your chest, snapping it into place to complete the look. Or at least, you thought would complete the look, until you begin to feel something is missing.
Your clothes look so completely out of place, plain and uninteresting. However, the store owner seemed to have thought of that as well, as you notice them returning with some appropriate attire from the other room. Removing your t-shirt, you think you briefly notice something about your skin underneath, shimmering with the same holofoil effect, but put it out of your mind as a new undershirt covers it up with its neon sunset imagery on day-glo pink. Once you get a leather vest with tons of band and animal-themed buttons on top of that, you don’t even mind being out in the open as you swap out your shorts for a black-and-neon-rainbow pair. The small link chains look good with those on the vest. Strangely, you don’t remember changing the tails over to the new studded leather belt, and yet they’re still there, hanging behind you.
You stare at yourself for a while, unable to shake some sort of feeling deep down within. You truly look like something from some sort of adult Lisa Frank artwork, or maybe even something an artist would’ve cooked up for a commission. Yet, you feel far more whole, perhaps even complete, just being yourself here and now. It doesn’t even feel like you should bother switching to your regular clothes again. They just look so uninteresting and boring in comparison, not even counting the hyper-colored cat that you’ve become.
You ask the owner how much it is for everything, and they give you an incredibly low price, along with some extra outfits for your wardrobe. Something about needing to make room for new things to put out. With the season being what it is, you opt to pay for everything without taking it off, and transfer your belongings to the pockets of your new clothes while you’re at it. You also notice a fittingly colorful messenger bag hanging near the checkout counter, and add it to your relatively small bill, mostly to carry your other purchases. Food becomes an afterthought as the register rings up your total. Once your card makes the terminal beep, you slip on the strap and wave good day to the owner, before stepping outside.
No one seems to mind the feline strolling down the sidewalk, ears flicking softly in the wind, or tails swishing and moving behind you. You smile, rubbery skin contorting its shine a little, as you breathe a sigh of relief. It’s just another day under the neon skies, after all.