You enter a clinic that boasts free consultations for an animal-transformative surgery. The waiting room is filled with animal beings, part-human-part-animal beings, and human beings. You flip through a magazine featuring gorgeous animal women and men. You remember that you saved money to buy an apartment for you and your now-ex-boyfriend but decide to spend it on the first modification of a chimera-transformation surgery instead, which would turn you into a part-lion, part-goat, part-serpent creature. You get home and look at your naked human body in the mirror, remembering how your ex called you beautiful. Then you remember how many women he cheated on you with. You get the first procedure, whisker implants. Immediately, you feel different and are treated differently. All sensations become more intense, more overwhelming. Co-workers and even strangers take an interest in you. You are constantly cat-called. You get a promotion at work and are back on the dating scene. You also start having a lot of sex, which your human friend from college points out. She says that she hopes you are being careful with the surgery. You two stop talking. You get the next modification and start getting into clubs and cafés exclusively for animal people. You date attractive animal woman and men. Some conservative humans criticize animal beings, and you join a protest for animal people lives that ends in teargas. However, you can only sneeze in response to the teargas because your tear ducts have been removed. You have just gotten engaged to a salamander/otter boyfriend when you run into your human ex at an organic foods market. You show off your new look and engagement, but they don't remedy the awkwardness of the encounter, nor how badly you feel afterwards. You're married for two years before salamander/otter cheats on you with a fully-modified chimera (unlike you, just partially modified). You run into the old college friend whom you had stopped talking to. She has also had animal surgery. She opens up about how painful it was, and as she expresses remorse, her eyes fill with tears. You feel something prickly where your tear ducts used to be.