Alien Cat Girls; A Serious Story About

The light boom was one of Helmi's earliest memories. She had been outside and seen it with her own eyes. Her family had been coming home from a dinner out. As they were walking into their home the sky changed from night to a kind of eerie twilight. There was a new star in the sky suddenly except it was far bigger than any star, but not as big as the sun. Helmi stared at it in awe, later it would be hard to accept that this astounding event had lasted only three seconds. Her mother had not been awed, she had been terrified. She'd grabbed Helmi and rushed to the basement, expecting the end of the world to follow shortly. Many other people had the same reaction. When the sun came up the next morning and the world kept turning unfazed, people emerged from their shelter and started trying to figure out what had happened. Various theories emerged, that it had been a supernova was one most people accepted. A distant oddity that didn't really affect their life. Never mind that the science behind that idea didn't really hold--most people couldn't understand why it didn't. Another theory was that it was somehow China, except for in China which blamed America. We wouldn't know it was a light boom until seven years later.

Helmi was in her last year of comprehensive school when the spaceship landed in the Atlantic Ocean. It proceeded to motor over to the coast of Florida until its progress was halted by the US Navy. There was a standoff for a month before a being finally stepped out of the ship. It was almost immediately that the aliens started being referred to as Tigirls. Humanoid in appearance but orange with black stripes. The navy sent a small ship to approach and the being rushed back inside. All attempts to communicate with the ship yielded no results.

After another futile month, an attempt was made to help them communicate with us. Simply, a shortwave radio was placed on top of their ship. In the second ever appearance of a an alien, a Tigirl went out, took it and came back. By the next day transmissions were coming from inside the ship in an alien tongue. By the nature of shortwave the messages were publicly available for all to hear. Linguists around the world scrambled to decode the text. There was one message that seemed to be coming out of the ship again and again: Our mission has failed.

As information began to flow two ways with the alien ship, the question of the light boom was solved: it had been them. The Tigirls had developed a faster than light technology to travel across the galaxy. They had traveled 14 light years from their solar system to ours instantaneously. However, just as traveling faster than sound causes a sonic boom, traveling faster than light causes a light boom. Light booms are dangerous, powerful things, creating a kind of temporary star. Hence faster than light travel cannot be conducted within a planetary system. Even though the Tigirls had traveled 99% of the distance of their voyage in seconds, it had still taken them 14 years, 7 years to get out of their solar system, seconds to to cross the galaxy and then 7 more years to get from the edge of our solar system to Earth.

Another thing revealed about the Tigirls was that they were in fact all girls. Uncertain of the long term viability of their own planet, they had been sent out as cosmic pioneers to settle a new planet. With a limited capacity on the ship, it was decided that the best way to have a large genetic pool for the space colony was to send only women and samples of sperm in lieu of men. 40 times as many sperm samples as women, meant to last generations. Except it didn't work. The semen hadn't survived the journey. Moreover their ability to travel faster than light had been used up--returning home was not an option. A message had been sent to their home planet, but they could expect decades to pass before a reply was received. No one else was coming. That is why they considered their mission a failure.

They weren't alone though. Earth is of course inhabited, something they hadn't realized until it was too late. This was perhaps the most ironic blow. The Tigirls had thought their home planet overtaxed only to find themselves on a planet with thrice the population. They had come prepared to settle virgin lands but instead found themselves needing to integrate into an existing society.

While the cat girls had many troubles they also had an advantage, something of immense value--an alien space ship. While it couldn't do a faster than light jump again, it held within it the possibility of reverse engineering the technology that could. Since the ship needed to be intact, hotheads who called for it to be forcibly seized were sidelined. The United States offered a billion dollars for the ship. China imediately set to wow by offering $100 billion. It just went up from there. Outsiders warned that if Earthlings got their hands on the technology, the Tigirls home planet would soon be overrun. The Tigirls asked for a promise that settlers wouldn't be sent to their home. Bidders quickly tacked this onto their offer. The Tigirls were subsequently warned that even if the promise was meant while given, it would never be kept. Indeed corporations were already making plans for this vast untapped potential marketplace and source of resources.

Ultimately the Tigirls went with a dark horse--Finland, who had only offered to settle the Tigirls. They were drawn to the cold and fjords, which reminded them of home. Finland had proposed to place their spaceship in a museum, to howls of protests from techno utopians world over.

The Tigirls didn't need handouts anyway, everyone wanted to see them and hear their story. Almost overnight Helsinki became a new center for film and television. Every talk show and podcast wanted to have a Tigirl guest. They couldn't speak any Earth languages but we could translate what they said; anyone who had a chance to interact with a Tigirl had a translation app on their phone.

The influence of the movie From Kuigor (an anglicization the name of the cat girl home planet) cannot be overstated. Technically the second feature film staring Tigirls, it set the framework for how most people would understand the aliens. Which is kind of a shame, because it is ridiculous. It centers on Azweri, an idealistic Tigirl who decides to fight crime as a superhero upon arrival to Earth. Through out the movie she displays a number of mannerisms of Earth house cats--going after laser pointers, grooming herself by tongue, purring. These were not the natural habits of Tigirls, but afterwards they understood from the film that this is what humans expected of them and they obliged.

Becoming a fashion model was a natural choice for many of the Tigirls since it satiated human demand to see Tigirls without needing them to communicate much.

Attempts to make a Tigirl pop star failed as they cannot sing in any manner that is appealing to human ears.

Of course there was also a demand immediately present for sex and relationships with Tigirls. This was perhaps the most foreign and revolting concept to the aliens. We might as well have asked them to mate with walruses. The first legitimate Tigirl porn (there were innumerable fakes) was a scene between Tigirls. That there was human desire to see this was mystifying, though not as revolting as the demand for interspecies relations.

Focusing in on the youngest of the Tigirls, Luminaria, who decided to try and integrate into her host planet as much as possible, starting with going to school.

As you could imagine, when she first arrived at a Finnish secondary school, Luminaria drew the attention of everyone. While a few students asked to get a photo of her, no one seemed sure how to actually interact with her. There was a lot of speculation as to how she might react to a mouse or a dog, even though Luminaria herself made a point to not take on any Earth cat behaviors.

Luminaria had come to learn, and she knew she would need to do more than listen to the teachers. She sat next to Helmi in science class. Helmi became petrified around her alien classmate, terrified of making an intergalactic faux pas. In the second week of class Luminaria broke the the ice between them by asking, through a translation app, "Why do you call us Tigirls?" Helmi nervously looked around, trying to figure out who Luminaria was speaking to. Luminaria asked again, "Why do you call us Tigirls?"

Helmi swallowed and replied "Because you're all girls who look like... tigers." Helmi tensed up, as though she expected to be hit. When the only response she got was a hard stare, she continued, "A tiger is a big cat with orange and black stripes. I can show you a picture..."

"I have seen the tiger." Luminaria responded. "Why do you think we look like this?"

Helmi felt like she was being asked a trick question. "Because of your orange and black stripes?" She half answered, half asked.

"I don't have stripes like you do." Luminaria replied.

Though she didn't realize it, much of Helmi's trepidation about talking to a Tigirl fell away at this point. "Wait, what? You think I have stripes?"

Luminaria looked puzzled at her translation app, unsure if it was working correctly, then responded "Yes, humans have stripes." As if she was stating something as self-evident as birds have wings.

"No we don't!" Helmi managed to get out between her laughter "You have stripes."

"NO! Humans have stripes, not us." Luminaria responded, while making a noise that Helmi took a moment to realize was also laughter.

The girls were fast friends after that. Helmi had never had an alien friend before, Luminaria had never really had a friend at all. She wasn't supposed to have been on the trip to Earth at all. Her mom had gotten pregnant shortly before they left and no one had realized until it was too late. There had been no other children on the ship.

Having known only the confines of the spaceship, Luminaria relished being outdoors. Recreational camping was a foreign concept to the Tigirls, one which Luminaria quickly took to. Seeing wild reindeer, smelling the smoke of a campfire, skinny dipping in natural bodies of water--Luminaria savored it all. Helmi had never been particularly outdoorsy, but she was drawn in by her friend's passion.

While Luminaria's disposition allowed her to tolerate weather year round, Helmi refused to go out camping in the brutal Finish winters. In that season they would focus on Luminaria's other passion, Earth food. Having grown up on a limited range of preserved food and a few vegetables grown on ship, the possibilities of Earth food delighted her. Traditional Finnish blood dumpling soup, American fast food, Japanese sushi, she wanted to try it all. Helmi enjoyed a good meal, but it was again her that had limits. Luminaria could eat just about anything while Helmi had a tree nut allergy.

In their second year of high school, Helmi, who had always been indulgent of Luminaria's interests, began pushing for the two of them to do something she wanted to do: go to Disneyland Paris. After much evasion on the subject Luminaria snapped "If we go there everyone will treat me like one of the costumed characters!" Her fellow students had become accustomed to Luminaria's presence so Helmi had forgotten that Tigirls were still a novelty in the wider world. She eventually thought of a solution though: make up.

They did a trial run with Helmi using concealer to cover Luminaria's stripes, as Luminaria could not see them herself. With them covered she was no longer immediately recognizable as a Tigirl, but she didn't look 100% human either. Luminaria had entered the uncanny valley; a casual observer could to tell that there was something off about her without quite being able to put their finger on it. Or as Luminaria put it "I look like a sex doll."

Nonetheless, Luminaria agreed to go on the trip at the end of the school year. She didn't fully get the appeal of the rides but appreciated the chance to try unique restaurants. Most people were too busy with the park to notice them.

Back at their hotel that night Luminaria enquired "Did you enjoy brining your sex doll around Disney?"

Helmi laughed, then pulled out a make up cleaning cloth. "Let me take that off you." She was able to say it in the Tigirls' language which she'd been picking up. After cleaning Luminaria's face Helmi commented "Now that looks like someone I'd want to have sex with." Luminaria tensed, and then forcefully kissed Helmi, who kissed her back. The rest followed. The next day they neglected their plans to explore Paris in favor of staying in and exploring the possibilities of intergalactic relations.

Once back at school the increased affection between the two of them delighted classmates who had long shipped the two girls literally from different worlds. As they spent even more time together Helmi was finding it harder to ignore a thought that had been in the back of her mind for a while: She never saw Luminaria with any other Tigirls. She'd never even met her mother. When asked about this Luminaria shrugged off the question. "There are too many humans in the world for me to be spending time on other Tigirls."

In the wider world of cat girls a shift was taking place. Many had become jaded about fame. As it stood they were beloved oddities now, but when they aged and died that would be the end of their presence on Earth. They didn't have their original semen samples, but they were surrounded by humans who seemed to be fairly close in physiology. Time had worn down their initial revulsions. If they bred with humans they had a chance of a second generation, even if they weren't 100% Tigirl. Luminaria and Helmi might have been the first human-alien couple, but they would not be the last.

After graduating high school the girls moved to Turku where Luminaria would study conservation at university. Helmi went along but she decided to focus full time on her online business. She'd become one of the few people fluent in Tigirl and she was teaching it to others via social media. Luminaria wanted nothing to do with it, though it was an open secret that the two of them were together.

Azweri, who had risen to fame in From Kuigor, became the first Tigirl to become pregnant. Alas, she would have a miscarriage. At least a half a dozen other failed pregnancies happened amongst the Tigirls, though the true number was almost certainly higher. Doubts arose about whether a human-Tigirl offspring could ever be viable.

Luminaria was of course aware of all this but she stayed out of it. She was more concerned about the survival of the planet as a whole than the preservation of an invasive species.

Eventually there would be a live birth of a human-Tigirl hybrid. Of all the candidates, Rebi, the oldest of the Tigirls, who hadn't even been trying to conceive but had her own love story unfold on Earth, would be the one to have a child.

The date of the birth seemed foretold. Just as a light boom had been created when the Tigirls spaceship leapt across the galaxy to our own solar system, one had also been created when the Tigirls left their home star system. Because it was so much further away it only appeared in our sky like a normal star, flicking into existence for three seconds. The light traveled the galaxy for years, reaching Earth on the same day a little girl was born with faint tiger stripes.

It was a day of celebration for the Tigirls. The future had been restored to them. There was one though that didn't join in the revelry, who instead planned to spend the evening reading a text book. However, her girlfriend wasn't having it.

"Come on" Helmi protested as she unsuccessfully tried to snatch the book away "I know you don't hang out with the other Tigirls, but even you must be excited for today."

Luminaria tensed. "I... am happy for them. But it is not a celebration for me to be a part of."

"Why not?"

"I am not like the others. I didn't sign up for this, I was born into it. And I... I rejected it."

Helmi turned her head "How did you reject anything?"

With a deep sigh, Luminaria explained "Traveling here I learned all about how lucky I was, how Kuigor was a dying planet and how we were going to a new planet for a fresh start. And, it all felt like a mistake. It felt inevitable that we would destroy this planet too. So I did what I could to stop it."

"How..." Helmi trailed off as she understood "You destroyed the sperm samples."

Luminaria gave a weak smile. "We were almost here when I did it. I thought I had saved the Earth. What a joke. That's why you don't see me with the other Tigirls, they won't have anything to do with me."

"Actually, you probably saved them." Helmi said. Luminaria just blinked in response, Helmi continued "If they still had their sperm they probably would have wanted to stay on their original mission and wouldn't have integrated into Earth. Then humans wouldn't have accepted them."

"I guess I should tell them they should be thanking me." Luminaria laughed as she said it.