Mice Tea

Margaret De Campos

Appearance: She has brown, curly, shoulder-lengh hair, with green eyes. She has dark skin. She wears a red sweater with gray jeans, white ankle socks, and loafers. She is curvy.

Animal Form: She has the same hair, eyes, and height as her regular self, but she gains mouse ears, a mouse tail, brown fur, with light brown fur on the hands, chest, stomach and the feet, also her small muzzle. She has a black mouse nose.

Sexuality: Bisexual.

Personality traits: Berserk Button: Sylvia calling her Peggy seems to be one for her, due to the fact that despite Sylvia treating it as a friendly nickname, Margaret doesn’t initially view her as a friend due to all the extra stress Sylvia often dumps on her at a moment’s notice.

Bespectacled Cutie: Bordering on Nerd Glasses, she's rarely ever without them.

Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Along with the rest of the main cast- in her case, red.

Extreme Doormat: One of Margaret’s main character flaws is her near inability to put her foot down, which leads to her taking on responsibilities that she shouldn’t have to deal with like having to cover for Sylvia when the latter can’t be bothered to come in to work.

Nervous Wreck: Julie quotes the trope when describing what Margaret used to be like in their college days. Even at the start of the story, the topic of whether she'd like to run her own cafe some day sends her into a tizzy about bankruptcy and fire insurance, though she does gain some self-confidence as things progress.

Old Maid: Her aunt is rather upset that Margaret's nearly thirty years old and hasn't found a spouse yet.

Rage Breaking Point: The thing that kicks off Margaret’s rant towards Sylvia in Sylvia’s route isn’t the revelation of a hypnosis-induced alternate personality or the discovery of having bought so many expensive clothes while under the influence of said personality, it’s Sylvia calling her ‘Peggy’ while trying to calm her down.

Repression Never Ends Well: Margaret has a tendency to bottle up her frustrations towards someone until they become too much to deal with and she launches into an angry tirade. Margaret herself lampshades this at one point.

Really Gets Around: Some snippets of dialogue reveal that Margaret has a very active sex life. She at one point admits to Sylvia that she’s had 41 sexual partners, much to the latter’s shock.

Felicia Banks

Appearance: Felicia has short but puffy sharp black hair, with blue eyes. She wears a button up blue-white shirt, with a blue tie. She wears a no sleeved blue sweater over the shirt, with light brown jeans and black loafers. She is petite.

Animal Form: Her hair, eyes, height, are all the same, but she gains large cat ears, a tail, and gray fur, with light gray fur being on the hands, feet, stomach, chest, and finally her small muzzle. With whote fur tufts in the ears.

Personality traits: The Alleged Boss: The main reason she was Margaret's boss is because Margaret was anxious about the responsibility of running a business and turned down an offer from Barlow's previous owners, with a customer commenting that she thought Margaret was the boss due to how much she does on the job.

Berserk Button: The only thing that seems to consistently get under Felicia’s skin is altering her (admittedly complex and impractical) management system without her knowledge or consent. This seems to be due to already being under a lot of stress, and having to get used to an unfamiliar system would add a lot more.

Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Along with the rest of the main cast- in her case, blue.

Cat Girl: What ends up becoming Felicia's default form on her route. She takes to her animal characteristics far quicker than Margaret does with her own initially, and even after Margaret grows fonder of them during the story she still doesn't wear them casually, unlike Felicia who is seen in them more often than not. While Felicia's reasons for doing so are left ambiguous, it's alluded to that it probably has to do with finally being able to properly communicate with her cats.

Gender Bender: Undergoes this in all story routes, as a result of drinking the magic Kemono Tea. Being a trans woman, she's very okay with it.

Kindhearted Cat Lover: Felicia already owns eight cats at the start of the story: Opal, Smokey, Kyle, Whisp, Shade, Duchess, Salmon, and Mittens. Felicia makes them homemade cat food daily from chicken and rice.

Neat Freak: Apologizes for her apartment being a wreck when Margaret first comes by, despite it being the most spotless apartment Margaret has ever seen. Felicia mentions that she has to vacuum daily to keep the assorted fur at bay.

Playful Cat Smile: Gains a subtle one as her default expression, after her transformation.

Speaks Fluent Animal: Gains the ability to understand and talk to her cats during her storyline.

Sylvia Drake

Appearance: Sylvia has blonde ponytail waist-length hair, and tan skin. Her eyes are yellow. She is slim, but curvy. She wears, a gold-yellow sweater, with black pants and gold-yellow heels

Animal Form: Her hairs color changes back to her regular black hair, as her normal human hair is dyed. She becomes a vixen fox, with orange fur, white fur being on the tip of her orange bushy tail, muzzle, and on her chest and stomach. She has black fur on her arms, and legs that stop at her thighs. Her fox ears are large and black, with the insides being orange with white fur tufts inside. Her height and build stays the same, including her eyes.

Personality traits: Affectionate Nickname: She often refers to Margaret as Peggy as a friendly nickname. Margaret herself does not appreciate it.

Ambiguously Bi: After making love to Margaret in her alternate route following a successful stage performance, Sylvia admits to being demisexual, and finds it difficult to have a sexual relationship with someone without a strong emotional bond. However, this trope is Lampshaded earlier, when Margaret learns that Sylvia is transgender after misinterpreting Sylvia's earlier statements and assuming Sylvia had attended a Pride Parade as an ally.

Berserk Button: She has a milder reaction to it than most examples, but pointing out that her tan is fake is one of the only things that consistently gets under her skin.

Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Along with the rest of the main cast- in her case, yellow.

Failed a Spot Check: One directed at her in both hers and Felicia's route, rather than something she missed; she's not amused to find out that her boss and coworker have missed literally every hint she's dropped about being trans.

Innocently Insensitive: Sylvia considers Margaret to be her friend that needs to loosen up, completely ignorant that Margaret's wound-up around her because she keeps being called in on her days off to make up for Sylvia's frequent absences. When Margaret finally reaches her limit and derides Sylvia for being a flake that breezes through life and then dismisses others that have to work hard to survive, Sylvia has a breakdown.

Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Downplayed in that Sylvia isn’t really a jerk, she just has a bit of difficulty taking other peoples’ feelings into consideration.

Julie Lin

Appearance: She is a curvy Asian woman, with short black hair, her eyes are purple. She wears a purple short-sleeved shirt with jean shorts and black sneakers.

Animal Form (for work at Barley's Burrow): Her height, hair, and eyes stay the same. She becomes an anthropomorphic Shiba Inu. She has black fur, with light brown fur on the hands, forearms, stomach, chest, muzzle and feet, with the light brown being on the underside of her tail, and the inside of her thighs and ears. Her ears have white fur tufts inside of them.

Personality traits: BDSM: Bondage comes into play a lot during Julie's route, for both titillating purposes and practical.

Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Along with the rest of the main cast- in her case, purple.

Commitment Issues: She does not like labels, and digs in her heels any chance she gets when Margaret tries to define their relationship in her route. She only starts to give any ground on it when Margaret points out that they're already going through the motions of a relationship.

Deadpan Snarker: Of the main cast, she's the most prone to making snarky comments.

Friends with Benefits: When Margaret states at a bar that some of Julie's self-assuredness rubbed off on her during their college days, Julie adds that's not all they "rubbed" before she left to study abroad.

Guilt-Tripping: Unintentionally does this in her route, as Julie's plan to use Kemono Tea to single-handedly commit multiple high-profile thefts against an art dealer, as revenge for the dealer stealing art from her and her peers and leaving Julie destitute, sets off so many red flags that Margaret feels forced to help her to prevent a worst-case scenario. Near the end of her route, Julie realizes she did this and apologizes, but Margaret forgives her.

I Am What I Am: In her route, she tries to dissuade Margaret from her attempts at a Relationship Upgrade by pointing out her own flaws, such as her impulsiveness and recklessness, and how she's astounded that Margaret can still tolerate being her friend, let alone want to be her girlfriend.

Lives in a Van: Begrudgingly admits in some routes that the reason she moved back from France is due to going broke thanks to an art scam, and she's been living in her van ever since

Smarter Than You Look: Despite the disheveled slacker she comes across as, she's fluent in four languages, she's a talented artist, and she's able to plan and pull off three high profile art heists in less than a week, with barely a hitch until the last one.

Stealth Pun: Given her Chinese descent, one might initially expect her transformation to be a panda. Instead, she turns into a raccoon... an animal colloquially known in the US as a trash panda.

Gavin Van Der Valk

Appearance: Gavin has short orange hair with green eyes. He wears a button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up, light brown jeans, and brown sneakers.

Animal Form: Gavin becomes a curvy yet somewhat tall female rabbit. Her fur is white, with a dark green spots and brown spots on her body. Her right hand is dark green, while her left is brown, that same coloring is on her feet. Her tail is white, small, and bushy.

Personality traits: Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Along with the rest of the main cast- in his case, green.

Eyes Always Shut: Has this for most of his expressions.

Flight: Capable of this in his falcon form.

Furry Fandom: Turns out that he's a member, which leads to complications midway through his route.

Meaningful Name: Gavin’s surname literally translates from Dutch as ‘from the falcon’, and his transformation is that of a falcon.

Kemono Tea: Kemono Tea (or floor tea) is a magical beverage containing an active ingredient called "transferm". Drinking it forces humans to physically transform into anthropomorphic animals.

Default Animal State: Every person has a core default animal tied to their inner personality.

Progression of Change: Consuming more of the tea deepens and accelerates the physical transformation into an animalistic form.

Customizing Transformations: By mixing specific extra ingredients and herbs into the brew, a drinker can target and alter the transformation into a precise animal based on symbolic wordplay or cultural traits.

Pre-Transformation Perks: Before the full anthro shift takes hold, the tea first grants the drinker a flexible, adaptive body.

Reversion: Limit animal activities: Avoid actions or urges associated with the specific animal form (such as mouselike habits).

Rest and routine: Maintain a healthy routine of proper sleep, rest, and good food.

Cool down: Focus on calming your physical and emotional state.

Targeted meditation: Engage in meditation while actively picturing your original, human body.

Everyone's flaws have since then been resolved after their marriage.

Margaret owns Barlow's Burrow in New Greenshire, which is partners with the original Barlow's Bookstore, and Gavin's tea store.

Barlow's Burrow is a mixture of a bookstore and a tea store, which sells different Kemono Teas that allow customers to become different anthropomorphic animals to their choosing.

Margaret is married to Felicia, Sylvia, Gavin (Officially) and also Julie although it's (unofficial) as Julie doesn't like hard labels.

Everyone mostly stays in their animal forms.