But that's impossible, the only other fight before the Cait Sith was Kage Onna which I didn't lose to either. This is also my first time playing so there's no previous save where I lost to her. Pretty sure this is some weirdness with the game itself.
replay the tutorial you missed some vital info. but you can sum it up to roughly 3 things.
1) you lost to this boss and
force quit/rebooted the game for a quick restart (this
causes corruption dont do that)
2) your
levels are too low your faith determines you
max health and will and this scales within the first
30 to 50 levels immensely.
3) you were not paying attention to
battle warnings or stances (these indicate actions you need to take or you will essentially lose. you need to
evade or defend on certain moves, pressing <- during the battle should allow you to see statuses of both you and the enemy as well as descriptions.
there is one more thing but this should not affect your "virgin run"
4) your
fetish levels are too high and you need to
go to the gym to remove these (also going to the gym can give bonuses to stats anyway).
Good luck in your run you may need to reset your save cause this game remembers (start from scratch by deleting the save folder).