yeah this is basically a ripoff of PuffFluffer’s fluffy life cycle but I did it anyway
Fetal fluffy (tummy babbeh)
Gross and lukewarm to the touch, like the world’s shittiest gummy bear. These things are a common sight around Foal-B-Gone consumers and you’ll sometimes see them if you kick a chubby feral mare a bit too hard. The thing is, these make great fishing bait, and they’re commonly used for that purpose in the nations surrounding the Black Sea (Ukraine, Romania, Crimea, Republic of the Caucasian Mountains, Bashkortostan, Georgia, Turkey, Neo-Hittite Empire, Constantinople, Bulgaria, Romania). You can even buy them there as bait.
Preemie fluffy (too wittew babbeh)
Yeah, these needed more time in the oven for sure. These are pretty much guaranteed to die unless someone particularly determined gets their hands on ‘em, though even with their efforts, only 2% of these survive their first week out of the womb. That 2% of surviving preemies are usually loaded with health problems and typically don’t live to see adulthood. Good for live feeding reptiles, though you’d need a small handful of them to make it worth a larger reptile’s time and energy.
Newborn fluffy (chiwpie babbeh)
Fresh from the oven and into the fires of the unfeeling world around it. The bird and mouse DNA used in fluffies does the altricial newborns of fluffies good, since they squeak and beg for food when hungry, which is about every few hours whenever they’re not sleeping. They also squeak like this when they need attention, but because a newborn fluffy’s cries for attention and cries for food are so similar to humans, if you want to take care of a newborn fluffy, be sure to get your hands on an adult fluffy because they can tell the difference between hungry cries and attention cries. The sound of squeaking foals can be grating for owners, but for the mares who birthed them, the squeaks might as well be Mozart. They’re dependent on their mom for their first five to seven months of life, after which they get weaned (much to the protests of the babies, which at this point the mares will describe as “too big fow miwkies”). And God help the mare who has the misfortune of getting a foal with Sensitive Babbeh Syndrome, because that thing will NOT shut up if it wants milk, and it’ll refuse solid food it’s old enough to chew, much to the dismay of the mom, who will know what exactly the SBS fluffy wants, but not give it to them on the grounds of the thing being “way too big fow miwkies”. Overall, fluffies with SBS are a net negative for the immediate mental health of both the humans and the fluffies around them. If you have a stallion and a mare in the same house and you forget to neuter either of them, sooner or later you’ll have around six or eight foals squeaking for their mom’s milk/attention. Cats love screwing around with these things, and if you live in a city, you’ll sometimes see a stray cat with a newborn fluffy in its mouth.
Fluffy foal (wawkie/tawkie babbeh)
Old enough to walk, talk, be trained/taught (the first thing taught to them by owners/mothers is usually going to the litter box so as to not make “bad poopies”/“bad peepees”) and be semi-independent. While adult fluffies have enough control over their bowels and bladder so as to not shit/piss on the floor when a litter box is available (though fluffies can hold their waste in for several hours), the foals are still getting the hang of them, so accidents are common (which can lead to rather bloody incidents if the fluffy’s owner has an incredibly short fuse when it comes to fluffies). Surprisingly vulnerable in the wild, so the top priority of most mothers in feral herds is to keep foals safe from danger. However, in the northern regions of North America, this has shifted to making sure the foals grow up “big and stwong” so that they can defend themselves in the case of an attack from an enemy herd that might come strolling along (see the North American Alicorn War for more information). Generally big enough for rowdy folks to play hackeysack with (seriously, the New Englanders, the Vermonters, the Algonquin, the Iroquois and the Cree have basically turned this activity into a competitive sport), and they make okay chew toys for dogs. I say okay chew toys instead of great because the mess left behind is always a pain to clean up.
Adult fluffy (fwend/fwuffy)
And here you have it. A fully grown fluffy. Fluffies become adults after two and a half years of growing up. The culmination of humanity’s mastery of genetic engineering this, worthless shitrats that, adorable little creatures who can only do wrong if taught to do so here, humanity’s heretical attempt to supplant god there, blah blah blah… What hasn’t been said about fluffies a thousand times already? Uh… Don’t put them in a meat grinder back legs first even if they’re dead or alive without shaving them first I guess? The hair will gum up the machinery and it’s a pain in the ass to clean. I dunno, go ask someone more experienced in taking care of fluffies than I am. Deseret, Kawésqar, Belgium (ugh), Xhosaland and Dai Viet are chock-full of them. Also, fun fact: Dai Viet sometimes uses fluffies in their propaganda, shaving them bald and painting them either the colors of the Dai Viet flag, the American flag, or the flag of communist Vietnam. The ones that are painted the communist colors are typically malnourished or intentionally weakened until the day their famous ‘fluffaganda’ pieces get made to be shown on national TV. The fluffies that get painted communist colors always die at the end of the fluffaganda pieces. The reason why they use fluffies to depict the communist resistance in particular is because they want to spread the message that even the weak and pathetic fluffies could beat the communists.
Elderly fluffies, aka greyfluffs
Now THIS is something you don’t see every day. By the time a fluffy has reached this stage, they’re about 9 years old in human years, but something like 97 in fluffy years. Even the most devoted and diligent owners have a hard time getting fluffies to this stage since they’re so fragile. In fact, in captivity fluffies usually live for 6 years on average, so managing to raise a fluffy to old age is an achievement in and of itself. If you happen to be an owner of one of these greyfluffs, then congratulations! You kept something incredibly fragile alive long enough for it to develop osteoporosis. I hope you’ve stocked up on casts…