That’s how I figure Hugboxy areas would go. I wanted to write an equivalent to the cities woth Foal For Skettie boxes, poison, stomping holidays, and general abuse culture. So I geared the town in Simple Creatures that way, how I would picture a model railroad idealized Americana place would treat them.
Health inspections, food provided that makes their shit more like proper manure, inspections to put down Hellgremlins, fix a certain quota of Mares a year, and find non-Hellgremlin Smarties to train to lead herds to be less intrusive on humans. The result is asmall community that are easy to get along with and provide something of a tourist attraction/something to watch and throw bread to in the park. Roughly equivalent rights to a squirrel in that you can’t go murdering them in public, leaving their bodies around, discharging weapons in public areas, or prolonging suffering for your amusement but that all relies on cops wanting to get involved or being called on you for it.
Oh yeah, and the reason they do TNR programs with cats, is because having some feral cats in the area can keep other feral cats out of the area. Territory stuff.
But I literally just realized that it wouldn’t work with fluffies, because fluffies are highly social creatures, and thus predisposed to gathering in large numbers, because the more friends, the better. So that would be a problem, too.
Fluffies are bad at avoiding hazards and finding food, and would probably have difficulty reaching areas like mountain towns as opposed to valleys. Fluffies who survive would soon select for better ones who breed when they have abundance, are more cooperative, and know how to deal with humans.
Anywhere that Fluffies would survive easily they’d be more generic dumbasses.
Uphill Fluffies as possums, downhill as craneflies.
Unless their smarties are actually smart, or at least, smart enough to watch what happens to other herds who piss off humans, and connect the dots between “hewd make hoomins angwy” and “hewd aww gu foreba sweepies”.
Agriculturalists who grow crops that Fluffies can’t ruin causing the megaherds in the first place to fallow fields, ranchers having a love/hate as they eradicate grazing areas one year but leave it better for the next which causes feuds based on local concerns, some crops like strawberries becoming far more expensive as the herds go through like locusts.
Some endangered species thriving on new prey or competition eliminating their rivals, some going extinct in the wild as Fluffies out-compete them.
Then the culture wars. The dumber and more contrary the better.
Unless the city creates intentionally wicked Smarties. Babyfuckers, short-tempered serial killers who hate everything that isn’t like themselves, wiping out other bloodlines and growing so incestuous the genepool decay renders most as stillborns.
I’ve been planning on doing a story about that, too. I’ve already briefly touched on it a couple of times, but it’s never really been the focus of a story.
A good shorthand for whether a given part of the world is pro-hugbox or pro-abuse is whether there’s Foal-In-A-Can machines present. I figure anyone who actually wants a fluffy as a pet wouldn’t be getting one from a vending machine. They probably put the most fragile foals in the cans, anyway. I imagine that the Foal-In-A-Can machines are pretty much a dumping ground for any stock that they don’t think is worth breeding, or selling in stores, and they want to make something off the rejects.
Some people depict them sniffing for scents, others don’t.
I went with the idea its an adaptation that they also have to learn to use. They have to know to try and do it, and have to learn what smell means what. Otherwise all they get is when in the presence of the otherFluffy when the pheromones the subconscious programming causes them to emit show which Fluffies are Smarties or Toughies even if that’s not their current role.
I suppose the easiest idea is their fluff. Ferals probably don’t squat, so their back and belly fluff is probably saturated with urine and liquid feces which rubs the ground as they walk. They probably also rub things to scratch themselves. Which would distinguish domestics, ex-domestics, and domesticated ex-Ferals who would wash themselves, giving them the safety needed to freeze to death or starve.
Cats leave scent with their paws. Given Fluffy “hooves” are toebeans basically maybe they do too?
“Fluffies unknowingly enter Smarty territory” is used every so often, so suppose its rare that a Fluffy thinks to sniff around and a Smarty thinks to mark. When they coincide you have a crisis averted. That also helps distinguish redshirt herd Fluffies from the rest, by having pathfinder/scout/hunter Fluffies.
What I went with is that ferals can develop a more sensitive sense of smell that lets them identify which herd a given fluffy is from. So that, and the fluff thing you mentioned, could probably be used to identify a herd’s territory, too. And even the dumbest toughy can’t be tricked into believing that an intruder is supposed to be there.
Which makes them a lot harder to trick than human guards. Seriously, all you need is a jumpsuit and a mop, nobody ever gives the janitors a second glance.
Sure, take it. However, you must give me your babbehs in return. No? Look at you. Your covered in poop! You obviously cannot care for yourself, let alone babbehs. Bad fluffy, bad mammeh.
