The Life of Ivan - Chapter Six
“Zero to One Hundred”
You are Ivan, and despite your best efforts, you gave in and decided on a saferoom for your rescue fluffy. You can reasonably believe that the future has some serious curveballs in store that will test your patience, but it is too late to back out now. A mere 40 hours after making a call for an initial estimate, the saferoom is complete. Currently, Crown is asleep in a patch of sun let in through your kitchen window. She got herself so excited to be let out of the basement that she promptly tired herself out. This gave you time to move everything from the basement to the saferoom.
“Hewwo daddeh! Cwown wan wittabawks pwease?” giving you the ‘upsies’ pose.
“Of course, I’ll take you there.”
“Yay! Daddeh best upsies!” happy as can be, per usual. But she notices you aren’t taking the stairs, “Whewe daddeh bwing Cwown? Nyu game? Cwown wike game.”
You admit, the lack of awareness in general of some fluffies is adorable. But so far in your experience, she’s unusually naive for a feral fluffy. They often question things humans do with more…urgency. Not that you’re wishing for her to give you a hard time of course.
“No Crown, I have a surprise for you. Can you cover your eyes please?”
“Cwown wub suwpwise! Otay daddeh!” She covers her eyes with her hooves as requested, but to do so she is practically burying her snout into her chest fluff. Reminding yourself she requested the litterbox, you set her down there instead.
“Now Crown, you’re in the litterbox. Do your business first then you can see your surprise. You can open your eyes now.” You stand behind her, holding up a large blanket so she cannot see the room. Your biggest worry, like usual, is fluffy shit ending up somewhere other than the litterbox. While you know it will happen sooner or later, you aren’t up for finding out if excitement piss is any worse than the dreaded “scaredy peepees”.
Crown gets her bearings, pads around the litter a bit, and relieves herself. It’s quite a bit louder than you expected.
“Wook daddeh! Cwown do bestest poopies! Am gud fwuffy fow daddeh!” She hums off key (to the already off key) Good Poopies Song whilst struggling to drag her bum across the litter, but manages to succeed. The natural makeup of fluffy fur does its job and her rear end is surprisingly clean.
She excitedly waddles across the litterbox babbling about “Bestest suwpwise!” and you move the blanket out of the way, letting her go nuts. It takes her several minutes, but she finally breaks away from the various toys and find the nest area. The nest area goes one inch below the surface of the rest of the floor, and consists of a sizeable square area partially set into both walls to provide cover. The entire thing consists of the same navy blue rubber padding that covers the entire room with rounded corners and edges.
In preparation for ‘move in’ day, you put her original bed, a second bed roughly twice the size, several ‘easy clean’ fluffy blankets, and a stuffed (also easy clean) teddy bear. Is she spoiled by fluffy standards? Absolutely, no contest. But you’re absolutely determined to prevent her from reverting back to her feral roots. Comfy enough to be content and compliant, but not ‘sketties for every meal’ spoiled. And besides, if it ever changes, you have a saferoom ready to go for a quality shelter fluffy.
You slip out, you aren’t ready to listen to her babble about “new toysies fow Cwown” just yet. From your phone, you turn on the television and play your carefully curated “Obedience” playlist of FluffTv episodes. Over the last two days, you wired your entire house with cameras, so you aren’t too worried about leaving her unattended. Next on your list though, is to check on the feral herd.
You have confidence in their ability to defend themselves, at least from other fluffies. They have a sweet advantage with the pile of discarded industrial type trash that they now inhabit, but you’re still curious. Unless the mood strikes you, you have no intentions of helping them boost their defences.
Let us skip to where you arrive at ‘Fluffygrad’, as you have dubbed it.
You are immediately greeted by shouts of “big mistah!” and “Hoomin!” The Smarty Friend waddles up to you and sits at your feet, tail swishing slowly across the ground behind him.
“Hewwo big mistah, Smawty nu see odda fwuffies hewe. Wah’ wan’?
“Nothing at all,” you reply, shaking your head, “just coming by to say hello. Is anyone sick or hurting?”
“Nu, nuffin hewe. Soon-mummahs awe mummahs nao, so fwuffies fin’ nummies fow cowd time.”
Something clicks in your head, you forgot these little shits still have to survive the winter. You exchange a few more words with Smarty Friend, finding out they don’t appear to have much trouble finding food. However, you doubt they can account for the babies that will inevitably made whilst waiting out the winter. Potentially cutting into their food supply.
While there isn’t much you can do about that, what you can do is ferry the massive piles of grass and leaves over to the clearing. Not like you have anything better to do, right?
A short time later!
You slowly back your truck up alongside the house and nose it carefully around the corner and into the yard. You make a mental note to trim the brush before the snow hits this season. Starting with the grass, you shovel it bit by bit into the bed. It takes about an hour, but in that hour the bed is now piled high with grass clippings and various types of vegetation, along with a small pile of dead leaves.
Arriving at the clearing, you give them a fright. As you turn off the truck and step out you can hear screeching and shouts of “METAW MUNSTAH!”
You greet the confused Smarty Friend, who is likely wondering why you would bring such a deadly beast to their secret nest. “Wha’ big mistah hab? Munstah nu huwt hewd?”
“No, I have a present.” You open the tailgate and pull the tarp the pile sits on top of. It’s incredibly heavy, but you manage. And shortly after there is a large pile of yard trimmings, a mountain to a fluffy. “I don’t expect any of you to eat this, but you can use it for nesting material for the winter. Does that help?”
The Smarty Friend takes a deep breath in surprise. Trotting over to the pile, he paws around and gives a long sniff, proclaiming to the herd, “Big mistah bwing nestie tings fow cowd time! Tuffies hewp bwing to piwe!” Turning to you, he says, “Yu good hoomin, big mistah. Ish big mistahs nestie thewe?” Gesturing with a little hoof in the direction your ‘metal munstah’ came from.
“Yes, so if you can find it again, that is where you go if anything attacks your herd. If I’m in the ‘nestie’, I’ll help you.”
“Smawty wike hoomin.” he says, and simply trots off to join the herd in moving all the new material.
For an hour of work, you saved yourself several hours of burning grass and weeds to get rid of it. Fair trade, you say. But the day isn’t over yet, and you get a creeping feeling that you may have left the garage open. You pull out of the side yard and into your driveway and, you guessed it, wide open. And to your dismay, that’s all it took for a stray fluffy…wait, two stray fluffies?
“Shit,” you mutter, climbing out of the truck. And when they notice you, you see it’s a pair. And between them, four babies. “Double shit, this isn’t good. What else did I leave open?”
“Hewwo, nyu daddeh? Pwease hewp mummah and speciaw fwend! Hab bestest babbehs!”
“Are there more of you?” you ask, brushing off the fluffy nonsense.
“Mummeh nu - “ she is cut off by further fluffy babble, but from behind you this time.
Christ on a crutch. If it isn’t a little shit with a horn.
“Dis smawty housie! Nu wan’ dummeh hoomin!”
“Aye, heard that all before you little shite. I’ll be right back with a nice surprise.” You aren’t sure why, but you’ve become unreasonably… heated. You feel an urge you haven’t felt for some time, and today, you intend to let it win. You get a twisted smile on your face when you remember you left your trusty Mossberg shotgun in the hall closet. A shotgun that happens to be compatible with a bayonet. Oh yes, it’s that bad. Perhaps you should consider therapy.
Already loaded and ready to go, you affix the aforementioned bayonet and fill your pocket with 12 gauge shells. Normally using buckshot is a waste, but it’s all you have. You leave through your front door and step quietly into the grass, around your truck, and up to the fattest fluffy that wasn’t the invading smarty. With a mighty downward thrust and a swift scooping motion, the fat fluffy is now impaled on the end of your boomstick.
Hearing protection already in place, you pull the trigger. A loud bang ends the screams of pain and gasps for air made by your unfortunate target. Fluff, blood and viscera go everywhere; coating you, the walls, your beloved truck, and the fluffies that surround you. The screaming and screeching begins immediately.
They waddle about incoherently, pissing everywhere and crying for help. You aim your shotgun at another, barrel in contact with it’s head, and pull the trigger yet again. Causing an equally gross but impressive fountain of blood and chunks. At this point, two you can see are hugging each other and bleeding from their fluffy ears. With your left foot you stomp on the head of one, and with your right you kick the smarty as he runs towards you in an attempt to save his two friends. This kick sends him to the back of the garage, he hits the wall and lands in the slop sink.
The fluffy you stepped over runs away, and you let him. A younger fluffy, not quite a foal, appears to have caught a piece of buckshot as a ricochet. He begs for his life but you ignore his pleas for mercy, sending your bayonet into his chest. You give it a sharp twist before pulling it back out.
So leaves the fluffy family that greeted you so politely. At this point, you begin to slow down having blown off so much steam. You examine them from arms length. They are all subdued colours suitable for outdoor living and appear well fed, but too scraggly looking to be runaways. More ferals. But having traumatised them irreversibly, you reconsider ending them.
You don’t bother with words, you pick them up out of the puddle of piss and shit they’ve made for you, and toss them into a milk crate. With your shotgun now hanging by its sling from your shoulder, you pick up the milk crate and carry them to the native herds clearing. You force them out onto the grass.
“That smarty was not a smarty.” you say sternly, “That was a very, very, bad fluffy. A dummy, not a smarty. Because you have babies, you don’t get forever sleepies. But if you ever come back without my say so, I will tear you to pieces. Ask this smarty, a real smarty, if you can stay. I will not help you.” Without allowing them a chance to ask questions you walk away, back towards home. The walk relaxes you, going from batshit-fucking-pissed to mildly irritated.
You know full well that this herd may beat the piss out of any newcomers but you don’t care. Bait or not, the little shits did say ‘please’ when they asked for help. Worth a chance, you think. You’re also incredibly annoyed with yourself for the mess you have to clean up. Almost out of daylight already, you decide to start tomorrow instead, knowing full well that fluffy brains aren’t going to come off paint very easily.
Such is the life of Ivan. Poor choices all around! At least you got your cardio in with the walk.
Note: I tried adding a visual to assist with the storytelling. I likely won’t do this very often, but let me know what you think of it.
