Beep beep beep Gerald’s alarm blares, waking him up at his usual 5:30am, life starts early on the farm, but doesn’t stop early so some days are a little hard, but he has work to do, so despite the cold outside and the warmth under the covers he gets out of bed and gets dressed in his denim overalls ready for the day.
First light is showing through the inky blackness of the sky as he goes out with a torch followed by his loyal lad a fine old Labrador, Dumbo (great big ears and very little brain). First he starts up the milking barn and checks on the calves; collecting the eggs from the chickens, giving last nights left overs to the pigs, he scowls at the goats as he passes, they got out again last week the shifty buggers, they were his late wife’s so he is loath to get rid of them, doesn’t mean he likes them. Now it was light and he had formed an entourage, stalking behind him and the dog were the dozen farm cats that dealt with vermin.
It had been a good few years since the bad times where fluffy populations had got so out of control that fields would be covered with them and stripped bare, it was tough being a farmer then, no money outside of government support for at least 5 years, thankfully people out in the country were okay as they could at least hunt the fluffies for meat, but millions had died in the famine as there just was not enough food to go around and richer countries were able to buy up just enough supply.
Thankfully fluffies are much better understood than they were and control efforts are effective, but Gerald still needed to be careful to not let an infestation take hold on the farm, they might be cute and innocent individually, but they are capable of terrible damage if left to their own devices thus the cats, they are good at keeping the fluffies away. Some still get through and somehow evade the cats so Gerald keeps a FCKD sketty trap in his barn, it releases some chemical that attracts fluffies like moths to a flame, and gets the fluffy to walk over a trapdoor which drops them into a bucket ready for collecting. As he gets to the barn he greets a great big fat cat, “Mornin’ Buff.” they only have one eye and a lot of scars but he is the boss of the cats, he is sat waiting by the door, animatedly whisking his tail about. He and the others follows Gerald inside.
From within the bucket he can hear scurrying and muffled fluffy voices he has come to expect. The bucket quiets down as he steps closer, he picks up the trap and carries it outside to inspect the nights catch. Setting it down on a table and taking the lid off he peers inside to see two adults and a whole gaggle of foals pressed up against one wall and a pile of shit against the other. They look up at him scared, before the mother says “hewwow nice daddeh, am you nyu daddeh?” which sets off a chorus of “nyu daddeh, wub nyu daddeh, nu wike box, can fwuffeh hab upsies nyu daddeh, nu wike bad poopie, nu wike smeww.”
These things were really designed to pull at peoples heart strings, big eyes, cute voices, soft fluff, but he knew that he could not afford to look after all of these fluffies, or any of them really, farming does not have good enough margins, and its not like anyone would buy them from him, and he can’t just release them, so with a sigh he replies “sorry not today.” as he picks up the mother, eliciting an immediate “mummah nu wike upsies, nee be wid babbehs.” before she has a chance to look around and see Gerald’s entourage “h-hewwow doggie and kitties…” with a little heft he chucks the mare to Dumbo who catches her by a leg “EEEHHH… Weggies haf owwies! Pweese put down doggie fwen…” That’s the last Gerald sees of her as dumbo happily trots off with her to eat her in peace.
Gerald looks down into the bucket and sees the consternation on the remaining fluffies, babbehs wriggling about crying “mummah, where mummah, wha happen tu mummah.” and the until now silent stallion questions “wha daddeh du with speciaw fwend?” The cats are weaving between Gerald’s legs and rubbing up against him, he picks up the stallion and puts him down amongst the cats “H-hewwow kittie munstas.” he managed to say before Buff baps the two cats that lunged for the stallion before taking them himself, the stallion is dragged away by buff crying “nyu daddeh sabe fwuffeh fwom kittie munsta, babbehs nee daddeh and mummah.”
With the two adults dealt with Gerald picks up the bucket of crying foals and tips it onto the ground, the squirming foals look around for their parents desperately but are soon set upon by the remaining cats, they are all picked up and taken to each cats favourite spot, thankfully there was just enough, so he didn’t need to leave any without a treat or didn’t have to deal with an extra.
Gerald just needed to go wash out the bucket so he took it to the nearest tap and started filling it up, spraying the pile of shit, looking down he suddenly noticed that the pile wasn’t entirely shit there was a brown foal in there too which was desperately peeping their displeasure at the water that was spraying them, Gerald picked up the foal, if getting poop on his hands was a dealbreaker for him he would have quit farming a long time ago and sprayed him off under the tap more thoroughly despite the foals protestations of “wawa bad fo babbeh.” but once cleaned off sufficiently the foal changed their tune quickly “fank yu nyu daddeh for cwean poopie babbeh, babbeh nu wike bein’ poopie babbeh, where mummah and daddeh…” Gerald was considering what he was going to do with this poor creature when he felt a cat rubbing against his legs again, looking down it was Midnight, a jet black Bombay, they had had a big fight with Buff a few days ago so had been keeping their distance, but with him out of the way they took their opportunity, Gerald dropped the foal for them “why daddeh gif babbe-EEHHHH.” the foal managed to squeak out before being whisked away by the stealthy Midnight.
Gerald looked at his watch, 8:30, he needed to get on with things, so he washed out the bucket and reset the trap and got back to work.