Sink or Swim, Part 3
“Dey took my specaw wumps, Daddeh,” Bob complained.
“I’m not your daddy,” I said for the third time. “Call me Roger. And they didn’t take your ‘special lumps’, they just gave you a vasectomy.”
“Okay Wogeh.” he said again. “Buh no-nos huwt fow days."
“I don’t want to hear about your balls anymore,” I said, looking for a place to park the car.
“In Owtis day, dey jus wip off you spechaw wumps!” the micro yelled from his box in the back.
“I don’t want to hear about your balls either, Otis” I said.
“Wuv pway wif baww,” said Bob. “Fwuffies in jaiw show Bawb how pway wiff baww.”
“You weren’t in jail, Bob, you were at the shelter.”
“Shewtah use jus be pwace fow fwuffies git biggest owies befowe buwnie huwties,” grumbled Otis.
Good lord, what kind of psycho did he live with? I wondered as I finally found a spot near the Fluffmart entrance. Since I was starting from scratch, I figured I’d give myself the best possible chance to succeed. I had an appointment next week with Floofe Brothers and I needed to make sure I had everything squared away for the two fluffies I now found myself owning. We walked to the entrance, me carrying the box with Otis and Bob following behind.
Inside was chaos. Foals of every color teetered around the playpen areas with the more attractive colors strategically placed closer to the register. Along the back wall, dozens of cages housed dozens of fluffies in even more shapes, sizes, and colors. You could find anything you want here from the eight-hundred-dollar shimmering Raricorn, to a three-dollar, blinded, pillowed, colostomy bagged fluffy labeled “for litter pal use only.” Along the back wall was a vending machine that appeared to have live fluffies in cans. Having the fluffies I already wanted, I instead went to check out the selection of foods I’d need to feed these two.
The labels were upsetting to say the least. The cheap stuff had happy fluffies diving into a bowl of kibble, strongly implying that they were the main ingredient. Checking the label confirmed my suspicion that this was mostly corn meal and “mechanically separated fluffy viscera.” The tag line “Now with more suffering in every bite!” lead me straight to the top shelf stuff, which was mostly sweet potatoes and dark leafy greens. I tossed that in the cart, then looked for a proper collar for Bob.
I sort of wondered what the hell kind of business Fluffmart was running as they had a package of zip-ties labeled “Sleepy Time Fluffy Collars!” in addition to a variety of collars with spikes, studs, and shock devices on the inside of the collars. I was thankful to find a collar that fit Bob’s fat neck, though an employee approached me as I considered the colors.
“Sir, is that feral yours?” he asked. “I saw him follow you in here, and if he’s not, I’ll just go ahead and dispose of him.”
“Bob’s not a feral,” I said.
“Bawb wiv by wake,” he said to the employee. “Just gawt out of jaiw.”
“I mean, he was, but now he’s not.” I corrected. “I adopted him. And quit telling people you were in jail, Bob.” The employee looked at me, then back to Bob, unconvinced.
“You were in jail?” he asked.
“Wogeh took Bawb from wake to jaiw, den got Bawb out of jaiw again,” he explained.
“You adopted that?” he sneered. “After already giving him to a shelter?”
“Fuck off,” I said. “Bob’s going to be the first swimming fluffy.”
“Yah!” yelled Otis. “Fawk off!” He looked at Otis’s box for a moment, then back at Bob.
“If you wanted to kill him, there’s far easier ways of doing it,” said the employee. “Water’s…”
“Bad for fluffies, yeah,” I said. “Didn’t I ask you to fuck off?”
“You didn’t ask, you just told me to fuck off,” he snapped back.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was rude of me. Will you please fuck off?”
The employee shook his head in disgust before wandering away. Sure Bob was kind of homely with his orange fluff and grey mane, but he was my fluffy and he’d already cost me a hundred and forty-five dollars. Plus this bag of kibble, which was like thirty bucks. And the collar. And the habitat for Otis. And the litter box and litter. Man, fluffies were expensive. Having never owned a pet before, I didn’t consider just how expensive it’d be. That wasn’t even counting whatever it was going to take to train him to swim. I paused to consider just how much I was willing to spend on this nonsense and what I’d get for my money.
I’d get a fluffy that swam. And I’d prove Steve wrong. And that was about it? Other people had used life vest for fluffies to get them in the water, but it was usually a festival of shrieking and shitting that lead to the fluffy drowning anyway. Bob wasn’t going to drown and I was sure of that. In the time I’d seen him in the water, he was cool and collected, even with his herd mates losing their minds around him.
After dropping another hundred and thirty bucks on various stuff for my two new fluffies, I loaded everything back into the car and went home. I’d read my lease before I adopted these two and though it forbade pets, according to the laws of Maryland, fluffy were not legally animals. I have no idea how that worked and I didn’t care. It did mean that I could keep Bob and Otis at my apartment, so long as they didn’t harass other people.
Before ever setting hoof in water, I had work to do. I set up the litter box and micro habitat in the spare bedroom, then programed the fluffy safe remote for the TV that I’d gotten at Fluffmart. There were balls and blocks to play with, as well as Micro version for Otis. After laying down the foam to protect the floor from Bob’s hooves, I started laying down the ground rules.
“Alright, Bob, Otis, here’s the rules,” I said. “Stay in your room unless I’m taking you out. Poop and pee in your litter box. Breakfast is at 6am, lunch at noon, dinner is at 7pm. Snacks as appropriate if you’re behaving. Spaghetti on Thursdays if you’ve done everything I’ve asked. Toys stay in your room. Do your exercises every day when I give them to you.” I paused to think of anything else. “Uh… don’t turn up the TV volume. Don’t talk to the neighbors.”
“What do if bweak wules?” asked Bob.
“Why would you break the rules?” I asked. “If you make a mess outside the box, you’re going to be the one cleaning it up. If you don’t do your exercises, you’re going to drown once we hit the lake. I don’t think this remote I bought for you even has volume controls. And as far as the neighbors go…” I shrugged. “This place is pretty crappy and I suspect some of them are insane.”
“Bu what do if bweak wules?” Bob asked again.
“Bah!” Otis complained. “In Owtis day, dey wip you no-nos off for make peepee outside of bawk!”
I found myself again wondering what sort of lunatic owned Otis. Still, Otis wouldn’t be able to get out his terrarium, so I don’t know what he was worried about, if he was worried. It was hard to tell if he was insane or just loud and opinionated.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said. “But if you’re going to be an asshole about the rules, I’m going to dump you back at the lake. And then you’ll be all alone because there aren’t fluffies there anymore.”
“Nu wan be awone,” Bob complained. “Be gud. Fowwow wuwes.”
“Alright then, let’s get started.”
I turned on the TV and explained it to Bob. The remote was fluffy sized, not micro sized, so Bob was in charge of what they watched, if anything. I didn’t have cable, so the TV only got like 6 channels, none of which was FluffTV. It was my understanding from the kids I taught that Fluff TV was the worst of children’s television dialed to eleven interlaced with commercials and messages designed to make fluffies as annoying and demanding as possible. As far as I could tell, the antenna got CBS, ABC, NBC, a Fox affiliate, and two different Weather channels. With summer stretching on for the next few months, hopefully we wouldn’t be spending much time indoors.
Bob sat in rapt fascination at the colors and pictures coming in through the flat screen, as if he’d never seen anything so amazing in all his life. Thinking about it, he probably hadn’t, considering he’d been a feral up until today. I didn’t even know if they had a TV at the shelter. Still, he and Otis sat quietly in from of the TV for an hour while I got some things ready for Bob and Otis’s first lessons.
When I’d been on the swim team in college, I found that I could never keep water out of my nose. There was a bit of an upturn to it from a bad break when I was younger and cutting through the water while doing the freestyle always tried to force a gallon or so into my lungs. A fluffy’s nose was wide, flat, and right at the end of their face. If a fluffy were to swim, the water would go right down their nostrils and directly into their lungs. Fluffies lacked a natural way to close their nostrils, so I thought about how I did it. A clip wouldn’t fit across Bob’s snout, and would have just crushed Otis’s tiny head. So I was going to shove silicone earplugs into Bob’s nose and smaller silicone plugs for Otis. Once they learned how to breathe through their mouths, then we could begin with phase two. I turned off the TV, breaking the fluffy’s trance.
“Alright, fuzz balls,” I said. “First swimming lesson is breathing through your mouth.”
“Why breaf frew mouf?” asked Bob.
“Because your nose is flat,” I said. “And if you breathe through your nose while you’re swimming, you’ll drown. Which is bad.”
“Wawa bad for fwuffies,” Bob agreed.
“So I’m going to put these plugs in your nose, and you’re just going to practice breathing through your mouth for a while.”
“Dats dum!” Otis yelled. I didn’t think he had any other volume. “Wawa bad fow fwuffies and yu wan us go swim? Twyin to gif fwuffies wongest sweepies?”
“I want to prove the world wrong,” I said, clenching my fist. “Everyone says you can’t swim. Everyone says you’ll drown.” I pointed to my fluffies, swelling with pride and hope that my words would lift their spirits and spur them to action. “Everyone says water is bad for fluffies. Don’t you want to prove them wrong?”
“Nu!” Otis yelled.
“Nawt weawwy,” said Bob. “Can watch mow tee bee?”
“You’re both assholes,” I said. “You can watch more TV as you’re breathing through your mouths. Come here and let me put this in your nose.”
Bob’s normal tactic of going limp when he didn’t want something did not serve him as well as he’d hoped here. In a moment the string that held the silicone earplugs together dangled out of his nostrils like an orange strand of spaghetti. A fluffy with a plugged nose was even harder to understand, given how nasal their voices normally are. Otis was much harder, since he could thrash his tiny head around, but I eventually held him still enough to cram the silicone tube into his nose.
“Dis nu feew gud,” Bob complained, hoofing at his face. ”Pwease take ting out of nosie. Nu wan.”
“Nu can smeww!” Otis complained.
“Oh believe me, you smell plenty,” I said. “Now, you practice breathing through your mouth for an hour, and when you’re done, there will be treats.”
“Bawb nebah hab tweats,” Bob said. It was as if he had a massive head cold and it was hysterical. I grabbed my laptop and sat in the room while the fluffies watched TV. Bob occasionally hoofed at his nose, while Otis franticly struggled to pull his tube out. After a few minutes, he lay on his back, exhausted.
“Gawd dam you, Wogeh,” he panted. “Haytechu su mush. Gon gib yu sowwy poopies.”
“Is nawt su bad,” said Bob, without looking away from the TV. “If dis wowstet ting dat happen, den Bawb am happy.”
It wasn’t by a long shot.
