“Mummah wubs yew, babbeh. Yew am da pwettiest, speciawest babbeh in da wowd.” Clementine nuzzled her little fluffball of joy. His eyes had opened just a few days ago, staring to her own and full of wonder. This little brown colt was the only one she had left. Life for a runaway pet feral was hard, and by the time the orange and green mare had been captured and put into a shelter all the other babies she’d birthed had been lost. Not Blanket, though. Like many other runaways or ferals she’d been left on her own to assign her babbehs names and she chose to name him after one of her favorite things back in her old housie.
Blanket was soft and bright. When he cooed she cooed right back to him. Whenever he got sleepy and suckled on one of his hooves, it gave her the brightest of heart happies.
“Babbeh an’ mummah am hab bestest housie.” She promised him. This shelter was not a good place to be. In the tiniest of kennels where they could hardly even stretch their legs out. There was lot of pleading from other fluffies, never enough kibble, and they would take away the small beds allotted to you if you dared complain. The bright lights hurt your eyes and there was always the smell of poopies in the air.
As Blanket grew up and began to talk and walk, Clementine gently placed him in the litterbox so he could potty and make sure the shelter staff were happy. All the mummahs and daddehs too. If they saw a babbeh who just flopped around in their own mess, why would they want them?
“Yew am mummah’s babbeh. Cwemmy wub yew.” Before they turned off the lights at night and made the fluffies afraid of dark times howl with fear, she nuzzled his nose with her own and licked his cheek to assure him that everything would be OK.
“Wew fwuffies gu, mummah?” Blanket asked one day while they just sat around one day. They did a lot of sitting around. It gave a lot of time to think, what little a fluffy could think about anyways. Every day more and more fluffies were brought out from the kennels. It was different from when mummahs and daddehs came through though. There wasn’t an air of happiness. The humans reminded him of mummah when she was sleeping, crying because she was remembering her other foals. Full of saddies.
“….Mummah dun know.” Clementine answered him truthfully. One thing was for sure: They never came back. As soon as the occupants of a kennel had exited, new ones were brought in. They had watched countless ones leave. Usually brown or old ones.
Every day prospective mummahs or daddehs came in to view them. Usually they only gave Clementine and her son a passing glance. On occasion a ruder visitor may even comment on Blanket’s ‘bad colors’ and why the shelter even wanted him around in the first place.
“Bwankie bad cowow?” He asked Clementine about it. It brought a visible grimace to her, and she hugged him in close.
“Babbeh bestest cowow. He am pwettiest fwom heaw-pwace…” She gave his ear a lick. “To tailsie.” Another lick to his tail, causing the colt to flop down and giggle, kicking his hooves around.
“Tickwy, mummah!”
One night the pair were brought skettis. Real skettis! Mummah had told him about it before but this was the first time he’d ever had it. The other fluffies had gotten nasty old kibble, but they had been given this most special of treats.
“MFGLFFL!” Blanket snorted and grunted as he dug into the skettis, greedily suckling up noodles and sauce. He would have shared with mummah but this was the first skettis he’d ever gotten, so it was nice to let him have it all. Falling over on his side he gave a loud burp and a tail wag. “WUB SKETTIS!” He exclaimed, Clementine bending down to lap the sauce from his face so he was pwetty-cwean.
“Mummah ‘n babbeh am hab skettis when nyu housie.” She nodded a bit. That would be truly nice. The mare noticed that her beloved little foal was already asleep so she kissed his nose and curled her body around.
Right before dark times two shelter assistants would walk along the kennels. They found Clementine still wide awake, Blanket snoozing against her belly and suckling against her fur.
“Hewwo nice fwends.” Clementine told them with a half-smile, unsure of what they could need. They didn’t usually come around once food had been served for the night.
One of the humans sighed. They’d drugged the spaghetti and it was supposed to make it easy to euthanize or relocate them. Well, at least the foal was asleep. He was only being relocated to a different kennel. Someone special was coming by soon and she seemed like the sort to pick such a hard luck case. Clementine, on the other hand…
“C’mon, be a good girl.” The shelter assistant reached in, gently took Clementine up in his arms. Looking confused as the other reached in and took Blanket, she shook her head as the began to walk in different directions.
“Nuuu….dat am Cwemmy’s babbeh…” She knocked her back hooves around and tearfully watched as Blanket was safely deposited in a smaller enclosure. “He nee’ mummahs wub! BABBEH! BABBEH!”
Clementine was brought to a back room. It looked like a safe room, to a certain degree…but it felt wrong. Very wrong. It smelled like fear. Like a bad place. Many fluffies had many scaredy-peepees in here before. Despite all the bright colors, fun posters on the walls, and the soft blanket she had been placed onto this was a very bad room.
“Bwankie nee’ mummah. Pwease wet gu!” The attendant who had brought her back here had her pinned down gently with one leg as he stripped a syringe from it’s paper lining, carefully drawing out the correct amount of sedatives from a vial which would kill her.
“You’re going to skettiland, girl.” The man told her in a soothing voice. This wasn’t a shelter run by bad people. They were in fact very nice and did everything they could do to make things, even the unpleasant ones, the best they could.
“Nu wan skettiwand! Wan babbeh! Nu! NUNUNU!” She couldn’t get away though, and soon she felt small sting at her back leg and a burn as the drug was injected. The man finally unpinned her, but she didn’t stay on the blanket. Instead she bolted at the front door, closed as it might be, scrabbling her hooves at the knob as if she could somehow magically work it. When that didn’t work, she began to ram the door with her head. It didn’t matter though because soon she’d just sink down to the floor, voiding her bowels and mumbling about her foal.
The attendant could have stopped this but didn’t want her last moments on Earth to be one of restriction and pain. It was better just to go off at least thinking you had a hope. Giving a sigh, he rolled her up in a paper sheet. Just another body for the furnace.
Hours later Blanket would wake up. Even with his eyes open he still felt like he was sleeping. Blurry like in a dream. His body felt like nothing, heavy and non-cooperative. Eating enough sedatives to knock out two fluffies would do that: It was a small miracle he wasn’t dead. Even though he felt so strange, it didn’t stop him from becoming washed over in fear and sadness. Mummah wasn’t here. His entire life he had never been away from her. Forcing himself on his legs, he noticed this wasn’t even the same kennel. It was smaller, instead of bars it was glass paneling. He rapped his hooves against the paneling rapidly.
“Mummah! MUMMAHHHHH!” Full of the worst scaredy feelings he’d ever experienced, the foal began to ram into everything in the enclosure. The dish of kibble was knocked askew and sent crumbs of food rattling everywhere. The water bottle was sent to the floor, dribbling everywhere. He made bad poopies in his fear, tracking through it as he ran around in circles. Stamped dirty hooves to the glass. “Mummah! Pwease dun weave babbeh Bwankie!”
The people at the shelter had other things to worry about than Blanket’s bitching though. An entire goddamn film crew was outside. They were here for one of those reality shows featuring some C-list blonde by the name of Jezebel. A publicity stunt after she’d drove drunk and flashed her pussy or something. Tacky, classless, totally obvious. Kind of appropriate she’d decided to curry public favor by adopting a fluffy from a shelter out in the middle of Bumfuck Nowhere.
A flood of cameras and strange people would come in while Blanket was at the lowest point of his life. Sobbing and screeching against the glass for his mother. They would stare at him, they would judge him. A high-pitched, preening voice would pout:
“AWWW! Isn’t he so sad? Oh my gosh. What a poor baby.“
Blanket was forced to look at the mummah who had pressed her face to the dirty glass, stained with his brown hoofprints. It wasn’t his mummah that was for sure. She had dark purple circles around her eyes. Her lips were bright red like they were covered with booboo wawa. The woman was smiling but it wasn’t one filled with warmth. It activated a sort of inner fear. Something biological deep down. Like he was prey. A hawk diving down for a rabbit, though he would never be able to put it like that.
“I. Want. Him!” The woman announced. Blanket gave a whimper.