So- Skyrim. 4 separate dnd campaigns, one of which I’m dming. My momentum in writing this stalled a bit after my last chapter, and this one decided to fight me. I’ll try to work a little faster on the next bit, but it’s bleh outside and Skyrim is very, very tempting.
There has been a consensus. Last week did not happen and we aren’t going to talk about what didn’t happen. All video evidence otherwise has been removed to an outside server where none of us need to think about it. It can be retrieved if my sanity continues being questioned, but we’ve moved past that, haven’t we? Over, done with, gone. (The new iron and silver wrought decorations above the thresholds stay. So do the designs under the welcome mat, and the carvings in the moldings. And the very fancy new stained glass icons on the windows in the office and my room. I don’t care if you think it makes the facility look mystical and pagan. It all vibes again, and you named this place Crescent Moon fluffies anyway. still beats murderfluffs inc) Between Kal and what free time Asher was willing to trade for pizza, we managed to get all the doors and damage fixed out. We even managed to take the opportunity to upgrade and rearrange a little bit.
I mean, it’s occurred to me that in a perfect world, I’d have a nearby but less accessible to the public place to rig footage for the secondary website, somewhere with a little more floor space out of sight to keep a breeding population of the feeder fluffies. Selling off the pretty ones is giving my budget a lot more room until the Pack fluffs reach a breeding point, but that does mean less around when dinner time comes. And setting up a steady method of keeping the less compliant breeding stock settled and out of the way where visitors and customers might stumble on them would be perfect. Ah, well.
To what I actually did manage to do, the more compliant breeding mares and the three more devoted special friends who are playing nursemaid to the foals are now settled in the second kennel room I used to have the boys in. Along with the four magic milk boxes, now that the itty bitties are weaned onto mince and meat bites. I’m probably going to start pulling foals as soon as the colostrum runs out, before their eyes open at the latest. At least none of these mares have pulled anything stupid, and I have a lot more monitors and cameras set up in those kennel rooms to make sure they keep socializing the foals to my specifications.
With them in there, the other room on that hall is pretty much revamped into a communal saferoom for the Pack and itty bitties. If Aurora keeps being so touchy with the soon mummah shit, I might move her into one of the isolation rooms. (The closet sized saferooms we used for the earliest footage.) She’s still at least a week off whelping as far as we can tell, so it’s a consideration. We’re still not sure if this means the demonfluffs have a slightly longer gestation or just that she’s falling into the longer end of the twenty nine to thirty four day normal fluffy cycle. It’s going to take more than a single pregnancy to have any grasp on that(and the fact this is a cross breeding doesn’t give any more certainty on anything.)Honestly, if she had another one of the Pack she was close enough with to let them play helper for this last week or so, I’d have moved her already. The itty bitties are still convinced everything and everyone is a playmate, toy and jungle gym all rolled into one, and I can’t even blame Aurora for not being thrilled about it. But the only other adult fluffy she even actually likes is Glory, and he’s a little wrapped up with his own pregnant “special friend”.
Speaking of, the boys are now conclusively cross fertile at least to the extent of impregnating standard fluffy mares.Rook’s and one of Glory’s little pets are expecting, so I’ll be taking a great deal of notes and records on behavior and progress. (As Bill requested. Repeatedly.) Whatever I pick up off of Aurora’s litter will be added as well when it becomes relevant, but at the moment all I have is extra touchy about social interaction, especially with the non related foals. For now, I have noticed Glory has become almost obsessively fussy about Melody and her surroundings. He’s built and rebuilt her nest about a dozen times in the last week, goes running for what ever toys she asks for, dragged her food bowl in next to her. It only took five or six incidents of her freaking at him bringing tidbits out of his bowl to her for him to get the picture on that, but now I have him occasionally tracking me down to ask “mayb can hab sketties fow bestest soon mummah speciaw fwiend?”(ask me how sick I am of that question. He knows better than to ask more than once a day, but still.) He’s still looking after Harmony as well, just not to the same degree.
In stark contrast, Rook’s reaction to Carmen declaring herself a soon mummah was to track me down and inform me that “Cawmen hab tummeh babbehs wike Mummah wan. Wook stiww gotta be nicies?” He has definitely decided that his job is done there and as far as he’s concerned a certain shrill pink mare is no longer his problem. I just moved her into the other room for Pepper to look after. I should probably add that there might be an outside factor in this. As soon as he was satisfied the newest carnivore of the facility, (that cannibal mare that came in with the ferals) wasn’t an immediate threat to the itty bitties or Foxfire, he relaxed a great deal about her. And since a great deal of his investigation into that concept involved as in depth conversations as even our fluffies can manage… He seems far more interested in Ophelia than he ever was the standard fluffy fillies. Started making inroads on the same sort of giftbringing and food sharing behavior Glory tried on his pair at first, and progressed right along the same lines.
So I’m pretty sure we can mark that as courting or at least social overture gestures, which proceed into allopreening as much as into more traditional fluffy games, huggies and activities. Going by her investment into her side of the mutual grooming, his attentions might be returned. Admittedly, his attention is still fairly divided, since he’s still very devoted to the current itty bitties. He isn’t pulling Marnie and Foxfire level constant mothering, but he does seem to regard their wellbeing as one of his duties. Routinely lets them chew, pounce and generally maul him about, without so much as a wince unless they hit an injury. Settles them in a nest at night, breaks up excessive rough housing with each other, ensures they all make it to the litterboxes and remain clean and fed. That little white and red one especially seems insistent on using him as a bed and chew toy.
Glory tolerates the roughhousing just as much as Rook does, but he escapes out of their reach when he has a chance, and he never goes looking for them if they aren’t actively interacting with him already. My boy only takes a break from them when they’re napping and he gets a chance to talk to Ophelia or at night when he makes his way to my room. He’s been very disappointed that the new doors all have locking knobs and not the levers he could pull, but the pet flaps on some of them are a consolation. (Kal got me the Smartdoors. They key to either specific microchips or special tags on collars and there’s an APP. I can track which flaps are being used by which fluffies and when, block access to specific rooms or by specific fluffies/ tags. AND NO MORE UNDOING LATCHES BEHIND MY BACK. It’s great. They’re even available big enough Jane and Jessie can use them once I keyed their chips in as well. Put them on the kitchen, the playroom, both kennel rooms, the office and my room. If I think of another room I might want to let a fluffy or demonfluff into without getting up to do so, I might get more.) And he and the dogs curling up at the foot of the bed is remarkably cute for the number of times my feet have fallen asleep from the weight.
On a dog related note, both of Asher’s girls are nearly as tolerant with the itty bitties as any of the Pack adults. Seem to see them as very odd little puppies. Asher seems to approve of the idea- I swear I can see him speculating on things every time he watches the pack running around.
Marnie gets increasingly flighty and twitchy when the dogs or Ophelia is around, but she’s been on edge since last week. Still Foxfire’s own halloween colored shadow, stil cuddly and mothery to the itty bitties and any foals that come her way, but… She basically ghosts any time Glory or Rook are around these days, doubly so if she notices me around them. It’s aggravating. Until she gets over whatever flit is in her head, I locked her chip out of the allowed list for the nursery. I don’t need whatever got into her spreading to the salestock or the nursemummahs.
Pretty much all of the current batch of sale quality weanlings is gone to their happy new homes now. I did discount the presentable but less adaptable feral intake as “rescue foals”, but they still sold for not much under what Fluffmart would price them at. We’re down to like four or five of the bad colored weanlings from the litters here and a handful of the worst of the former street rats. With the unexpected departure of the more disposable stock from the outdoor pen, they’re pretty much all I have left for feederstock. Lucky for them, they have shit for meat on their bones at this age. And I have freezers full of meat for the Pack from the last couple weeks, so they get a little bit of a reprieve. I’ll give them until about 12 weeks old to endear themselves into an actual home before I pull them out of the sale pen.
By that point the guys should have the new patch to the fence around the outdoor pens fixed. Luckily Grape and Rose were still huddled over all the foals they’d claimed and Soot and Smudge were still looking after them. Speaking of- I sent those two home with Genevieve. She’s ecstatic to have such sweet fluffies as her own, they’re delighted to have “nicey Miss Genny am Nyu mummah?” I did take the precaution of having them fixed and chipped before I handed them over, but they seemed to take it better than they might have.
The rest of the brood stock is divided between the inner kennel runs and the larger cages. I don’t trust any of the currently expecting mares not to enact slaughter on disliked foals when I’m not looking, and if they were still in together I can already envision the way they’d egg each other on. So the recently bred are in the run next to the studs, with the sooner mummahs in the larger cages. Any of the run inhabitants who overstep will get moved to the small wall cages. Happily, we managed to get all of the kennel side fixed up with everything else.
New doors, new arrangements, even new paint. Best part being a fair chunk of the repairs were paid off by my share of what Nate offered Asher for that bronze feral. Bill even came through with a loan of the lab electroejaculator before we handed him over. So I still have a chance at seeing if I can work that metallic fluff into the brood stock. Cross that into one of the mellower, more biddable mares (meaning probably not any out of the runs) they might be acceptable sale stock when socialized. If they take after him too much, I suppose I could call Nate again.
I might also keep an eye out for that other stallion from the herd, the one that escaped, when Asher starts up the business again. He’s still trying to get a safer storage set up than the pen he used to have outside his trailer. In the meantime, he’s been helping out a great deal with the repairs, and clearing the open area of the kennel area for the cat wheels, carpet mills and other exercise gear for the Pack. By the time there’s a chance of a rematch, I intend for the demonfluffs to be in fighting fit. We’ve got a pretty good set up, which will match training the itty bitties in a few weeks easier as well.
First Chapter- The Pack- because what we need is more fluffies bred to eat other fluffies. (1) by :Shadowfox
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