#pet!meme

[Pet Meme for @mixingpumpkins.]

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Cornwall, near Tregeseal, ~30BC …

“Papa!” The child’s voice pierced the background sounds of the village. “Papa!” There was no thought to lowering volume, nor as yet any hint of the mild contralto she’d reach as she grew, it carried over quiet voices, the rustle of the wind and the gentle rasp of her father’s whetstone on the blade of his sword.

“PAPA!” Louder still, as if by some miracle he’d not heard her, though he’d need to be completely stone motherless deaf, “I kilt a dwaggin!”

“Did ye, now?” Branek put down the blade and got to his feet, a resigned sigh belied by the smile on his lips. “A mighty beast was it, then?”

He already knew what he was going to find - his daughter Therese with some stick or other she pretended was a sword, and the ‘slain dwaggin’ sprawled on his back with rear paws splayed and front ones held up, bristled snout panting and tail beating a happy ‘thump-thump-thump’ on the turf.

[Pet Meme from @myxcenterxstage.]

“No …” Thera’s voice held a longer, more petulant note on the word, hands shifting the cutting board and its contents a pointless inch to the right, as if the beast at her feet might actually succeed in reaching that high. “This is not for you!”

With that established, she went back to her task, only looking down again when there was a dull thump-thump! at shoe height. “Because you’re a bunny, that’s why!” She parked a hand on her hip. “Ye’re a bunneh!” Neither the nonsense nor the phony accent were anything she’d allow anyone else to hear, but there in the kitchen she let it emphasise her point. “And don’t you stomp at me.”

On the parquet-tiled floor, His Highness Lord Fluffybutt Wigglenose the Third (also known as Huffles) stared back at her, all pink eyes in a white-furred face. Thera sighed, shaking her head. “No!”

Huffles glared at her a second more, then abruptly thumped and took off in a gallop under the table, past the pantry and around the room, a display meant to demonstrate that he was annoyed.

“They’re eggs, you pillock. You wouldn’t like them anyway!” Or at least she assumed so, and quite conveniently wasn’t about to check - Huffles was known for trying anything he could get his teeth on, after all. “And don’t you try the Easter defense on me, either.”

There was a moment’s pause, still accompanied by the expectant stare, and then indignant shuffling and another hind-foot thump-thump!

THUMP! Thera stamped her own foot down, abandoning reason for the rabbit’s own language, face in a scowl. “I said no, you oversize hairball! Dammit, I’m a predator, you’re supposed to be scared of me!”

[Pet Meme for @bountyman.]

It was turning into a ritual, just about. Thera made her way upstairs when the mood began to strike her, or when the noise became too great in the taproom below. Sometimes she’d just splash water about, others she’d take longer for a proper wash, but then she’d make her way to her room and the lamp would be lit - and within a few moments claws would scrabble on tiles and as she readied to braid her hair there would be a sound at the window.

Whoever had named Gregor ‘Gregor’ was a mystery she hadn’t yet solved, especially considering that Gregor was a girl. But nonetheless a pair of yellow eyes, one slightly clouded at the side, would watch her approach, and when the window was opened the portly ginger would invite herself in like a dowager empress, to wait patiently for Thera to settle in a chosen perch.

[Pet Meme for @bertievi.]

Whipsnade Zoo, 1920s …

“Who said you were allowed to have that?”

Nobody had, of course. Barker didn’t pay a lot of attention to ‘allowed’. An ex-vanity prize of a now departed zoo exec, the blue Macaw didn’t take kindly to cages, rules, or other people’s property. He had taken a fancy to Thera, for reasons best kept between themselves, but even in her case it didn’t extend to giving a fig about what she told him not to do.

“Upsy-daisy!” He assured her briskly, if mumbled around the fountain pen still clenched in his beak. “Upsy-durgle!”

“I don’t care!” Thera retorted in similar tone, reaching for one free end of the pen. Barker held on, one clawed foot rising up to wrap around for extra grip, a range of half-garbled protests along with. He had a vocabulary of at least 50 words, probably more (along with various large animal noises and, unfortunately, the whistle of a bomb being dropped), and these were most likely from the … choicer end of the scale.