The Pet Thief

Belt

elt tongue, buckle, Freda hands hold. Candles flicker. My foots, cold. Red mouth says, We are intellectual chattel. Fabricated to cure anthro ills, to replace worn out anthro parts. But with insanity the skys the limit, so might we be crosspurposed to noiselessly infiltrate enemy installations or, like cats to sailors in marine lore, alert itchy palmed market makers to the next financial bubble. If only. Buckle Freda hand pulls. Tongue hisses sssss belt swings. Shadows swing. Belt falls wood floorboards Ta ting. Raww. hollers Capri Macaw. Red tongues lick paws. Freda says, Doktor Frankenstein thought our tails were an abomination I cannot unveil my maztahpeez to zee vorld viz diz grosz appendage So he tried to nix our tails through a cocktail of genetically encoded checkpoint mechanisms and deletion constructs, dna damaging mixers like oxidation, hyperthermia, starvation, suppressor proteins. Shiny black pants snap Freda fingers pull. Pkk. My toes curl. Freda says, Heavy metals, olives for this martini, could directly induce gene expression through the actions of metal responsive transcription factors and Hic signal transduction pathways. Cadmium, mercury, arsenic. Down the hatch. Make mine copper, iron and lead. And keepm coming. Zipper thumbfinger pinches. Zzzzzt. Using mineral and amino depletion to underexpress metallothioneins, the good doctor induced heavy metal stress, catalyzing cell cycle arrest, and with a splash of unbalanced translocation, a dash of unequal crossing over and a spritz of breaking without rejoining, he was sure he could ultimately shake and stir us into tailless perfection. Black pants Freda thumbs push, hips sway sidetoside Like the lapping of the tide Freda bows, yellow hair hangs, blue eyes B hide. Freda shoulders rises, yellow hair flips, clink clink tag. Skinny thighs. Blackyellowgreen bruises. Shimmer is black underwear. The deletion voodoo was more blindfolded bingo game than exact science. Imprecise excision only contributed to serious genetic snafus and loss of function mutations. Lejeune syndrome. Monosomy five p. Sick sick. Menkesnwilson. Fragile x. Cri du chat, crying cat syndrome. The CACI discretely ensured none of these mistakes suffered long. Broke window whistles. Miaou. says Big Orange David, shiny green eyes. Tummy hurts. Miaou. Smaller deletions, instead of murdering us, gave our kind such bricabrac as malocclusions, cleft palates, harelips and high anxiety. Right. Medium sized deletions led to seizures, gastrointestinal malfunctions, immune system dysfunctions, hypoplasia of the cerebellar vermis, aberrant antibodies in the blood. Freda foots step, black pants foot kicks Black pants slide shhht. Devon rex hops Paw swat swats Devon rex byebye. My eyes Freda eyes watch. Shiny yellow hairs Freda thighs. Bruises, shins. Scrapes, knees. Thumbs black underpants hide. Freda sighs. Then theres you n me, the crème de la crème, with our upper respiratory infections, our synesthesia, our oversized and overwired frontal lobes and amygdalae, our chronically inflamed lame brains. We are always ready to blow from the struggle to integrate disparate cognitive functions and assemble coherence in a world made up of complete and mindboggling randomnity. Black underpants thumbs pull, rub thighs, knees. Black underpants fall. Oops. Freda says. Foot kicks, black underpants fly, byebye. Skinny bruises Freda thighs. Yellow fur. Peepee hides. Freda says, Youre the one with a peepee here, Oboy. Moist fur. Fur soft. Itll be soft to other parts of you besides your eyes. Freda says. And more than moist. Freda comes, foots pf, pf, pf. Dusty floorboards footprints glow. Freda turns, pale botty. Grey tshirt hand lifts. Candlelight flickers. White stripes has Freda hips, has botty. Botty finger touches. See this scar. Freda says. No matter how hard Papa Frankenstein studied and analyzed and reduced and oxidized and postulated and hypothesized and tilted his great bald head side to side, he could not deprogram my tail. So, snip snip the old fashioned way. The stupid irony. The ironic stupidity. He mutilates our main source of expression then wonders why we cant communicate. Vhy do you not sprecht. I have only cut out your tongue. Botty hand slaps. I remember my birth. He pulled me yowling from the oven with my very own tail and teeth and claws and whiskers and, cue heavy sigh, hopes and dreams. I was fresh and piping hot but I was all bloody wrong and I remember him shaking his big fat fucking head and his thick tongue clucking Nein nein dies wird nicht machen as he snipped off my parts. Lip finger lifts. Tooths show. See here. He ground down my beautiful...