the cat

[instar]

Comments

[pandion]

Well, there's Andi, taking kitchen inventory and making a grocery list.

[hold_infinity]

"I figured out how to do combined morphs!" announces Robin. "I've got a lion-tiger-jaguar-leopard morph now. It's gorgeous."

[pandion]

"Ooooh! Are you gonna use it? Like if we have to actually fight aliens instead of being all ninja-y?"

[hold_infinity]

"Probably," she says. "It's got a lot of advantages over any of the contributing species. Being fucking enormous, for one."

[pandion]

"How enormous is that?"

[hold_infinity]

"Well, how wide is your garage? I was about that long. When I stood up my head almost bumped the ceiling. If I'd stood up straighter, it would have."

[pandion]

"Wow, big kitty."

[hold_infinity]

"Yeah."

[pandion]

"I wonder if there's anything you could combine with an elephant?"

[hold_infinity]

She shakes her head. "Probably not, except another elephant. The only animals I can think of that hybridize that well are horses and cats. Well, and dogs with wolves, I s'pose."

[pandion]

"Is there any good reason to want to be a wolfdog instead of just a wolf?"

[hold_infinity]

"Hybrid vigor?" she suggests. "I'm not sure what specifically. I'll look it up."

[pandion]

"What's hybrid vigor?"

[hold_infinity]

"The same reason my Panthera hybrid is bigger than any of the animals I acquired to get it. You get weird effects when you mix related species, and sometimes they're useful ones."

[pandion]

"Oh, huh. What else does that besides wolfdogs? Wolfdogs are real without anybody morphing them, right?"

[hold_infinity]

"Yeah, they're all over the place. And, I don't know, mules?"

[pandion]

"Oh yeah, mules exist. I forgot them."

[hold_infinity]

Robin giggles.

[pandion]

"Has anybody tried to make a four-panthera vigorous hybrid thing? Like, with real animals?"

[hold_infinity]

"Don't think so. Most of them have been crossed with each other at least once, though."

[pandion]

"And then the baby ones don't get along when they grow up or they're like mules and it doesn't matter if they do or don't?"

[hold_infinity]

"Or the zoo where they live doesn't have one of the other two species, or they just have a girl leopard and a girl liger, or they don't feel like trying it, or whatever. I don't know. Some of the hybrids are fertile, though, with the parent species."

[pandion]

"If I ran a zoo I'd mix 'em up all kinds of ways." Pause. "There is probably a reason I don't run a zoo."

[hold_infinity]

...Robin laughs.

[pandion]

"Eventually I'd try to crossbreed a penguin with a puffin and it just wouldn't go well."