Housepets! Origins

[Harry Johnathan]

PART 1.
SGT. RALPH


Adam and Sarah Potter walked through the winding, brightly lit white halls of the hospital to the family physician Dr. Orwell Johnson’s room. They were waiting anxiously for the news about Sarah's fertility test, and tension, electricity, drama even was in the air as the kindly nurse opened the door to Johnson's sickly yellow-green colored office. Sarah later swore you could hear a pin drop. It was so quiet. Adam was feeling queasy. He could throw up. Maybe it was the 3 (or was it 4?) Burritos he had for lunch, who knows?

“Come in, please!”, called Dr. Johnson.

The couple sat down as Johnson cleared his throat. They could've used a drink. A big, big drink.

“The results came in.”, Johnson stated. He didn't look or seem happy. “You're infertile. Can't have kids. Sorry-”

And the people in the waiting room thought they heard the screams of the damned!

---

Adam and Sarah walked into the pet shelter, looking quite haggard according to anyone who saw them. They passed by a cute little purple rabbit, a purple bird holding a gold coin in it's beak, a sleeping purple kitten (gosh, just a lot of purple animals that day!) and went to the clerk.

“Hello, excuse me sir? Do you have any… um, more normal looking animals?”

“Well, I mean, we have this cute little German Shepherd puppy. His previous owners were in the army, died from a landmine explosion.”

“We'll take him!”

“That will be $500…”

---

Ralph was having another nice, lovely dream about his owners in the pink field they last went out as a family for a picnic when he was somewhat rudely awoken by two humans in bizarre clothing with bad hair poking at him, the clerk counting dollars behind them.

“C’mon, buddy, it's time to go…”, the woman picked him up, not looking too pleased with him. She booped his nose with her ugly, sharp fingernail, looking disgusted.

“He's gross.”, she said in a dull, monotone voice.

“Come on, you'll grow to love him, hon!”, Adam reassured her, patting her on the back and petting Ralph's cute little head.

“I wanted a real son, Adam.”

These people are nuts, Ralph thought in his head, but he went along with them to their tan Sedan anyway without protest. He looked out their dark green tinted car window and waved at the pet store clerk, waving goodbye to the shelter he was raised in for nearly 2 years...

---

“Here we are, kiddo!”, announced Adam as they entered the house. “Welcome to your new home.”

It had yellow wallpaper peeling at the edges, a TV, 7 rooms (a kitchen, a living room, a dining room, 2 bathrooms upstairs and downstairs, and 2 more bedrooms, one upstairs and one downstairs), multiple closets, a radio, a reddish living-room couch, a carpet in every room except the kitchen and dining room (yes even the bathrooms) a single working sink in the downstairs bathroom (upstairs broke years ago) and a little tiny grey, cute looking trash can in the corner of each and a big one in the kitchen next to the fridge, oven and microwave. Also a basement with a laundry machine, an icebox and a woodshop table for carving, an attic filled with cobwebs and chests full of old clothes and newspapers dotting the floor and a crawl space under the downstairs bedroom where the switchbox was kept.

Overall, a nice middle-class suburban home. Ralph could get comfy here, he supposed.

---

It was 7:00 P.M. Dinner was over (Adam, the normal cook, got lazy and ordered a pizza) and Ralph was wasting the one hour he had until bedtime drawing some dumb doodles at the coffee table when he heard strange noises and wailing from the bedroom. He looked over and saw Adam, who had previously been watching the news normally, looked utterly disturbed.

“What's wrong with her?”, Ralph asked, curiously.

“Oh, nothing.”, Adam said rather loudly. He then walked over to Ralph and looked at him, their noses only inches apart, whispering.

“See, Sarah's a bit... high strung, and she can be very scary sometimes.”

“Oh?”, Ralph asked, tilting his doggy head in confusion.

“But don't worry. As long as she takes her medication, everything should be fine, okay?”, Adam smiled big.

---

Ralph went to sleep listening as, downstairs, Sarah was screaming at Adam about something dumb like leaving the soap with his hair on it in the shower. Ralph looked out his window to the blue sky and the moon. The moon's round shape reminded him of his old owner, his mom, his real mom.

Oh, how he missed her!

---

Months had passed. Ralph had grown bigger, taller. Sarah hadn't been that mean to him, but was cold and distant. Adam was weak compared to her. And Ralph had also found Sarah's pills all over the house, hidden. When he confronted her with this, she had screamed at him and slapped him!

One day, Adam and Sarah told Ralph over dinner they were sending him to K9 academy. To train him, to be a police dog. Ralph was uneasy about it, but went along with it. Ralph wasn't one for arguments, anyway. Adam and Sarah acted rather strangely, claiming how excited they were to have a police dog as a son.

In reality, Sarah wanted Ralph sent to the academy so she could be away from him. She hated Ralph, really, with his stupid looking ears and muzzle, and his haunting, peirceing eyes and his innocent voice and ugly, dirty brown fur and his awful habit of tracking mud in the house. Adam, who always bowed to Sarah's desires, went along with her scheme.

---

“Bye, Ralph!”

Ralph watched as the car went speeding away. He trudged into the academy doors and sat next to a rather chubby doberman sipping on a milkshake and a cocker spaniel engrossed in a book. It was titled: Chemistry for Idiots.

“Hi”, Ralph said.

“Hi.”, the doberman said. “My name's Kevin. Your's?”

“Ralph.”

The spaniel shook Ralph's hand. He spoke in a rather rough sounding British accent. “Me name's Terrance. Me and my family cames from Liverpool to here. We were in a bit of money trouble. My sister's named Duchess, wanna see a picture of her?”

“No thanks.”, Ralph said.

“Suit yourself!”, said Terrance. A light came from a door opened next to them. A voice called. “Come in, next!”

They walked inside.

---

“Hello, worms!”, the man who called said. He was dressed in a green uniform, and his face was obscured by large sunglasses. “I'm your drill seargent, Officer Johnny Craigs, and I am not gonna coddle you like your idiot parents. No, no, no, I'm gonna teach you discipline. Do I make myself very clear?”

“Yes, drill Sargent!”, Ralph said before anyone else, making a comical salute. Craigs looked down in utter disbelief.

“What?”, Ralph said. “That's what your supposed to do. I watched Forrest Gump and he did that.”

Craigs snorted. “Great, we got a smart-aleck.”

“I'm being serious!”, Ralph replied.

“Okay, a not so smart aleck. Now, move it, move it, move it!-” The other officers prodded the puppies (and a cat?) to the training hall.

---

The exhausted trio of puppies sat on a bench outside drinking from water bottles.

"Alright, enough for today!", human police Officer Jack clapped his hands together, laughing at the looks of the exhausted animals before him.

"I hope I never have to excersise again!", Kevin moaned. He fell off the bench, his weigh making a large thud on the concrete. "Ow."

Terrence panted, using a copy of Pet Fancy to wave himself from the blistering heat. "I signed up for the science division so I wouldn't have to do excersises!"

The crazy looking grey cat Ralph saw earlier went up to them. "You three new here?"

"Yeah!", they all cried out in unison.

"That's cool. This is my fifth year too. My name's Stephen."

"What's a cat doing in a dog's academy?", Ralph asked.

Stephen glared at Ralph. "I'm very ambitious, at least compared to my loser owners, who are perfectly content running a dumb secoNdhand car store. Anywho, see ya later, losers. Ciao!" He walked away, swaggering his tail.

---

The trio were running laps a few days later when Ralph overheard Officer Jack talking over the phone;

"Yeah, this is Happy Jack, reporting to PETA. Planted the bomb in that dumb hick's sandwich, he won't know what's coming to him!"

Ralph ran to Officer Craigs. "Officer Craigs, don't eat that!"

"What the-?!", Craigs cried when Ralph forced the sandwich out of Craigs' hand and threw it into the garbage where it exploded in a powerful (and loud? display of red smoke!

"Jack put that in there! He's with PETA."

"Thank you, Ralphie!", Craigs said. He glared at Officer Jacks. "You're fired. And off to solitary with you!"

Jack gulped. He was led away in cuffs by the other officers...

"You can't do this to me, stop!", he screamed, splashing some of Terrance's chemicals onto Stephen's face!

"Oof, no. My eye! I can't see..." Kevin ran to Stephen's aid with some tissues. Ralph bumped into a black female watching from outside the academey with a trash bag. A cacophony of chaos and noise, like a sea of terror, engulfed the courtyard.

"My parents aren't gonna like this!", Stephen cried. "No, don't touch my eye, it hurts!"

"Ralph, go get the medkit!", cried Officer Bill.

Ralph ran to the main building, when...

"Hi, I'm Daisy!" He bumped into a black lab.

"That's great and all-", Ralph said, in a hurry.

"Be my boyfriend?", she said cutely.

"Um, sure...?", a confused Ralph stated said before running off..

---

At the end of the year, Ralph returned home to his parents. He had been given a small bronze medal for his actions and a letter for his parents to sign to join the K9s officialy.

"Did you have fun?", Adam asked on the drive. He had a black eye, and Sarah wasn't with him.

"I guess so."

"Hey", Adam said. "Did you guess why Sarah isn't here?"

"Why's that?", Ralph asked disinterested. He was playing with a Rubix cube.

"She left.", Adam said bluntly. And he was smiling!

"What?", Ralph asked, shocksd.

"She couldn't handle being with me anymore. Called me a weakling.", Adam laughed. "But I still have you, little guy!", Adam reached back and ruffled Ralph's fur.

"This is bad!", Ralph cried.

"Why's that?", Adam asked.

"Because I need both of my parents to sign the letter!"

---

After hunting down Sarah for at least 2 weeks, a nervous Ralph and Adam walked up to the front door of a River Ridge City apartment and pressed the alarm.

Sarah walked out, smoking a cigar. "What do you two bozos want?" Ralph could hear a baby crying from inside the house.

"Sign this?", Ralph said, grinning.

She reluctantly whipped a pen from her pants pocket, and held her cigarette in her mouth as she wrote her name on the paper. The two ran to the car and never looked back as they drove home to Babylon Gardens.

Ralph thought about his old owners on the ride. He looked at Adam.

"Adam?"

"Yes, Ralph?!"

"I love you, dad."

Adam paused. "Love you too, son."

Things were getting better, surely. Hopefully.

Certainly.

1.
FIN.

[Harry Johnathan]

What do y'all think?

[Leotamer]

I don't really have many coherent thoughts about this. I liked it. The action scene was a bit hard to parse at first reading, but other than that it was clear.

[Harry Johnathan]

I don't really have many coherent thoughts about this. I liked it. The action scene was a bit hard to parse at first reading, but other than that it was clear.

Thankies! Yeah, I'm not very good at writing action scenes.

[Amazee Dayzee]

Radical new story that you wrote up here Ryder! Keep up the good work!

[Harry Johnathan]

Radical new story that you wrote up here Ryder! Keep up the good work!

Thank you, Dazyee, you're very kind!

[Amazee Dayzee]

I try to be kind because I feel like its the only thing I have.

[Harry Johnathan]

I try to be kind because I feel like its the only thing I have.

Aw, you have so many other qualities and skills to you, though!

[NHWestoN]

I try to be kind because I feel like its the only thing I have.

... and you're VERY GOOD at it.

[Welsh Halfwit]

Good story. So Steve just might have been a bit delusional BEFORE the patch...(!)

[Amazee Dayzee]

If that is true, then he must have done something to cause him to have to get the patch by losing his eye.

Or maybe his eye DOES function and is fine but he wears the patch anyway because he is delusional.

[Leotamer]

From what I understand, pirates would regularly switch which side they wore an eye-patch. It was to keep one eye adjusted to the dark cabins of the ship and one to the bright sun glare on the deck.

Now, about the story itself. I am still contemplating the logistics of the exploding sandwich.

[Welsh Halfwit]

Now, about the story itself. I am still contemplating the logistics of the exploding sandwich.

Firecracker Cheddar?

[Harry Johnathan]

Miniture time bomb disguised as an olive.

[Amazee Dayzee]

Despite the fact that it is miniature, the explosion sure would pack a punch.

[Harry Johnathan]

Especially if he bit into it.

[Harry Johnathan]

PART 2.
DELUSIONAL STEVE

Ralph, Terrance and Kevin all ran over to Officer Craigs, who was about to munch on a ham sandwich. "Officer Craigs, don't eat that!"

"What the-?!", Craigs cried when Ralph forced the sandwich out of Craigs' hand and cast it into the rubbish bin where it exploded in a powerful display of red smoke!

A scream erupted. All a certain grey cat could hear was an acidic hiss as chemicals were sprayed into his face!

"Oof, no. My eye! I can't see..." Kevin (or was it Ralph?) ran swiftly to Stephen's aid with some tissues.

"My parents aren't gonna like this!", Stephen cried. Officer Craigs began rubbing at his face with tissues. "No, don't touch it, it hurts!"

It hurts...

The Halls of the Babylon Gardens
Veterinary Office were nothing like the hospitals you see in movies. It wasn't empty, stark white, clean and sterile with bright lights with tables piled with magazines. No, it was instead a bustling hall filled with people and their pets, colorful smoke coming from vents, with various items scattered all over the ground, and with wooden walls with a green carpet and extremely dim lighting.

Dr. Edwards looked over a certain grey cat that day, a cat who had acid thrown into his face by a hooligan who attempted to kill a police officer. He had done facial reconstructions on pets before, but this by far one of the most extensive and diffucult he had to perform. The poor cat's fur was completely gone on one side, some of the nerves in his face were damaged beyond repair and his left eyelids had permanentley stuck to his actual eyeball. It was all very... um, messy for lack of a better way.

After hours upon hours of surgery, the cat's face was brought somewhat back to normal. His chin was far more angular than it used to be, and his cheeks were now rather large and puffy, giving him a look that could best be described as "crazy pyscho". By far the most noticeable change in his appearance was his left eye. The doctors couldn't fix the damage, so it had to be removed entirely, replaced with a glass eye that looked like a glass eye... fake and, well --- glassy. Overly shiny. Prone to moving about.

Steve's owners, upon seeing their "son's" new look, were rather shocked. What shocked a heck of a lot more was the cost of the operation. They were as good as bankrupt.

---

Steve dropped out of K9 Acadmey due to the sheer tramua of even being near that building after what happened, and spent the next 2 months recovering in his bed before resuming his old life of helping his owners sell cars. His owners were a brother and brother team, Alex and Jackie Brown. They were a struggling car wash before receiving Steve as a gift from their cousin Tanya in Ukraine. Now they were the biggest car dealership in the entire state of Missouri.

Or at least, they were. Steve's weeks long stint at K9 academy and his months long recovery had caused a sharp drop in sales that led to them being forced to sell much of their assetts. They were broke, so broke that when Steve's "eye" broke, they didn't buy a new one, just put a Halloween eye patch over the socket. They were rapidly reaching the dreaded state of poverty, and having three mouths to feed was making it all so much worse.

And, being the good bussinessmen they were, they had a fine approach to the matter.

Cut out the middleman.

---

They carried a kicking and screaming Steve to the shelter only 3 weeks after his full recovery. His new face was scaring customers, so they weren't losing anything vauleable at the very least.

Steve was placed in a cage, the same one Ralph had been in only a few years earlier, and he was left to stew in a mix of sorrow and anger. By the time he woke up the next morning, the reality of his situation hit him and the poor kitty went cuckoo-crazy.

What a contrast to Ralph's story, huh?

2.
FIN.

[Amazee Dayzee]

This was a really great story and I am glad that you finished it! Wonderful work!