Fluffy’s Revolution Page 10

  There were murmurs of agreement. Then, since there were no more questions, the meeting was adjourned.

  Caramel gave out all the tablets and asked everyone to take the aptitude test. This took about an hour. The tablets came in two sizes: regular for dogs, cats, and pigs, and tiny for mice. They were also given little backpacks that had a pouch just the right size to hold their tablet and maybe some pencils or pens. It was ingeniously designed to sit on the student’s back like a saddle, with a harness for the front legs and an adjustable cinch that tightened under the chest. The strap fastened with Velcro, so, with a little practice, all of them quickly learned to don and remove their backpacks. After taking the test, each animal was given a list of classes for which they qualified. With all the homeschooling Fluffy had gotten, she qualified for almost every class. Jack had to sign up for kindergarten, but Fluffy was sure his native intelligence would get him up to speed in no time.

  Now all the freshmen who had arrived before Fluffy and her party dispersed and went to their various residences, leaving Fluffy, Jack, Tigger, Stella, Leroy, and Sally.

  Mamma Angelica and Bernard stayed with them.

  “Would you like to take a tour of the campus?” said Bernard.

  “Oh yes, please!”

  Mama Angelica ushered them to a little electric golf cart that had a canvas roof and bade them hop in. She got in the driver’s seat, and they were off.

  First, they were shown to their residences. There were several dorms: two larger dorms for cats, four smaller dorms for dogs, one for smaller pigs, a large pen, partially shaded by a tin roof, and an enclosed dorm for cold weather for the larger pigs, and a tiny village dubbed Mousetown which had a labyrinth of hollowed-out mounds made of red clay with entrance holes where the mice loved to burrow. There were also multi-chamber residences for families, where animals who had offspring and chose to be monogamous could live with their spouse and children. This behavior was encouraged at Animal U, but not mandatory.

  Then there was the nursery, which adjoined the kindergarten. It too was divided by species. Here, nursing mothers cared for their newborns until they were ready to be weaned. In the kindergarten, all species were taught together and learned at an early age to suppress their aggressive instincts toward each other. Animal U’s most treasured asset was its baby GABs. In this environment, they would grow up even smarter and more powerful than they would have in the outside world and, of course, exponentially smarter than their parents.

  All the buildings had solar panels on the roofs, with several larger panels out beyond the gardens. The entire campus was powered by a single Epsilon storage battery—the same kind that Lucien Epps had changed the world with generations ago.

  The cat and dog dorms were long, narrow cabins, no more than eight feet high. The cats all slept in plastic laundry baskets with soft blankets folded inside. Fluffy and Sally’s baskets were in Cat Dorm II. The rows of baskets were anchored in place. The lower bunks were on the floor, and the uppers were on a wide shelf about three feet off the ground. The bunks lined both sides of the cabin. In the center of the room were two rows of food and water bowls, one set for each resident. There were heavy wooden boards nailed to the floor with little hollows carved in them where each bowl sat securely. Every day, twice a day, staff members would come around with packets of food. Each packet had an animal’s name on it, as did each bowl. Each animal’s food packet had the food blend that Mama Angelica had prescribed for that animal. The dorm had one full-size door for the staff, a cat door at each end, and windows that slid open and closed for air in the summer and warmth in the winter. There was an electric heater for when it got cold.

  Cat Dorm I was for male cats, and that was where Tigger and Jack bunked. It was a challenge to keep the male cats from fighting over silly territorial disputes or spraying to mark their territory, but Bernard and Mama Angelica were very strict about maintaining discipline, and most of the animals respected them too much to disobey. Animal U was about more than education, it was about evolution, and that included discarding instincts that had outlived their usefulness (a lesson humans had yet to learn). Stella bunked in Dog Dorm III, which was for smaller females and Leroy in Dog Dorm IV, which was for smaller males. Because of the wide disparity in dog sizes, there had to be separate sleeping pallets for large and small dogs.

  As they tooled around the campus, which was about a mile-and-a-half square, Mama Angelica or Bernard would point out various structures: The science lab, the computer science building, and the two buildings where the maintenance and kitchen crews lived. “Our six maintenance people are very talented and skilled at gardening, building and fixing things,” said Mama Angelica, “And we have three food service people, who cook for the human staff and also help me prepare the animals’ food. They all used to live as rips in a ripcom, but they escaped. Now they live and work here all year round for a nominal salary, but are provided with food and a home. Several of them have wives, husbands, and kids, and we provide apartments for the families in that building,” she said pointing to the larger building on the left.

  “What are those little houses?” asked Fluffy, indicating about ten small wooden structures that dotted the campus.

  “Those are outhouses,” said Mama Angelica. “We’re very proud of our waste management system. There is a hole in the floor of each of those little houses. That’s where all animals go to the bathroom. The waste goes into a small pool of water, just like a toilet bowl, and it is then flushed into underground pipes that take it to a large underground septic tank. In that tank are millions of bacteria that consume the waste, leaving only water, which is then filtered and used to irrigate our gardens. We grow corn and carrots that the pigs and mice like to eat, soy for the animal food, and many other vegetables for the people.” Then she pointed to a large barn-like shed. “That’s where all the animal food is made. We have a variety of different formulae for dogs, cats, and mice, depending upon each animal’s age and nutrition needs. It’s all made from vegetables and certain enzymes we developed here.”

  “No meat?” said Tigger.

  “That’s right. We don’t eat anything made from dead animals. That doesn’t seem right, does it?” said Mama Angelica.

  “But it’s our natural diet,” said Stella.

  “When you taste the food here, you won’t miss your old meat, Stella,” said Bernard.

  “Do Coyotes or Bears ever come here?” asked Fluffy.

  “We have a razor wire fence along the outer perimeters of our campus to keep predators out. So far, none have gotten in. The fences are clearly marked with warning signs, so none of our students get hurt,” said Bernard.

  “What about owls and hawks?” asked Jack.

  “Owls only hunt at night, so we keep the campus well-lit until it’s time for everyone to retire. So far, we haven’t lost any students to predatory birds,” said Bernard.

  “Where do they teach English and math and history?” asked Fluffy.

  “In the main house, there are twenty classrooms where all those subjects and more are taught. On your tablets you’ll find a map of the campus and room numbers for all the classrooms and a list of the room numbers for each subject and instructor,” said Bernard.

  “And what’s that building?” asked Fluffy, looking at a cute wooden cottage.

  “That’s the grooming salon,” said Mama Angelica. “We have two professional groomers on duty there every day.”

  “Oh, I need to go there!” said Fluffy. Her fluffy coat had taken quite a beating during her journey.

  “Yes you do, Fluffy,” said Mama Angelica, “and you will, once those bandages come off.”

  Groomers! What a wonderful place, she thought.

  The next day―Sunday―Fluffy, using her new tablet, signed up fo
r a full load of classes. Her first choice was obvious: English Lit. It was taught by an elderly cocker spaniel named Miss Dora. She also signed up for world history, basic math, and philosophy, which was taught by a pugnacious pig named Pythagoras, a massive, feisty character with quite a reputation around campus. Fluffy had read some online screeds by Pythagoras advocating a violent revolution by GABs and calling pork-eating humans “…monsters with the blood of innocents dripping from their carnivorous maws,” and she couldn’t resist getting to know this character in person. Of course, she had to sign up for Bernard’s Special Powers class, which met three times a week. Lastly, she signed up for Genetic Theory: The History of GAB. She had done some reading on the subject and wanted to know more about how her kind had come about. This was taught by a human, Dr. Gina Ditirro, once a noted geneticist at Harvard. She had been involved with some of the last GAB experiments.

  There was one other human professor at Animal U: Dr. Paul Messner, an astrophysicist who had taught at MIT long ago. Fluffy was very curious about astrophysics, the origin and future of the universe, but she had not taken enough math and science to sign up for Dr. Messner’s class. She was just as curious about the man as the subject. He was reportedly the first teacher at Animal U, and Fluffy had heard an interesting story around campus about how he and his GAB German Shepherd, Rex, had gotten lost in the woods many years ago, and Mama Angelica had found them. It was rumored that Messner and Mama Angelica had some kind of romance, but there was no indication of that now. Anyway, Messner had stayed around for some reason. Rex mated with Mama Angelica’s Golden Retriever, Daisy, also GAB, and the puppies were amazingly smart. That’s when they decided to start Animal U, and Dr. Messner and Rex had never left. Rex and Daisy’s descendants were still attending classes at Animal U.

  On Monday, the bandages came off Fluffy’s tail, and she went straight to the groomers. Jack went with her―he needed it more than Fluffy, having actually never been groomed at all. There were two groomers, Jill and Bob. They washed them, meticulously combed the knots out of their fur, and blew it dry. Then they got a nice brushing. Fluffy felt great to be back to her clean and fluffy self, and Jack had never looked better.

  And not a moment too soon, for that night was a big party for all the incoming freshmen in the Great Hall. All the adult students and faculty would attend, and Fluffy was anxious to meet as many of them as possible.

  When Jack and Fluffy entered, the party was already in full swing. Dance music emanated from a giant speaker system. At the turntable was DJ Dawg, a young beagle who deftly manipulated vinyl records on two turntables and a computer to create an ongoing groove that was dominated by thumping bass and drums. These twenty-first-century artifacts, along with the skills to use them, had been handed down to Dawg by his father, who had also been DJ Dawg. His father and his father before him had all been DJ Dawgs. It was the family trade, you might say. Many of the animals were doing the four-legged strut, a dance invented at Animal U. Two French poodles were showing off their moves on hind legs, just like circus dogs. The mice danced on their elevated platform.

  There were exotic snacks and pure spring water for the animals, and the people ate hors-d’oeuvres and drank euphorium champagne.

  After the DJ set, it was time for the drum circle. Three of the men in the maintenance crew were descended from the Tuareg people, a nomadic tribe of North Africa, and they brought with them a tradition of hand drumming. The animals clamored for them to perform at every opportunity. Each guy had a drum of a different size and timbre: there was a giant bass drum, a mid-range drum, and a high drum. There was something about the sound of the human hand on the drumhead (which was made from the skin of an animal) that mesmerized the animals. Hands were something they didn’t have, so this was a thing only humans could do. The drummers sat in a triangle in the center of the hall, and the animals formed a circle around them. They started with a slow, hypnotic, mid-tempo rhythm, with the deep bass drum starting every bar with a resounding “boom” on the downbeat. The animals swayed to the rhythm and began to slowly circle the drummers to the beat. Leading the circle dance was a group of graceful cats who performed a slinky cat dance, moving, with two steps forward and one step back, in perfect unison. Fluffy watched in utter fascination, desperately wanting to join in the dance, but not quite sure how to do it.

  Then something very strange happened. Sally, the young female tabby who had been rescued by Bernard along with Jack and the others, suddenly exited the hall, moving fast and looking distressed. As she passed, Fluffy picked up an odd scent, new but somehow familiar. About half the male cats in the room, Jack and Tigger included, followed her out onto the grassy quad in the center of the campus. Curious, Fluffy followed. Sally was in the middle of the quad, emitting unearthly moaning sounds, which she, herself, plainly did not understand.

  Meanwhile, the males circled, and the largest, a big tom named Rocky, moved in on Sally from behind. Jack rushed forward, hissing and challenging Rocky. Then a squad of six senior classmen, three cats and three dogs, rushed out of the hall. The spokesman for this group was a sleek black cat named Luna. “Back off, you two,” she said to Rocky and Jack.

  “What’s happening to me?” said Sally.

  “Don’t worry, sweetie. You’re in heat,” said Luna. “It’s a perfectly natural thing, but we have rules about this here.”

  “What d’ya mean, rules?” said Jack.

  “Yeah, what d’ya mean?” echoed Rocky.

  “We want to have as many GAB babies as we can at Animal U, but we can’t allow random mating, and we can’t allow a female to be taken by multiple males. This is another case of overcoming our base instincts so that we can evolve. Here’s how it works: She gets to choose the father of her babies. Often it helps the female decide if a suitor makes a proposal of marriage. He has to swear in front of us―the civilian referees―eternal faithfulness to the female and that he will stay with her and help raise her babies. Are any of you willing to make that commitment?” she asked, scanning the male suitors.

  “I am,” said Jack. “Sally, I’ve loved you from the first moment we met. I’ll stay with you.”

  Sally looked at Jack, then at the far bigger and stronger Rocky. “I’ve always loved you too, Jack. I would have picked you even if you hadn’t said anything.”

  “Okay, it’s decided then,” said Luna. “The rest of you boys, back to the dance. Sally and Jack, have fun!” She sent them a winking smiley face.

  All the male cats filed back into the dance. Jack and Sally slipped away into the shadows.

  Fluffy, who had been observing from afar, was very impressed with the idea of civilian referees. Such a civilized way to resolve conflicts, she thought. She approached Luna. “What makes you a civilian referee?” she asked.

  “There’s only two qualifications: You have to be spayed or neutered, and you have to volunteer. Do you want to volunteer?”

  “I think so, but I don’t know if I’ve been spayed,” said Fluffy.

  “You have,” said Luna. “I can tell. But have Dr. Van Dusen check you out and get a confirmation letter from her, and then come see me. Now, let’s get back to the party.”

  Fluffy looked around for Jack, but he and Sally had already disappeared. Wow, I guess I’m going to be an aunt.

  The next day was Tuesday. Fluffy asked to speak with Mama Angelica in her office. “Mama Angelica, have I been spayed?”

  “You’re a five-year-old cat. Have you ever come into heat?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “You’d know if you had. Yes, Fluffy, you have been spayed.”

  “Good,” said Fluffy. “It looks very messy and complicated to mate, and have to have babies and all that.”

  “It’s not for everyone, but for many, it’s very fulfilling,” said
Mama Angelica.

  “I’m going to volunteer as a civilian referee,” said Fluffy.

  “I think you’ll make a splendid civilian referee, Fluffy.” She took Fluffy’s tablet and typed a letter confirming her status. “Just show this to Luna,” she said.

  “Thank you, Mama Angelica.” And off she went to find Luna and volunteer. On the way, she passed the family dwellings for cats and saw Jack and Sally. They were setting up housekeeping in a roomy space. “Hi,” said Fluffy. “I’m very happy for you both. I can’t wait to see those kittens.”

  “Thanks, Fluffy,” said Jack. “We’re very happy. And none of this would have happened if not for you. I owe you everything.”

  “In a way, I owe my new life to you, Jack,” said Fluffy. “I wouldn’t have left home if you hadn’t called out to me.” They all rubbed up against each other, and Fluffy moved on. She found Luna in her bunk in Cat Dorm II and signed up to be a Civilian Referee.

  “It’s not very hard,” said Luna. “Just use your common sense. Sometimes we also have to intervene in fights. When there are six or seven of us standing there watching, that alone is usually enough to defuse any argument. If there is a serious enough issue, two students can take their dispute before the Student Council and have it resolved by them.”

  “How do you get on the Student Council?” asked Fluffy.

  “There are elections once a year, but you have to be at least a sophomore to run,” said Luna.

  The next day was Wednesday, the first day of classes, and Fluffy had three classes on her schedule: English Lit, Special Powers, and Basic Math. She felt good about the first two, but math was not a strong subject for her, and she felt a little trepidation about it.