Pet Shop

“Ooh! Look! Look at this one! Her hair is funny.” Puff’s claw was hooked onto the ring of one of the cages holding a small, bright-eyed infant with curly, vibrant hair.

“Eww! It’s hair is so long. Come on, let’s go!” Puff’s twin brother, Spec, pouted.

Their mother leaned over her and peered through the bars at the baby. “Odd, odd creatures indeed. Well, let’s move along now sweetie, obviously one with such unique hues will draw far too much attention. We don’t want that now, do we?”

But Puff and Spec were already sticking their paws into another cage, and Eliza was forced to follow her mother, sister, and brother down the aisle. It nearly bored her to death, listening to her siblings fight over this and that, and hearing the constant “I want this one no that one’s mine” and then her mother’s response, “Both of you shush, we’re getting a family pet and we’re going to share!” Eliza, however, could not be entertained by the inferior creatures such humans were. They ate, they walked on two legs, they slept. Such simple behaviors were not worthy of her attention.

“Liza! Liza! Look at this chubby, little one. It has blue eyes like you!” Puff and Spec burst out laughing and continued to poke the poor creature within its containment.

Eliza turned and pretended to examine the cage behind her. Another mother was leaning over her kit, watching the occupant squirm about its cage while she talked to one of the managers. “This one is such a rarity! I’ve never seen a...a-”

“Exquisite hybrid,” The manager, a tom, replied. “Yes, it was imported from our Beijing location, but its DNA scan results prove it’s specifically a Eurasian mix.”

“I’ve never seen such a pretty one! Are there any others like it?”

“Not a female, but I believe there’s a Eurasian male in cage M1307.” The manager led the mother and her kit toward another section of the menagerie, leaving Eliza to peer at what was apparently a “rarity.” 

The hybrid didn’t look very different from the other kids she had passed, but its pale skin and light-and-dark streaked hair was different. The rarest aspect of the child, in Eliza’s opinion, was the creature’s brilliant, emerald eyes. Colors so spectacular as the jewel itself were indeed scarce.

She tapped a claw against the bar, and the child reached to grab it. Eliza quickly retracted her claw and scrunched her nose. “Ew, don’t touch me.”

“Eh hah ha.” The child laughed and rolled onto its back.

“Oh, Eliza! What are you doing over there? Come and look over here. Tell me what you think of this one!” Her mother purred from further down the aisle.

Eliza grudgingly peeked into the cage her mother was referring to. An ordinary child with brown eyes and yellow hair peered back at her. “Yes that one’s fine and all but...shouldn’t we invest in say...a unique animal? Like a hybrid?”

“Liza, dear Eliza, hybrids are very expensive. If your siblings will settle on a pedigreed specimen, don’t you think it would save all of us the bickering? Pedigrees are also something of a rarity too, you know?”

“Yes but-”

“Speckle and Puff get over here now! Tell your sister what you think of this one. Isn’t she cute?”

Puff purred her approval. “Yes, Mama. I want this one.”

Spec ignored his sister and cut in front of Eliza to peer into the cage again. “I want a boy,” He grumbled. “Can we cut off its hair?”

“Boys are gross!” Puff batted her brother in the face, which he retaliated by tumbling on top of her.

Their mother separated them by the scruffs of their necks and stood between them. “Calm down both of you. Are we getting a human or not?”

The twins paused their hissing and nodded compliantly.

“Then let me see to the manager about this one.”

Eliza interjected, “But we haven’t looked at the middle-aged ones, or the adults!”

Eliza’s mother leaned down and smoothed the top of her head with her sandpaper-like tongue. “Dear, you know Spec and Puff wanted a baby. And besides, the older they are, the uglier and grumpier they are. You won’t like them.”

Eliza ignored the sympathetic look her mother gave her and slipped past the cages. She crossed the barrier that divided the menagerie by species and entered the canine breeds section. Dogs of all sizes and colors stalked about their pens, some barking at others or gnawing on bones. Eliza despised dogs even more than humans. To her, the fact that such low-intelligence animals also walked on four limbs seemed to mock the way that cats had evolved to stealthily prowl the Earth.

She watched from afar as one of the managers dragged a pup from its mother and nudged it into the neighboring cage. When the pup tried to escape through a gap in its confinement, the manager brought a metal loop over his head and prodded the thing back into its enclosure.

The creature looked at her and whined. Eliza hissed at the pup. “Stupid dog, do not beg to me.”

Eliza left the canines behind and joined her mother and siblings at the register.

“Liza! There you are. We were just about to finalize the adoption certificate. What do you suppose we name the little thing?” Her mother purred.

Eliza peered into the travel case that the brown-eyed, yellow-haired, two-legged human sat inside. It pushed its face against the mesh material of the case and belched. She immediately recoiled and eyed the creature apprehensively from a safe distance.

“I don’t care what we call it.”

Her mother sighed and looked to Puff and Speckle. “Well we have to call it something. Can you both agree on a name? Any name?”

Spec scrunched his face in concentration before bursting into laughter. “She has a big nose. Let’s name her Biggy!”

Puff giggled and nodded.

“Well alright,” Their mother turned to the tom managing the registry. “Biggy. Biggy is its name.”

Eliza took the certificate and attached it to the side of the case for her mother. As soon as they had exited the shelter, the two young kits demanded to walk their new pet. Speckle dragged the toddler out of the case and held her still while his sister tightened the collar around its neck and clipped the leash to it.

“Come on! Get up, get up!” Puff began to run with the leash, dragging the child with her.

Spec clapped his paws with delight too, and chased after her.

Eventually, the twins grew tired of dragging the poor creature around, and dropped the leash at Eliza’s paws while they brawled. Eliza hesitated, but a reassuring nudge from her mother had her grasping the rope. Unlike her siblings, Eliza ambled as the child crawled after her. Blood still dripped down the toddler’s scraped knees, but she continued to follow Eliza.

Eliza looked back at the child, mere feet behind her, and purred. “Sit, Biggy, sit.”

The child fell back onto its bottom and wailed, but Eliza smiled with delight.

“Good girl. Good girl.”

Then she began to run.