Subject: A Christmas Tale (in 3D Plonq-O-visionN)
Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 01:31:16 GMT
Lines: 350
Newsgroups: Fur.com:alt.lifestyle.furry
X-Status: 28

"Dear Santa,

Go yiff yourself.
Thank you.

Sincerely,
Plonq"

The little snow leopard read back his letter, enunciating each
syllable carefully.  He debated over whether he was sacrificing
clarity for verbosity, and for a moment he considered adding little
pictures of skulls and daggers to the margins.  He dropped that idea
again just as quickly - the fat old guy probably had an elf screening
his mail anyway. 

"No more disappointment this year," he said as he licked the envelope.
"Bleah!" he added as an afterthought.  If they could put furs on the
moon and make a decaffeinated coffee that didn't taste like yak piss,
why couldn't they produce tuna-flavoured envelope glue?  By his third
attempt to seal the envelope, the flap was too soggy and coated in
snow leopard fur to have any hope of sticking.  Plonq sighed, sealed
the envelope shut with a single pass of duct tape and carefully
addressed it. 

"      Santa Claws
   c/o Toy Workshop
       RR1, North Pole
       H0H 0H0"

For a return address he simply wrote, "Plonq."  The old guy knew where
he lived - even if he hadn't bothered coming by the past couple of
years. Plonq grabbed his packet of stamps and paused.  Santa had a
postal code, so that meant that it must be a domestic address, right? 
On the other hand, wasn't he north pole somewhere in Siberia?  The
little feline mewled indecisively for several seconds before finally
settling on one stamp of each denomination.  "That should cover all
the bases," he purred.

Plonq tossed the letter into the outbox on top of his fridge and
promptly forgot about it.  He donned his toque, mittens, scarf, boots
and tailwarmer in preparation to brave the elements.  The irony of a
snow leopard dressing up against the winter weather was lost on the
little cat.  He tromped out of his apartment and got nineteen paces
down the hall before it occurred to him that he had no idea where he
was going. The cat morph doffed his toque and scratched his head,
trying to recall why he had been planning to head out into the cold.

Meanwhile back in his apartment, the first few grains of (what would
eventually become a great deal over the years) dust settled on the
letter atop his refrigerator.

"It was something to do with Christmas," he growled, pacing
frantically over a short stretch of burgundy shag.  His enormous tail
thrashed while he thought, its tip thumping the walls on both sides of
the narrow hall with each sweep.

"Scrunch, scrunch, thump! Scrunch, scrunch, thump!"

The snow leopard paced and thumped the wall with his tail, blithely
unaware of his growing peril.  Plonq had learned long ago that long
fur, long carpet pile and very dry air made for a lethal combination,
but the cat morph was too lost in his thoughts to give the matter much
consideration.  He rubbed his chin.

"I must have been heading out to buy something, but what?  I'm not
celebrating Christmas this year, so it couldn't be tinsel.  Eggnog?"
Yum!  That was as valid a reason to head out as any other.  The feline
licked his snout, pulled the toque over his ears again (which nicely
hid the sparks that had been dancing between them) and made a beeline
for the elevators.  His finger got within a foot of the button when...

"ZAAAAAAAARK!" said the static bolt that ripped from the elevator
button to his finger.  The lights in the hall flickered twice to the
dual thuds of thunder and a cat morph creating a Plonq-shaped
impression in the opposite wall.  Doors opened up and down the hall as
various startled morphs poked their heads into the hallway to see the
cause of the ruckus. A badger in the nearest apartment spied Plonq
sitting rigidly against the wall with his forearm still extended and a
small wisp of smoke rising from his index finger.  He rushed to the
snow leopard's side and said,

"Geez, buddy, are you all right

"I hear bells," mewled Plonq wanly, "is Santa here already?"

"Hoo boy, I think you need to go lie down," said the badger with
sincere concern.  "I think you've just experienced the mother of all
static shocks."  He waved in the direction of the elevator call
button.  "Just look at the burn marks around..."  The badger paused
and did a double-take, his expression slowly melting into that of
somebody who had just experienced an epiphany.  "Oooh.. just look at
the burn marks around the button!"

The snow leopard followed the badger's gaze and noticed nothing
especially unusual about the burn on the wall save its striking
resemblance to a silhouette of the Virgin Mare holding a baby-shaped
thing in her arms.  What caught his more immediate attention was the
sight of singed fur on his index finger.  "Ack!"  He reflexively stuck
the finger in his mouth.  "Bleah!"  He quickly pulled it out again as
the acrid taste of burned hair spilled over his tongue.  He whimpered
and held up the wounded finger in an attempt to garner sympathy from
the furs who had followed the badger's lead into the hall, but he
found himself upstaged by the elevator.

"It's a Christmas miracle!" said one fur.

"Somebody call the paper," said another.

Plonq picked up the mitten which had been blown clear by the shock and
slunk quietly away to the stairwell.  During the excitement in the
hall he'd caught a faint whiff of eggnog from the open door of an
apartment and remembered his purpose for venturing out.  As he passed
the row of mailboxes on the main floor he felt an inexplicable twitch,
but he quickly wrote it off as eggnog withdrawal.

The feline's winter gear served him well for the eleven seconds that
it took him to cross the street to the convenience mart.  He stopped
on the threshold to kick the snow off his boots and then stepped into
a world of fluorescent light hum and stale Slurpies.  Although the
little store's prices were almost universally higher than the
supermarket down the street, the proprietor was canny enough to offer
key discounts to his regular customers to keep them coming back.

"Plonq!" called the little siamese cat morph cheerily.  He pushed
aside the newspaper that he'd spread on the counter and tapped his
nail tips on the glass.  "What you are wanting today?  Christmas
stuff?"  He pronounced it "Klismas".  "I have fresh can turkey! 
Instant stuffing! Kraft Dinner!  Crack cocaine!  What your pleasure?"

"Eh?"  Said Plonq, pushing back his glasses and blinking at the
shopkeeper.

"Ha - just kidding!  All out of Kraft Dinner!"  While he talked, his
eyes darted past the snow leopard, projecting ahead to try and deduce
the cat's destination based on his original heading.  Ah - the milk
cooler. Plonq had purchased milk and cream the day before, so logic
dictated that he was probably after...  "Today only for you, Plonq, is
eggnog one half off!"

"Yum!" purred Plonq as he cleared the rest of the distance to the
cooler in a pounce that nearly left his boots behind.  He pulled open
the door and began loading up his arms with eggnog.

"Uh, no," said the shopkeeper quickly.  "Is half-price from bottom
shelf only."  Plonq peered over the cartons of eggnog strewn
haphazardly in his arms and noticed a second row of eggnog on the
lower shelf.  The cartons on that shelf appeared identical to the ones
on the upper shelf - same brand and all - except that their expiry
dates seemed to have been obscured with a black felt marker.  The cat
shrugged, replaced the first batch of cartons and loaded up his arms
from the bottom shelf.  He toddled over to the counter with his load
of eggnog and carefully lined up the cartons by the till.

"Yum!"  He said again, licking his muzzle greedily.

"Somebody is in for festive time, eh?" said the shopkeeper as he
picked up the first carton and held it up for the scanner.  He paused
before running it through and added, "is good with rum.  You drink
this with lots of rum, eh?"

"Nope, straight up," said Plonq, who was nigh bouncing with glee. 
"Oh, it's not all for me," he explained quickly, "I'm giving some to
my cat as well.  Yup, just her and me and eggnog and HBO for Christmas
this year." 

"I... see," said the shopkeeper.  Plonq watched in alarm as the other
cat's hand tightened on the carton.  "No family?  No friends?"

"Nope and nope.  No Santa either.  He didn't come last year or the
year before, so I sent him a letter and told him to get stuffed this
year so that he wouldn't disappoint me again," said the snow leopard. 
In the back of his mind he mused, "I DID mail that letter, didn't I? 
I must have - that's why I came out here wasn't it?"  He was going to
expound on how he had considered putting daggers and skulls in the
margins of his letter but he stopped when he noticed that the siamese
cat morph appeared to be in some discomfort.  If Plonq hadn't known
better, he'd have sworn that the other fur looked like his heart was
trying to grow three sizes. 

It grew about ten percent - which was enough.  The siamese cat morph
sighed and lobbed the eggnog he'd been holding into the garbage.

"Ack!" wailed Plonq, lunging too late to intercept it.

"No, is okay.  This eggnog is bad or something.  I accidentally put it
on bottom shelf instead of in garbage.  It's good thing you bring it
over to me or somebody might buy it, eh?  You go get a couple from top
shelf. Only two, you hear?"  Plonq slunk away, twitching and glancing
over his shoulder at every "THUNK" from his former cache of eggnogs
landing in the garbage.  He dutifully fetched two cartons of eggnog
from the top shelf and brought them back to the counter.  Before he
could fish out his wallet the shopkeeper waved his hands over the nog
and shook his head. 

"No no, is yours.  Merry Christmas.  You take home and don't forget to
give some to cat.  Yes, you take and go.  Shooo!"

"Well THAT was very nice," thought Plonq as he stepped out into the
street.  He hesitated at the sight of a line of furs stretching out
from his apartment building. Odd.  There were furs in wheel chairs,
and furs carrying babies.  Tall furs and short furs.  There were
morphs from every walk and crawl of life in a queue stretching down
the street.  Plonq jogged across to the front entrance and stopped
when a large rhino morph stepped into his path.

"Hey," growled the rhino, "no line-jumping!"

"I live here!" said Plonq indignantly.  A gasp rippled through the
furs within hearing.

"Did you hear that?  He LIVES here."

"Pardon me sir," said a timid voice by his left elbow, "but might I
touch your jacket?"  Plonq glanced down at the wheelchair bound jackal
and shrugged.

"I suppose," he replied.  The jackal gingerly stretched out a
trembling hand and brushed it down the arm of the snow leopard's coat
while the other pilgrims in the line-up watched closely.

"I think I felt something," said the jackal reverently.

"Nylon...?" prompted Plonq.  "Eighty percent."  All eyes and ears were
on the jackal, however.  The feline shrugged again and brushed past
the distracted rhino into the lobby of his building.  He kept one ear
tuned to the show behind him as he walked toward the elevators,
though. 

"I think I can feel a tingling in my legs.  Look at me, I can walk!  I
can... <THUMP>  No I can't!  Somebody help me back up..."

Plonq took one look at the crowd by the elevators and quickly veered
over toward the stairs again.  Thirteen flights, nine rests and most
of a carton of eggnog later he found himself back in his apartment. 
There had been a tense moment when he'd had to barge his way through a
crowd of priests and pressmorphs outside the elevator on his floor,
but eventually he gained the sanctuary of his flat.

The feline stashed the rest of his precious eggnog in the fridge,
peeled off his winter clothes and threw himself down on the couch to
see what he could find on TV.

"I'll be glad when his silly holiday is over," he growled.  He clicked
on the television and within minutes he had keeled over and passed out
in a position in which only a cat could possibly sleep.  Plonq slept
through the whole night while visions of childhood bullies pelting him
with stale sugarplums danced in his head.  The next morning he was
awakened to an insistent pounding on his apartment door.

Mumbling and scratching, he arose from his awkward slumber and
stumbled over to answer the call.  When he opened the door, the little
snow leopard froze in disbelief.

"What, you've never seen a reindeer before?" demanded the morph on the
other side of the door.  Plonq blinked rapidly, slapped his cheek to
ensure that he was really awake and then blinked again.  Standing
outside the threshold of his apartment was a gorgeous reindeer morph
dressed in what could charitably be called a Santa suit.  The low cut
of the suit did little to hide her ample cleavage, and the back of the
tight top was cut so high that it barely needed a slit to accommodate
her tail. A tiny red hat perched daintly between her antlers.

"Uh..." said Plonq dumbly.  The vixen appeared unfazed by his ogle
(apparently used to that reaction) as she glanced quickly down at the
clip-board in her hand.

"Is your name Plonq?"

"Uh..." stammered the snow leopard.  "I mean, yes!"

"My name is Vixen - you know, from Vixen, Blitzen, Dasher and
Associates. I'm here acting as an agent on behalf of Santa Claws. 
While Mr. Claws would like to have visited you in person on this
festive occasion, with the recent deregulation as a result of the
supreme court ruling on 'Naughty versus Nice', he's found himself
short on manpower to respond to each case personally."

"But what about my letter?" demanded Plonq.

"We're aware of that," said Vixen, flicking him a look of disapproval
with her dark eyes, "we caught that on the Santa-cam, but the fact
that you forgot to mail it somewhat offset its weight on your niceness
bell curve.  The fact is, sir, that you've been a comparatively nice
cat this year?"

"I have?" said Plonq in disbelief.

"I said comparatively.  The rather low average in the demographics in
which you were graded tended to favour your personal score a bit.  Now
that doesn't qualify you for a really nice gift - like black socks -
but Santa took a special interest in your case, and asked me to
deliver something very specific to you."

"Oh?"  purred Plonq.  He tried to peer over the other morph's
shoulder, but the taller reindeer blocked whatever may have been
hidden behind her. "What did he want you to give me?"

"This," said the reindeer.  She wound up and nailed the snow leopard
squarely in the brisket with a solid punch.

"Ooof!" said the cat, doubling over in surprise, alarm and pain.

"There is a verbal component to the gift as well," said the reindeer
as she carefully scratched his name off the delivery list.  "He says
to tell you 'the elves do NOT screen the mail of this fat old man'."

"Ack!" said Plonq.  He rubbed his tender stomach and sighed.  "I guess
that's what I deserve.  Oh well.  It's better than a poke in the eye
with a sharp stick."

"That's what he originally ordered for you," said Vixen.  "The punch
was my idea.  Well, sorry I couldn't give you something nice this
year. Gotta run.  Only two days until Christmas and I have a lot of
names to go through before I'm done."

"Um, before you go, can I ask you something?" asked Plonq quickly.

"Hm?" said Vixen, who had half-turned to leave.

"Would you like to yiff?"  Now it was the reindeer's turn to blink.

"Would I... what?" she said, as if she hadn't heard him correctly.

"Yiff?"  said Plonq again in a much smaller voice.

The reindeer glanced around as if to assure herself that she was the
only one standing there - perhaps on the off-chance that the feline's
question had been directed toward someone else.

"Let me get this straight," she said flatly.  "You're asking me," she
thumped herself below her ample breast with the clipboard, "one of
Santa's elite, if she wants to fornicate with some furry bozo who she
just punched in the gut?  Just drop my work and engage in Discovery
Channelish glorification of mammalian nature?"

"I've got eggnog..." said Plonq, who had been visibly wilting under
her tirade.  There was a moment of silence.

"Okay, you talked me into it," said Vixen, tossing the clipboard over
her shoulder and brushing past the startled feline.  "Sounds like more
fun than poking a bunch of losers with pointy sticks anyway."  She
paused in the doorway to pull something out of a pocket that Plonq had
not hitherto noticed.  Whatever it was, she hung it on the doorknob
before yanking the startled snow leopard into the apartment and
kicking the door shut behind them.

Swinging on the outside knob was a neat little sign reading, "Do not
open until Xmas."

The End.