Fluffy Hospital

Swindle, March 9, 2014; 04:21 / FB 18997
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Fluffy Hospital

You're a fluffy veterinarian. For some reason, you don't get much respect; like you're not a real vet, or something. You do all the same shit as a regular vet, requiring the same education, training, and expertise, with the added challenge of working with an animal that has a unique biology, is unusually fragile in many respects (and oddly resilient in others), and forces you to deal with things on a regular basis that vets don't usually have to deal with in regular pets (amputations are far, far more common with fluffies, for example). About the only advantage is that fluffies can talk and tell you what's wrong... to a limited extent. It's like a pediatrician asking a three year old what his symptoms are. Or an automechanic trying to figure out what's wrong with a car by listening to a woman who barely knows how to operate a gas pump describe the intermittent noise it makes, which you can't hear. But it does help, sometimes; a dog can't tell you where he hurts, for example.

One the other hand, while you don't get much respect for your work, you do make quite a bit of money. A dog owner might bring their pet in once a year because he swallowed a squeak toy or chewed through an electrical cord and only spend money that one time; a fluffy owner can bring their pet in multiple times a year, because it fell out of a window sill and broke a leg, ate something that gave it explosive diarrhea, nearly drowned in its water dish, and got its ass kicked by a three-legged cat. All in the same month.

Some vets make more money doing special operations for abusers; amputating limbs, removing eyes, making a fluffipede. All things that would kill a fluffy (or any other animal, for that matter) unless the person doing it knew what they were doing. Some idiots think cutting off a fluffy's legs with a tree pruner and then cauterizing the wound with a soldering iron or blowtorch is good enough; those people end up with dead fluffies. Blood loss from amputated limbs, bone or marrow fragments entering the bloodstream, infections (especially from the idiots who think cauterizing wounds is the end-all, be-all of dealing with large, open wounds like severed limbs), and more are all inevitably fatal, guaranteeing the death of the fluffy within days at most. Abusers generally like to keep their victims alive for as long as possible so they can keep torturing them, so they have a professional do the things most likely to kill their victims. There's also money to be made in producing milkbags for foal mills.

You don't do any of that. You run an ethical business, thank you very much. You can't say for certain whether one of your customers is an abuser or not (most of the time, anyway; some are pretty friggin' obvious), but you refuse to do anything to deliberately harm one of your 'patients', physically or psychologically. As much as you reasonably can, anyway.

You walk in the door, check in with the receptionist, and head into the back to change into your lab coat and put on a fresh pair of gloves.

First patient of the day, a pink and yellow mare named Rose. You've dealt with her before. She broke a leg falling down the stairs. A quick x-ray and physical examination shows that it's a clean break; you set the bone, splint the limb, and use a detachable cast to fix things up. Rose is shrieking in agony the entire time; her owner, you know, is too poor to afford anesthetics, and given that most veterinary anesthetics are too strong for fluffies and can kill them quite easily, specially formulated fluffy painkillers tend to be expensive. Rose knows you're trying to fix her, though, so other than shrieking in pain she doesn't resist or plead with you not to give her owies. You were smart enough to empty her bowels before setting her leg though. Once you have her all set, you hug her and give her a treat to calm her down, hand her off to her owner, and put a note in the paperwork he's going to hand the receptionist indicating that he gets a 10% discount. He doesn't know about the discount, and you're not going to tell him. He's a hard-working man, barely scraping by, and he's spending a lot of money to keep his daughter's fluffy in one piece; he's also too proud to accept charity, which is why he's actually poor and struggling to make ends meet rather than buying steak and junk food with food stamps, living in a government subsidized apartment, and living off of welfare. You're giving him a break with a small discount, and honoring his pride by not telling him about it. You respect a man like that, who would rather get by on his own than accept a free handout.

Next patient is a pregnant dam; you check with a stethoscope and detect at least three heartbeats, including the mother's. An ultrasound would tell you exactly how many foals there are and what shape they're in, but the mother is healthy and eating the special diet you recommended to her owner, so you don't anticipate any complications and runts are unlikely. You pass on the good news to her owner and hand the bloated mare back.

Third patient of the day, Roscoe. A regular. Roscoe's owner lets him out of the house whenever he wants, via doggy door, and does not have a fence on his yard. Roscoe is also suicidally over-confident and likes to pick fights. So far, you've treated him for two cat attacks, one dog attack (fortunately, the dachshund was more confused than pissed), and eight fights with a smarty trying to take over the yard. Today, Roscoe tangled with another smarty and his toughies and needs treated for a sprained leg, a black eye, bloody nose, a missing tooth (torn out while biting a chunk from one of the toughies), and a puncture wound from the smarty's horn.

"Yoo shud see da uvva guys, huh huh."

You like Roscoe. Even if he is a dumbass, he has his charms. And he's a regular source of income for you. You patch up the hole in his flank, brace the sprain, and slap an ice pack on his eye and send him on his way.

Fourth patient is a fluff pillow. You hate dealing with them, because most of them are depressed and/or psychotic and generally have suicidal thoughts, though little ability to carry through on them. This one, however, is pretty happy with its lot in life. It's a runt that survived to adulthood, born without legs rather than a quadruple amputee like most fluff pillows. It's also fixed. You actually have a hard time determining that it was, at one point, male, due to its fluff and poorly defined physical features. Its owner is a ten year old girl who treats it like a talking, fuzzy pillow that stays warm throughout the night; it spends its days singing silly songs to her and being used as a pillow, foot rest, or ball, and is absurdly happy for something that is completely immobile. It's also fat, due to a complete lack of exercise. Owner's dad just wants a check up to make sure it's healthy and current on its immunizations.

Fifth patient is a foal, a little filly, who was just purchased from a breeder and needs its shots. It cries and begs "meanie munsta hoomin" (you) not to give it owies. You give it a dozen shots anyway. You hug it and offer it a treat; looks like the little filly hates your guts and refuses to take the treat. Well, not your problem.

Sixth patient for today, Earl. Earl is a rescue fluffy, a feral literally taken off the streets today by a little old lady who felt sorry for him. He's absolutely filthy, missing an eye, has a broken leg that healed crooked and gave him a permanent limp, and has a nasty slash from a straight razor going down his left side from shoulder to hip. While you empty his bowels over the litter box and bathe him, he gives you a condensed version of his life story; seems his previous owner got angry at him for knocking up his other fluffy (despite having never mentioned special hugs, babies, or any rule against either, from what you can gather) and threw them both out. Earl's special friend and their foals were all killed by abusers who found them in an alley while Earl was forced to watch; all of his injuries resulted from human abuse, rather than wild animals or accidents. Despite all this, Earl remains fairly chipper and trusting, and had been to a vet twice before and knows you're there to help him. He remains calm and cooperative while you shave off sections of his fluff, stitch the nasty gash running down his side and disinfect it, clean out his eye socket (you cheated and used a local anesthetic without telling the little old lady or making her pay for it; she mentioned living off her social security and disability and wouldn't have the money to pay for it, and in this case it was absolutely necessary.), and see if you can do anything for his permanent limp (you can't). You fit him up with an eye patch, more because it looks cool than because he needs one, and send him on his way. You like Earl. He's a good fluffy, he's just had a shit life so far. Hopefully he'll be happy in his new home.

Lucky number seven is a big, blue unicorn named Charlie. Why do so many fluffies have R's and L's in their names that they can't pronounce? Do their owners think it's cute when they say their own names in that mush-mouthed baby talk? Charlie has been giving special huggies to several neighborhood mares, and his owner has had enough: it's time for Charlie to get fixed. You prefer to knock out any colts or stallions you're going to be castrating, but Charlie's owner is a cheapass, so Charlie gets to do this the fun way: no anesthetic, not even a local. You consider cheating like you did for Earl, but you often do this procedure without anesthetic, and Earl is a bit of an asshole, giving you backsass. You push on his back until he's laying on his stomach, spread-eagle, and strap all four legs down, adding a fifth strap across his back. Charlie isn't going anywhere. A muzzle also keeps him from doing more than mumbling; you've done this enough times that you know the incredible volume a fluffy can produce thanks to pain and terror.

Next, you carefully shave just enough of Charlie's fluff that his scrotum is clearly visible, and carefully massage antibiotic cream into his scrotum and the surrounding area. Most stallions at this point in the procedure are either too doped up or too scared to give you any issues, but Charlie is obviously enjoying the massage his balls are receiving and has developed an er_ction digging into the table uncomfortably. He giggles and asks if you're a poopie-lover; out of curiosity, you ask what that's supposed to mean, and he explains that it's someone who likes it in the ass. He's accusing you of fondling his nutsack because you're gay.

He's not such a smartass after you use the scalpel to make a small incision in his scrtum and squeeze his sack so his left t_sticle pops out the slit you made. He screams, the muzzle turning it into a hissing nose mostly coming out his nostrils, spit, snot, and tears staining his facial fluff. He screams again when you make a second slit and push so his right t_sticle slides out and dangles in the cold air.

This next part always makes you cringe. There's half a dozen ways vets do the actual removal, ranging from special tools that clamp things off to prevent bleeding, to simply grabbing the fluffy's balls and yanking hard enough to rip them off. A jagged tear actually heals faster and bleeds less than a clean cut. You prefer the method you're about to use because in addition to the jagged tear, it also crushes/twists the blood vessels shut to further reduce bleeding. You learned it by helping another vet castrate a real horse. Of course, he fed the horse's balls to his pet dog afterward; you're just dumping them into a medical waste bin.

You attach the clamp just above the left t_sticle, tightening down on the tubes and blood vessels, then insert the handle of the clamp into the cordless drill and hold the trigger down. The t_sticle spins rapidly, twisting the tubes connecting it to Charlie's body over and over until it finally rips off entirely. Charlie thrashes against his restraints and makes a hissing, spitting squeak through the muzzle. You set his t_sticle in a petri dish in front of him, where he can see it, and repeat the process with his right t_sticle. Surprisingly, Charlie hasn't passed out from the pain. You're really glad you emptied him out over the litter box though. You quickly stitch up the two slits you made, rub in more antibiotic cream, and unstrap Charlie from the table. He hugs his crotch and cries for his "special lumps" back as you hand him off to his owner.

You hate doing c_strations on adult fluffies without anesthetic. On colts, they're generally young enough that they don't understand what's being done to them and they quickly forget it ever happened once the pain wears off. With stallions, they're fully aware of what's happening and it generally traumatizes them. Well, one way or the other, Charlie won't be knocking up any more of the neighborhood mares, and he probably won't give you any lip the next time he comes in.

Patient number eight is a mare with intestinal worms. One shot, one pill, and an enema later, and you hand her off to her owner with a prescription for anti-parasitics, anti-biotics, and something to completely flush the poor fluffy's entire digestive tract, ridding her of the parasites. Fairly straight forward, really.

Number nine is a stallion who ate some powdered laundry soap; he's foaming at the mouth, shitting everywhere, and his eyes are rolled back in his head. He's not responsive. You brought him in back as soon as he came through the door and went to work, trying to flush his system and keep him alive, even putting him on oxygen. None of it works and he's dead less than five minutes after you put him on the table. You offer to dispose of the body (cremation in the furnace you burn all your medical waste in), but the owner insists on taking him home for burial, mourning the loss of his beloved fluffy. You feel bad for the little guy, but you've seen this often enough that it doesn't do more than give you a little twinge in your chest; you used to actually cry over stuff like this. You suppose you're desensitized after seeing it every day for almost ten years.

Number ten is a chirpy foal whose mother rejected it and stomped on it; the owner wants you to save it, even though it's a runt and its mother will never accept it. You do an examination, and it's actually not too badly injured from having been stomped repeatedly. The real issue is the reason the mother rejected it and tried to kill it; two legs are stubby and undeveloped, and a third isn't there. It lacks any genitals, male or female, and the anus is also absent; all that's there is a smooth section of fuzz. Listening to it breath, its lungs are also underdeveloped. There's no way this little guy is going to survive more than a day or so before either suffocating or dying from toxins building up since it has no way to poop or pee. On an older fluffy who was doomed to die in agony like this, you'd give him a lethal shot and let him fall asleep and never wake up; on a newborn foal, you simply grasp the torso in one hand, the head in the other, close your eyes, and give a sharp tug. The runt's neck is broken instantly and it dies almost immediately. You drop it into the medical waste bin along with Charlie's testicles and inform the owner of its demise; not wanting the owner to resent the mother, you tell him that the runt was unviable (true) and died of natural causes (a white lie) unrelated to his relatively minor injuries inflicted by his mother (true). You also explain the reason fluffies reject runts and how rarely they survive, even with human intervention, and send him on his way, without any hard feelings toward the mother fluffy.

Patient number eleven is a mare named Elizabeth (which is the longest and most difficult to pronounce word in her vocabulary; Elizabeth isn't derped, but she is pretty stupid, even by fluffy standards.) who swallowed a bunch of yarn thinking it was spaghetti. This is serious; it could form a blockage in her intestines that causes her to die in agony.

You squeeze her out over the litter box, since she's slightly panicked and not cooperative, strap her to the table belly up, and knock her out with a general anesthetic. Shaving her belly and coating it in antibiotic lotion, you take a fresh scalpel and make an incision in her belly, carefully doing the least damage to her abdominal muscles and avoiding breaching the chest cavity so her lungs continue to work. Now comes the risky part; you carefully slit open her stomach just enough for you to reach in with forceps to extract the mass of yarn, without spilling stomach acid and other contents into her abdominal cavity. You check to make sure no yarn made it into her intestines, then seal her back up, apply more antibiotic lotion along her stitches, and place the limp, unconscious fluffy in a cage equipped with a bed and water bottle; you'll keep her for the next couple days to make sure there are no complications from the surgery and that she doesn't burst her stitches by getting rowdy while playing.

Your twelfth and final patient of the day is a gelded stallion (you did the castration yourself when the fluffy was a foal, the same day he got all his shots. He was too young to remember you now.) who got shot with a pellet gun by some kids while playing in the front yard with his owner. You pet him and talk to him gently to keep him calm, while squeezing the lead pellets out of his skin like zits. One more to go, and it's deep enough that you have to make a tiny incision in the trembling fluffy's skin and pry it out with tweezers. There, all done. Three stitches and some small bandages and antibiotic lotion later, and you're done.

Wrapping up for the day, you hang up the lab coat, empty the bin you've been tossing latex gloves into all day, fire up the furnace to dispose of your medical waste, then say goodbye to your receptionist and head home.

It's time to watch your season four DVD's of Babylon 5, eat dinner, and hang out with your own fluffy, a purple and orange pegasus stallion named Bryan. There's those R's and L's again.

Tomorrow, you're going to have a whole new mess of fluffies to deal with. And while you might not get the respect that other vets do, you wouldn't trade your job for anything. You like fluffies. You wanna keep the little guys and gals patched up and happy.

Let's see what Londo and G'kar are up to this time.