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9:10AM, Tuesday, April 13th, 2021

"Come on, out," I instructed the Deinonychus in the backseat of my car, then reattached the leash to her harness. The wind was blowing stronger down here near the south shore, upsetting Sophie's feathers from their orderly grain.

Together, we began our trek along the sidewalk. I didn't bother wasting my time looking for parking closer to work, considering I was coming in later today, so I was parked along the street about a block away. Fortunately our little walk was event free, other than a few looky-loos who were not yet desensitized to encountering the occasional raptor; mainly older people. The "pre-revivalists", as they were nicknamed by the drom affiliated subculture that I was now beginning to study up on.

The Keelikolani building stood flat and wide, the massive stone building housing many offices for the state. I walked around to the side to the back wing, as I didn't deal with the public. The large double doors read, in gold, brazen font, "Hawaiian State Department of Labor and Industry Relations." It wasn't exactly the dream job a youngster would grow up dreaming to have, but it did, on occasion, let me meet and work with some VIPs from big businesses around the state.

Being a government building, a metal detector was stationed at the front of the hallway. "Morning Mr. Waller," the security guard, Stan, greeted me. His greeting changed in pitch halfway through, as he caught Sophie behind me, the unusual guest stroking his alertness from the typical boring routine. "Whoa, a, uh, drom? You're bringing a drom in here?" he asked, his tone being that of skepticism.

"Should be okay, right? People bring their dogs in," I argued.

"Yeah, dogs. People bring their dogs in. Not raptors," he explained, waving his hands in front of him. Sophie stuck her head out flat, crest raised as she look up at the guard curiously. "She's cute though. I mean, 'she' right? With a doll face like that," he said, smiling back at Sophie.

"Thanks, yes, 'she.' I don't think the rules stipulate the type of animals allowed, so it should be fine. Hell, I could bring my pet rhinoceros in here if I wanted," I joked as I readied myself for the metal detector. I grabbed the tablet out of Sophie's breast plate pouch and deposited it into the exceptions bucket next to the detector. I walked through the detector, no problem. Sophie followed suit, except the buzzer went off.

"Probably just the snaps on her harness," I explained, somewhat expecting that to happen. I have gotten to know the metal detector quite well over the years. "That thing was a bitch to get on, mind just wanding her down?" I asked, knowing his job required him to check without exception.

Stan grunted and sat up from his worn out stool, lazily holding his wand in one hand. He ran it over the vest and sure it enough it beeped where you would expect it to. Sophie watched bright eyed as the stick hovered over her body. "That's not a toy, don't even think about biting that," I warned her.

He quickly cast the wand down her body as if not expecting to find anything, just wanting to follow routine as bare-minimum as possible, but doubled back over a quick blip. The wand quickly honed in on a buzzing, under her arm, possibly near her lung, I guessed.

"What's this now?" he uttered.

I furrowed my brow and stepped closer. I had no idea what it could be.

Stan parted her feathers, looking for the source, but found nothing. He looked at me expecting answers.

I just shrugged. "Beats me? Some sort of implant, maybe?" I said. I was about to say something about ID tags, but I remember seeing, a couple times, dogs walking through here without a buzz. Raptors had the same type of tag they did, so I ruled that out.

"You don't...know?" he asked me in disbelief.

In retrospect, I suppose I shouldn't have said that. It would be rather odd for a legitimate owner to not know something like this. I really wish I had not of told Katie that Sophie was a stray. I rather liked my adoption fib I had come up with instead, but I couldn't use that here for risk of conflicting stories.

"Guess I have something to talk about next vet appointment, eh?" was all I could come up with.

Stan sighed and stood back upright. "Well, lucky for you it's too weak on the wand to render anything more than a journal entry on my part," he said as he promptly finished scanning her. "If a bomb goes off today, we're coming after you first," he said in a sarcastic tone and motioned for me to proceed ahead.

"Suicide raptor bomber?" I chuckled as I shook my head and moved on. Fortunately the security was reasonable here. It would be a whole different story had I tried to get Sophie through a TSA checkpoint at the airport. They would probably give her a cavity check, and she would take it the wrong way, and...

I shook at my head of my silly thoughts and looked down at Sophie walking besides me. After we rounded the corner I squatted infront of her and lifted her arm, "Hold still for a sec," I pleaded. Sure enough there was nothing on the surface I could see. I pressed against her skin, under her feathers, where I saw the wand beep, hoping to feel something. I didn't feel anything, but upon closer visual inspection, I did, however, see what looked like a tiny scar in her flesh. "Huh," I grunted, "maybe it really is a surgical implant? Or...a bullet, perhaps?" I said to myself, those being the only explanations I could come up with.

"Waller!" a familiar voice sounded behind me, startling me and ripping me away from my focus. "Oh...my...God," each word was hung with disbelief. As I turned to face him, his face was back in the doorway he came out of. "Kate, get out here," he said half laughing.

"Uh, hey Mike," I tried to say casually as I stood back up.

"What the fuck is this," my overly brash colleague asked me, pointing at Sophie. I was about to say something but he cut me off, "Shit, had I of known it was 'bring your raptor to work day', I would have tried to scrounge something up."

I tried to get a word in but not before Katie joined us. "What is it, Mi--" she asked as she came out the door, but broke into a bubbly squeal as she saw the gentle raptor standing next to me. Sophie soaked in her energy and returned a happy expression back and a squishing tail. "Oh my God, that face! You didn't say you got a _cute_one, Chris!" she said as she trotted over while crouching down to eye level with my Deinonychus escort. Sophie twitched her head as a greeting palm approached her, but she patted her head against it, inviting the caress. "Hey there cutety," Katie said. She was clearly comfortable being around droms, I would surmise.

Mike head an expression, waiting for an explanation. "So...?" he said, holding his arms out to indicate my companion.

"Well, I figured I'd bring her in. She's still warming up to the idea of being home alone," I explained, finally getting to say something.

"You figured you'd bring her in, eh? Dare I ask if you cleared this ahead of time?"

"No, why? Who cares? Martha and Whitsburg bring their dumb dogs in all the time."

"Yeah, dogs. They bring dogs in," Mike replied as he stepped up closer to inspect. "That's a little different than, you know, a freaking raptor."

"God you sound just like Stan, you know?" I said as I shook my head. Mike was always so eager to be the objective sort.

"Oh shush, Mike, it's fine. Look at her, she's just the cutest thing! I'm sure nobody will complain," Katie said as she was petting Sophie along the side of her face and neck. Sophie had her eyes closed, soaking in the attention.

"If you say so," Mike concluded as he reached in and scratched the top of Sophie's head with a single finger for a couple seconds, but just as soon returned to arm's length.

"So what's her name, anyway?" Katie asked, still stroking Sophie's coat.

"Sophie."

Katie jerked her head up and gave me a blank stare.

"What?" I asked, confused.

He held the gaze for a few more seconds, as if waiting for me to realize something. "...Seriously?"

I looked away for a second to think, but looked back. "Yeah? So...oh...oh", I trailed off as the bag of bricks hit me with the realization of what Katie was making a reference to. And the more I thought about it, the more the bag kept hitting me. I gave a soft, nervous chuckle at my slight of thought, "I didn't even realize that."

"God, Chris, you know I was just joking when I called her your girlfriend the other day. I guess I wasn't far off!," Katie joked, or at least I hoped she was.

Katie and I met back in college as like minded class mates. She was a bit of a tom boy, and there was never any sexual tension between us. We became inseparable friends during our schooling. I confessed to Katie that I had a thing for a student there, whose name was Sophie. She was somewhat of a girly-girly, very bubbly and always with a cute demeanor. However, she was always taken and out of my reach, but Katie never backed down from poking at me about her. That was six years ago, and I didn't even realize what I had done when I named Sophie. Perhaps my subconscious got the better of me.

"Damn, Chris," Mike spoke up, clearly not interested in expanding upon our little inside reference, "what are they paying you to sit around doing nothing all day, anyway?" he asked in a tease, "Because I thought even the scruffy brown raptors were hell of expensive. And judging by the looks of this one, I can only imagine how much this set you back."

Mike's question was good news. It implied that Katie has not shared that Sophie was a stray, which I very much did not want people knowing. I needed to get these two separated before Katie ruined everything. "Well, you know, sitting around like I do is an art. Not just anyone can do it. That's why they pay me the big bucks," I joked back, deflecting his question. "And that reminds me, Katie I needed to speak with you about something that came up, ASAP," I turned and gave Katie a somewhat serious face, hoping she'd pick up on my vibe.

She let go of Sophie and stood up. "Talk to you later, Mike," I implied my goodbye to him as we walked around the corner into a secluded nook.

"What's up?" she asked.

"Hey, have you told anyone Sophie was a stray?" I asked her quietly.

"Oh, uh, no I don't think so. Why?" she asked, giving me a confused expression.

"I need better than that, not 'think so'. Did you tell anyone?" I asked her again.

Katie shook her head as she looked away. "No, why so serious all of a sudden?" she asked.

I sighed, and looked around making sure we were still alone. "Look, I need you to keep this a secret, okay? Sophie has some complications I'm trying to sort out."

Katie smirked softly and looked away. "You know, when you mentioned over the phone that she was a stray, I didn't think anything of at first. But it eventually caught up to me that that seemed highly unusual. I figured it was probably some scruffy, unkempt feral, but now that I see her...yeah, what's going on?"

"I've got more questions that answers right now. The big problem is that when I found her, she wasn't tagged. I've looked all over, it's not there. Even a vet looked at her and didn't find one, which led to a calamity of woes I might add."

Katie paused for a moment as if she was trying to see my point. "Okay, no tag I can see as making it hard to get her back home. But why don't you want people to know she's a stray? What's the big deal?"

"No, you don't get it," I had come to realize, "there's no such thing as an untagged drom. Or a stray drom. They're always tagged prior to sale. You can't just march into a clinic willy nilly and asked to get your drom tagged."

"Why not? Dogs can be tagged anytime. My brother just--,"

"You guys need to stop comparing droms to dogs. Dogs didn't go extinct and get re-engineered back into existence. It's not the same. The rules are a bit different here," I blurted out, cutting her off. But then I realized I was the one doing the comparing. I shook my head and got back on track, "Anyway, I'm just worried that Sophie could be seized if word gets around that she's a stray, because it starts leading to questions I can't answer to legal satisfaction."

Katie sighed and looked at Sophie with weary eyes. "So what are you going to do? Just no luck finding her home, then?"

"I put forth every reasonable effort to return her. I would have expected her previous owner to return the favor, but I've seen nothing out there. So, yeah, I gave up on that sometime yesterday."

"Yesterday, eh? So that whole 'family crisis' thing...?" Katie said to me with a cocked head and suspicious eyes.

"Yeah...yeah, not that far from the truth though, right? I want to find Sophie a good home, but I guess that's mine now," I returned with a weak smile. Katie nodded but after she didn't speak up I went on, "But, uh, I can say that she's been around people. I found some kind of ring on her finger the other day. And she set off the metal detector on the way in. Something's inside her. Other than that I have no idea. I don't even know what breed she is."

"Isn't she just a...ah, hmm," Katie furrowed her brow as she looked at Sophie, "well I was going to say 'Arctic Ridgeback', but no, that's not right. Weird."

"Yeah, I've scoured the internet trying to identify her. No dice."

We both had a moment of thoughtful silence for a few moments before Katie spoke up, "Well...I'd have to ask again, what do you plan on doing?"

I looked down at Sophie who was simply minding her manners and looking back up at me sweetly. That's a question I been muling over a lot lately. "These deins...these deins are smart. They have no trouble working the doors. Even the locks. Those scaly fingers are more dexterous than they look," I said as I gripped her idling hand and ran my fingers along hers for a moment. "Last time she went outside on her own, she destroyed the neighbor's sprinkler system and I think tried to eat Kibbles nextdoor or something," I said with a smirk, exaggerating the last part a bit to make a point.

"No telling what she would do all day while I was gone. An untagged drom running around wouldn't last long," I sighed as I worked into my conclusion. "So for now, I have to bring her in with me. But I'm going to try and get my work straightened out so that I can work from home for the remainder of the week. Hopefully by next monday I can have something worked out," I explained my plan, although as for the last part, I had no followup plan.

"Wow, quite the adventure you're having there, isn't it? Well, don't worry, I won't say anything. And I'm always here to help, too," she assured me. "Uh, what about the IWH today?"

My eyes widen, "Ah shit! Today is Tuesday, huh?," I let out a frustrated sigh, "Sheesh, I'm all out of whack right now. Taking yesterday off, I came like it was Monday."

Katie nonchalantly just dismissed my reaction with the wave of a hand, "Well I--"

"Any chance you could take care of Sophie while I'm in there?" I asked with urgency, interrupting her.

Katie gave me an unimpressed reaction, "Well I was about to offer to before you so rudefully interrupted me, ya' jerk."

"So yes?" I prodded her, ignoring her usual remarks.

Katie pretended to look bothered, as I could easily tell, "Whatever. Could be fun to spend a little time with her," she looked down at Sophie, "'Cause aren't you just the cutest thing?" she baby talked her.

"Thanks, I really appreciate it," I said. The Industry Welfare Hearing - IWH - would keep me occupied for a couple hours this afternoon. I mentally kicked myself for not remembering ahead of time. I was beginning to suspect my routine way of thinking was becoming easily derailed by the recent train of events.

Aside from an affirmative nod back, the moment's silence suggested we were done here. "Alright well," I said as I looked around the corner into the main hallway, "I'm just going to sneak into my office and hunker down. I don't want to make a big scene," I said.

Katie scolded, "Well that's no fun. You should ride her bareback and hop from cubicle to cubicle. Straight line, right to your office."

I ignored Katie's goofy remarked and headed into our floorspace within the office complex. I was happy to unload all of this to Katie, and was glad I had someone I could trust here with me. We were fortunate to get an internship at this place together, straight out of college. We were then hired full time at the same time, which also established us as the youngest employees in this department by a pretty substantial margin.

This was a fairly old building, not designed to be a cube farm. Most everyone had an office along either the outside facing wall, or along one of the interior courtyards. Clusters of two by two cubicles were assembled inbetween the offices but were mostly all reserved to people who simply handled a lot of tedious and menial work. Most of which were temporary jobs, too. I had an exterior facing office, two doors down from Katie. The three of us made our way down the aisle. Fortunately everyone's workstation faced away from the aisle. Some people had mirrors attached to their monitor, but Sophie walked along with a flat stance and was too low to be seen. We made our way without drawing any attention.

"See you later," I gestured goodbye, and closed the door behind Sophie. The dimly lit office along the west wall had no direct light until afternoon, so I opened the shades. Outside, you could see a busy street beyond the landscaping. I hoped it would keep Sophie mildly entertained while I worked.

After Sophie finished thoroughly exploring every nook and cranny of the office, she planted her butt down by the small office window by the door and watched the people within the office walk about. People were surprisingly oblivious to her on the other side of the glass. They would walk about with lazy eyes that were not observant, as they did not expect to see anything out of the ordinary in a place like this. Only several people curious enough to investigate came into my office to greet her, but eventually things calmed down, and she settled down next to me for a nap. By close to noon I had finished catching up on emails and processing some documents.

I had a lot on my mind though. Questions and curiosities. I poked around on my tablet inbetween work, checking out some of the extended functionality of the sign language translation app. I discovered the app could translate into two modes. I had it set to "literal mode", which simply gave you the word by word translation. There was also "linguistic mode", although it said "beta" next to it. I tested out out by gesturing "question want treat?", and the screen read:

95%: Do you want a treat? 40%: Where do you want this treat? 5%: When do you want a treat?

"Where? 'In my mouth,' they would say," I thought with a chuckle. I decided to leave it in literal mode for now. I noticed I could also click on a word and bring up some dictionary details for it. I was so busy pulling up signs and gesturing them back as fast as I could, to keep up with the conversation, that I didn't have much time to read all the subtext. They were English words, after all, I figured I knew what they meant. I browsed the dictionary, looking up some of the word of interest to me.

"I'm an idiot," I said to myself, as I read the details for the sign "mate".

Mate: n. Referring to a mated couple or a member of a mated couple.

The definition had nothing to do with sex at all. "Ah, that's right," I sighed, remembering that, in SSL, words don't have more than one meaning like they do in human usage. They had _consolidated_meanings of similar things, but not to the point where it's an entirely different meaning. My ignorance had got the better of me on that one. I had to remember to leave my human way of thinking behind when speaking with raptors.

"Domino was simply asking if Sophie and I have fun," I whispered to myself, "or if Sophie is fun, I guess. Innocent enough." I slouched back in my seat, feeling relieved. One less thing to worry about. On the other hand, what Domino meant by "fun" could be open to interpretation.

I flipped through the dictionary and pulled up "fun", but the result held no surprises. Next was "sex", which turned out to be the word they'd use for actual intercourse. As expected, the word "gender" was used to refer to the gender. "I guess whoever came up with SSL figured this would make the most sense," I thought to myself. Admittedly, the English language could make ten times more sense if we could simplify reformat it and start over. I was always amazed how foreigners could ever come to understand it, what with all its double meanings and breaking its own rules. It seemed as though they took the opportunity to fix it up with the crafting of SSL, at least in some aspects.

Further mucking around the interface revealed that the ability to completely change the dictionary by filtering it to a specific curriculum. Apparently, there was a 2015, 2018, and 2021 dictionary. I once heard that it wasn't until 2007 that droms had become populated and established enough to lead people into begin questioning if they were even capable of learning sign language. Over the next six years, trainers coordinated on figuring out how to teach raptors sign language, experimenting and coming up with the grammar that worked best for them, but still being practical to understand. Their work eventually became collectively known as simplified sign language - SSL.

Curriculums began being published sometime in 2015, but it took awhile for it to dissolve into the general public to the point where we could use it. Typical trainers were those that knew ASL but were also comfortable with handling and training droms of various breed. Such specialists were far and few between out here on the islands. Dan must have been one of the first people to jump onboard that program, considering that he said Domino was a year into it at this point. I felt pretty lucky that I actually had mutual friends with him so that we were able to meet up. I took an educated guess that Domino was most likely on the 2018 model, so I switched my tablet's filter to match.

It made more sense to me on why I haven't seen any SSL trained raptors until now. I wondered what it would be like ten years from now. How far could they develop their communications? It would definitely beg the question on where you draw the line on declaring an intelligence species. With gift of clear communication, each generation could become greater than the last. I doubted the native raptors millions of years ago were anything like this. But raised around humans, and with us bolstering their communication abilities and sheltering them from a dangerous lifestyle, they've been enabled to prosper.

With a thud, Sophie collapsed from her brooding position onto her side to settle in for some extended napping. My eyes couldn't help run down her flanks and find her exposed nethers, only partially hidden by a few fine feathers. "Easy now, Chris," I instructed myself, trying to get my focus back onto work. "How ironic would it be if it were me who lost self control, instead of her?" I asked myself as I shook my head.

I sighed and tapped my keyboard and slouched back in my chair. I didn't exactly have a lot of pressing work to do. The economy wasn't exactly rendering a lot of work for us. If I had all my work consolidated together, I'd be out of here by lunch. But, it was like that for everyone. I wagered most of the people around this office only pretended to be working most of the time. Not just here, but probably all the state departments as well.

Sophie's little peep show reminded of me of something I had been meaning to look into. I tapped my tablet, bringing up a query to determine why, exactly, some droms even have mammalian genitals. After a few minutes, I grunted in frustration at the lack of meaningful results. I set the tablet aside and pulled out my phone. "I'll just ask Dan," I concluded. I paused as I began to tap out my message. Such a question could sound a little strange. I stared out the window for a minute as I formulated my wording in a way to make my question sound innocent enough..

"Hey, I just recently noticed that Sophie has what looks to be the anatomy of a mammal between her legs. I thought raptors were reptiles, what's up with that? I assume that what makes a hybrid a hybrid?" I asked, with the last question being intentionally wrong, only thrown out there to make myself out to be a newbie.

I slouched in my chair some more, finger tapping my forehead as I waited for a reply. The phone blipped a couple minutes later. "Sorta. That's normal, she's just an intrahybrid type."

"Intrahybrid?" I asked to myself. I've heard of hybrids but this term was new to me. I pulled up my tablet again and looked it up. A wiki article was the first result, and looked promising. I pulled it up and began to look it over.

The term was an anatomical conditioning and, from what I could tell, not well known to the general public. It referred to a genetic modification done to the ovaries in which it would produce super homologous eggs. These eggs could dynamically restructure in such a way that they were homologous with mismatched chromosomes to a certain extent. The reasoning was that, due to the small number of original DNA samples recovered, the gene pool in droms was very narrow in pure raptors, more properly known as Type A droms.

Since the small batch of Type A raptors could not produce differences in appearance and behavior sought by the industry, hybrids breeds were engineered, or Type B droms. The name was a misnomer, as people often thought this to mean they had DNA of other animals. It instead referred to the mere referencing of other animals as a base point to understand how to make the desired changes. However, they couldn't mate with different hybrid breeds because, on the DNA level, they were technically different species. The exception was Type AA raptors, sometimes known as palette pures, which were still original but only had recolored feathers.

Research into the homological compensation began back in the 1980s on bovines, with the intention of spawning new livestock species. The results were inconclusive, but in 2005, it was adopted and then adapted to be used for deins. Eleven years later, the first specimens were born, with velociraptors scheduled to be done in a few years.

Known as Type C droms, or sometimes Master Breeders, they were were a middle-ground to create natural breeds. Type C males could only mate with other Type Cs, and their role was mainly to produce more females. Only a small number of Type C breeds were needed to fulfill their role of creating new breeds without the need of genetic engineering. Their coats were always either white or light grey to allow for maximum palette versatility. "Hey, that's you," I said to Sophie. Fascinated, I read on.

A Type D drom was born when a C female mated with an A or B. The chicks were known as the Demi-natural breeds. A D1 had the original reproductive organs of a Type B, limiting their breedability. More sought after were the Type D2s, whose females had the reproductive organs of their mother. When two separate D2 breeds mated, a Type E drom was born, finally known as the natural beeds. However, Type E, D2, and C were all categorized as intrahybrids.

The article was very vague on why the vagina itself needed to be modified. But from what I could tell, an ordinary cloaca still technically contained a vagina, just internally. It appears the modifications resulted in the forming of an external version, like mammals have, and just moved the intestinal track up a couple inches. For the most part, their inners were still mostly the same as a cloaca bearing dein.

"Sheesh, Soph, they really did a number on you guys," I said with a sigh as I shook my head at how far genetic research has come in such a short span of time.

The issue with the narrow gene pool was curious, now that I thought about if further. Years ago, I noticed that all the members within any one breed looked nearly identical to one another. But with intrahybrids becoming more common, I was noticing a lot more variety. At least in deins. Velociraptors had only just recently got started on all this. "I wonder how many people had a similar naming scheme as Dan for his Penguin Raptors," I thought with a chuckle.

In any case, even with intrahybrids, the gene pool problem could only be avoided by professional breeders knowing what they were doing. I could only conclude that one of the main reasons fixing was mandatory was to prevent people from accidentally spawning a bunch of inbreds and starting a mess of hereditary problems.

I didn't have much success finding any other details on the topic before my supervisor stepped in. A slip of the hand locked the tablet, turning off the screen. I didn't exactly want everyone knowing I was researching the intricacies of drom genitalia in my office.

"Waller," my blond haired boss stuck his head through the cracked door, "You coming to the call or not?"

"Oh..." I stalled as I pulled up the calendar on my computer quickly. "Eugh, there was no reminder set for this thing, it seems," I said in excuse. Looking up, he didn't really seem care, but rather just waiting for me to answer the question. "Right...I'll be right there."

"Good," he said, and started to head back until his vision found Sophie down below me. He stared for a couple seconds, looked as though he were about to say something, but just shook his head a couple times and walked away.

"What, never seen a Deinonychus before?" I said quietly to myself as I got up. "Come on, little lady, let's go," I roused her up. Sophie fluffed out her feathers as she stretched out and yawned out of her nap.

She followed me a couple door down, where the door read "Katie Macilali". I knocked and then cracked open the door. She waved her arms forward, gesturing that it was okay to come inside, and smiled when she saw Sophie with me.

"Hey, I got a call to attend. Mind watching after Sophie? It'll be about an hour," I asked.

Katie snorted, "Oh, so just because I watch after other people's pets from time to time, you think I'm just the go to gal?"

I looked at her, giving me a serious look, trying to figure out if she was joking. She was, as her poker face crumbled into a smile, "Yeah, of course it's fine," she told me, then looked at Sophie. "You're just the sweetest thing, aren't you," Katie said in a baby voice as she pet her crest.

"Cool, thanks," I started to head out but decided to quickly brief her as I left. "She's sort of a copy cat, so she'll feed off your aura. If you're just chill and calm, she should be too... Pretty easy to look after."

"I'm sure I'll be fine, relax," she said dismissively, "She is," she added, citing how Sophie was already cooing peacefully in response to the petting.

"Don't get too attached, now, she's going home with me," I teased Katie as I walked out and closed the door.