FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

How to not catfish your date

Part 1

by: rat bastard

Wintersucks>

So that was that, right. There he was, insisting on running into every mob he could find, just dragging them all to the base and I was dying like every five minutes. Total jerk.

Tatertots>

Oh heck. Did you have to toss him? Was it that bad?

Wintersucks>

THEN he started swearing. Nasty stuff.

Tatertots>

Seriously? But .. wtf

Wintersucks>

It's like some kinda catfishing! He seemed decent, you know he did. The moment he got a chance he started acting like grade-A trash and wouldn't shut up.

Tatertots>

You know the guy was hitting on me.

Wintersucks>

me too. he wouldn't treat you like I do babe.

Wintersucks>

not at all.

Wintersucks>

no didn't mean that to come off desperate and cringey I swear

Tatertots>

effing lol

Tatertots>

listen regardless casanova I gotta head to bed. Work afternoon tomorrow, I'm going to be very tired.

Wintersucks>

damn okay. Sleep tight. Chat tomorrow.

Tatertots>

yeah. Try to get on during the day okay. It'd be nice.

Wintersucks>

ni ni

The lid of the laptop closed. Thief, alias Wintersucks, stared at his fingers reflectively on the surface. They were comparatively tiny fingers against the mid-sized laptop, with rough grey fur over the dark skin and long claws. His arms, too, were thin, tiny things also covered in grey fur. He had to splay arms and fingers across the keyboard like he was playing a piano just to chat online, clattering around leaning forward and stretching, but he'd mastered it. Those fingers were a blessing and a curse, but more blessing, he figured.

Still, it always left him in a bad mood when he emerged from the online world to reality and noticed them. He pushed the laptop back into the position Ms. Kowalski seemed to prefer it, and dropped sinuously off the office chair to the floor.

From the office the usual route was familiar. Noiselessly as possible, he padded on all fours to the kitchen, and spent a few moments waddling the small trash can towards the refrigerator and using it to prop the door after prying it open. The result of the foray was great: an easy to pry open tupperware container of cold macaroni cheese, which he was careful to scoop a really modest couple handfuls of, before the room was fixed back up again.

Next, the sink. A drink was easy to sip from the tap; the drawer handles of the cabinets were like a monkey bar set and climbing wall all in one, and he had no problem hefting himself up. He didn't like using the soap, but warm water on the spray setting provided a quick shower he could shake himself dry of easily enough. He spared 'the Kowalster' the ordeal of finding wet footprints or clogged fur in the drain using a kitchen towel.

There wasn't much else to do, once he was fed, watered, and washed, and now that the online servers would basically be dead. It was four a.m., and there was already a tinge of paler blue in the night sky outside. Ms. Kowalski wouldn't be up for another couple of hours, but why would he take the risk of hanging around? Why would he take the risk of wandering around outside, in growing daylight?

He clambered out the window. Then, he hopped up the old squat red brick building's fire escape, almost to the roof, where a final dusty 'attic' floor had a boarded up window with enough room to squeeze himself through. At some point, he believed, this floor must have housed some kind of business. Now, the owners obviously didn't have the spare cash to fix it up or rent it; it was left to the cobwebs and forgotten storage. Left to him.

He felt like the entire building was his. Nobody even suspected his presence.

Thief was a raccoon.

Outwardly, he wasn't anything more than that: barely able to stand two feet tall, anybody would assume he was just like any of the grey and black, ring-tailed trash scavengers patrolling the city and digging into dumpsters on any given night. And yet for some reason, mutation or magic made no difference to him, he understood things. Listening to parents babble to their children in the city park a couple blocks away had taught him his first words as a kit. It had been rough learning more, but here he was: master of an entire building, extravagantly fed and that mostly not on garbage, online casanova, stealing access to laptops and thinking about trying to get a remote job and a bank account.

Yet, still, it was frustrating. He was still caught off guard by the sight of his useless little mitts after pretending to be a person online. People would react just as badly as to any raccoon if he were spotted. He had no desire to be jabbed at with umbrellas or brooms or just generally shooed off, or to deal with any of the dogs free-roaming or held on very loosely controlled leashes. If he dared to speak in somebody other than a child's earshot, he had guesses as to what would happen, and didn't like them.

Day was coming and day wasn't safe. It was time to curl up with a book, then sleep.

Dusk

Dusk was about the time it started being safe to be out. It was also fun. He took the chance to stretch his limbs as often as possible, except when it was pouring. Tonight, the remnants of the sunset were glorious, blood orange fanning across a huge portion of the sky with deep blue starting to show in the east. It was hot, but with a light breeze as he clambered down and made the easy hop first to the dumpster then to the ground.

People were easy to hear, if they were about. But this was a quiet little town, really; a few thousand residents with a core of shops and other buildings that never did get above six stories. So people were rarely around at this time , if he avoided the bar area. It was with comparative ease that he made his way down the slight hill, through an alleyway, round a corner through a yard, then another block. Almost to the park, a cat hissed at him from a dark yard, and he had to scramble to a fence to gain height while making a fierce show - hissing, swearing under his breath, trying to intimidate the damn thing. It didn't pester him far beyond its yard; he was too much bother. Cats preferred to pick fights they could win; enough of a flash of teeth would almost always deter one.

When he reached the park it was first to the garbage bins, which mostly hadn't been picked over yet. Usually there was something good, a bag of caramel popcorn or half a sandwich, and once, a working pair of bluetooth headphones. As he ate a bit of hamburger bun with mayo he stood on the lip of the bin, balanced with his tail, and just let the scents in the air dance across him while looking at the lights on the water..

By the time he finished he had caught something better yet on the air. He continued on. There was a little pond or lagoon here, an overflow from the nearby meandering river. It was bordered in part by wild forest walking trails, away from the benches. The wild raccoons in the area made this area their base. He could smell their tracks, as he picked his way into the woods.

A ratchety mix of hiss and growl eventually greeted him. Shining eyes peeked at him curiously. He was studiously polite in reply, not meeting her gaze and sidling sideways in an arc around her. With his back arched, he crooned back. The other raccoon didn't act nervous, just pawing the ground a little and fidgeting as she faced him hissing. She was lovely.

“Just checking," he said, suddenly. “You in there? Understand me?" Blank incomprehension met him. He hadn't really hoped, and it didn't disappoint him much. They continued to spiral around each other a little bit longer. When she turned to retreat under cover, he followed. An hour later he was much more cheerful than he had been in a while.

Night

Wintersucks>

Good morning starshine. How's taters today? Extra buttery I presume? Need a little salt and pepper in your life? Rwar.

Tatertots>

I know you're basically nocturnal but even if you're just waking up that seems excessively cheerful.

Wintersucks>

Aw, what happened? Bad shift?

Tatertots>

Just.. busy. And people treat you like crap.

Wintersucks>

People treat me like crap too. Believe me I get it. Part of why I like talking to you, you don't.

Tatertots>

I like you too, wish I knew more about you.

Wintersucks>

Not much to say. Bumming a couch to sleep on. No job. Horribly deformed freak.

Tatertots>

I doubt the last bit. You gotta volunteer stuff sometime, Winter.

Wintersucks>

Alright.. ran into a friend earlier tonight.

Tatertots>

Oh? is that why you're so cheerful?

Wintersucks>

Maybe

Tatertots>

Ho ho ho should I be jealous

Wintersucks>

Flattered if you are. But, um.. no, she's not like, a long term thing.

Tatertots>!

The conversation kept going a long while, touching randomly on different topics: my little pony, star trek, marijuana, the asshole coworker. Thief was good at improvising on the snippets he did know about a lot of these things, and besides that, Taters seemed to need a listener more than anything else. He kept her up a little too late, as he often did.

Later

The next couple days passed in much the same way. The weather cooled a little, and Thief roamed further afield at night, checking the alleys behind various stores. He had a frustrated ambition to get himself a tablet; distractedly occupying Ms. Kowalski's office nightly had a risky flavour to it. His first thought had been combing the dumpsters behind an electronics shop, which were easy to wriggle into unless padlocked tight, but that hadn't panned out - yet. He felt this must be like lobstering. One had to set their traps and check for the catch. Hopefully he wouldn't have to keep looking until Christmas.

He had been out late on this round, and the sky was growing paler. The first birds chirped a persistent chorus all around him. It was cool, the breeze was sweet with greenery, and he almost felt like whistling. A faint dampness in the grass and soil underfoot was an almost too-chill tickle to the senses. He emerged from under the privacy hedge of a yard on his usual path back to the red brick building's top floor, when he suddenly heard a savage bark and skitter of claws on pavement.

For an instant he was frozen in shock.

He got a faint impression of a man, evidently quietly out on a morning walk, wisping smoke, behind the charging bulk of a dog that was obviously, suddenly, yanking him almost off his feet. Suddenly the dog was just loose, all in the flash of a second, before he could even completely twist around and jerk his body into a run.

He charged blindly under the hedge, just caring that he was going away from the teeth coming at him, and in an instant realized he hadn't picked the little worn footpath he had when his head crammed against the concrete base of a big electrical box. He was scrambling for a clear way around and through the unfamiliar brush, when the dog crashed in behind him and pain shot through his leg. He felt himself being pulled at, with far too much sheer power to resist.

The man caught up then, yelling obscenities at his dog as he grabbed the leash and wrangled it under control. The man didn't even realize the dog had actually managed to bite whatever it was under the hedge, and they were soon dragged away.

Hiding under the bushes, Thief was shaking. His leg burned, but over the next few moments he forced himself to look at the wound, all in a sick feeling of panic. Blood was dripping through his fur, and the flesh underneath that was ugly, but he thanked whatever god raccoons could pray to that when he gingerly bent his knee and flexed his ankle, nothing felt broken. It burned and ached, it was bleeding, but it didn't seem like any serious vein had been scissored open either. 'Just a flesh wound' was the movie phrase that bubbled up to his mind, and he cursed the glibness of it. This was still really bad. The dog had nipped a huge crescent of bleeding holes into the back of his leg all in one go.

It took him half an hour to hobble the rest of the way home. He had to hide more, as the sun was rising, people were stirring, and he was just slower. His heart rushed in his ears as he saw another man-dog combo out on the start of a walk, the dog spinning and leaping, and didn't move from cover until they were well out of sight. He was almost weeping in frustration by the time he did get to the fire escape, not just because of the pain but because he'd been frightened that foot and car traffic would come too much alive and he'd be forced to hole up somewhere cold and dirty for the entire day.

Three legs got him up to the top. He didn't even try to sneak at this point. His fur had clotted with the blood, and it wasn't perfect, but it was acting at least a little like a natural bandage. Shoving himself through the boarded window hurt, and opened the crusted wound a little again. He toppled himself over the windowsill onto the floor. At least he was home, and he had a few supplies squirrelled away here.

Long ago by raccoon standards, he had shadowed a series of lessons at an elementary school from the shrubbery outside the windows. It had taught him a lot. Young children get taught a lot of basic things; fire safety, for instance, whereupon they inevitably start to pester their parents to develop fire escape routes and have drills. Even a smattering of first aid: wash your hands, wash a cut, playing with band aids, who do you call if you think somebody's badly hurt (911! shouts the class), don't be frightened of doctors or people in respirator masks because they're here to help, and all of that.

So, Thief had a few things. Bandages, rubbing alcohol, other little bits like cream and aspirin, although he didn't know if the medicine might be poison to him and would only think to use it as a last resort. He had stolen it all, because there was no way to get it other than stealing it, and he had felt bad doing it. Now he was thankful he had. Half a bottle of water was emptied over his leg, and he was careless of the puddle he made as he cleaned himself. The stuff called rubbing alcohol, he had read the package for and vaguely understood, but he didn't expect it to burn. By the time he was done that, he was shaking a little again. The bandages he forced to be tight, scissoring through them with his own teeth, curled around in an awkward ball on himself. Then he crawled under the cover of some desks into the shadow and tried to sleep.

Noon

Eyes bored into him from behind a snapping set of teeth that would rip his limbs off if he was caught. It was coming, and he was cornered. He couldn't even see the walls that hemmed him in, but he felt them. It was all in slow motion.

Thief snapped awake. Sharp bright light filtered in through the cracks in the window boarding, leaving everything feeling dim but not dark. His leg felt like one giant stiff aching bruise. He looked at it, and was comforted by the fact that though the bandage was red, it wasn't very red. But he couldn't sleep. He fretted, twisted, and tried for a while, but realized he didn't want to sleep yet, not quite so soon after that nightmare. Ms. Kowalski would be out to work, for another little while. Moving around in daylight hours was risky, of course, even just the fire escape, but he needed company more than anything else right now.

Wintersucks>

hey, uh. You awake?

Tatertots>

of course I'm awake. I'm surprised you're awake

Wintersucks>

couldn't sleep, sorry to bug you.

Tatertots>

Nah you're not bugging me. Shit's quiet. What's up?

Wintersucks>

You're gonna think this is the stupidest thing. I just need to talk a bit.

Tatertots>

Why would I think it's stupid? We can talk. Just tell me what's up, dumbass

Wintersucks>

I had a really bad nightmare. A dog attacked me.

Tatertots>

uh... you dreamed a dog attacked you, or a dog attacked you?

Wintersucks>

...both

Tatertots>

are you okay??

Wintersucks>

...

...

no

Wintersucks>

I'm sorry. I fixed it, I bandaged it. You don't gotta worry.

Tatertots>

You have to go to a doctor, man

Wintersucks>

I can't

Tatertots>

...

call me right now. I'm not taking no for an answer here.

In the end, Taters didn't take no for an answer. Maybe it was just the fact that Thief was tired, maybe also that he just wanted to hear a friendly voice for the first time in a long, long time. The apartment was empty, and he gambled on an hour before he would absolutely have to vacate anyway. He thought about a lot of reasons to say no, but ultimately, he just wanted to say yes.

“Hi," he said, once he'd figured out the client enough to turn the chat into an audio call. It wasn't something he'd done before. He knew his voice would sound a bit odd. He also knew Taters was unlikely to say as much... or hoped so, anyway. She seemed fair, online.

“You little dumbass, stressing me out," came the lightly accented melodic voice in reply. There was a faint rueful tone to it. “I'm not going to ask you why you're being so stupid right away, but please tell me you're not immediately bleeding to death."

“No, that part's done with at least," Thief said, surprising himself with a sense of humour about it, all of a sudden. “Taters, I…"

“Sarah."

“Okay, Sarah. I uh–"

“Don't even try. Look. After a dog bite you need at least a tetanus shot. What is it, are you scared of doctors?"

“Actually yes I am."

An exasperated breath came from the laptop speaker. “You know," Sarah sighed, “my dad once delayed going to a doctor a little too long. He had a long lasting headache, and just insisted on waiting until it was convenient to get to the clinic. He's still alive, but the stroke didn't do him any favours, and the hospital was not fun. Winter.. shit, what is your actual name?"

“Thief."

“Seriously?"

“Yep. Don't ask."

A snort replied. “Your parents sure screwed you with that one."

“..."

Sarah continued, “Look. I don't want to be pissed off at you the way I was at my dad, okay. And I was, for a long time."

Thief closed his eyes and leaned his head back, breathing slow and staying quiet. His mind was spinning. Fuck, was one word that kept coming up in his head.

“Where did you say you were? Somewhere up in washington?"

“Yeah, it took me a bit to figure that out…", Thief replied, absently.

“You do know how close that is to northern california," came the flat-voiced question.

“Not really."

“Do you want me to come up there, frog march you into a clinic, and hold your hand as you freak out, because I would."

Thief just squawked a laugh.

“Because I was thinking of asking you if I could come up and visit sometime anyway," the voice continued, obviously electing to just blurt it out. “I have very few friends, Thief, and you're not going to be the second person I care about who stupidly risks their own lives. Not on my watch."

You'd have to take me to a vet, Thief thought, for a moment. Then he said, “look.. this is going to sound like a really stupid question. But can you answer it? Seriously answer it?"

“Uh, I'll try?"

“Is a talking animal a person?"

“Um, you're not that ugly. I guarantee it."

Thief made a razzing sound. “I'm being serious here. Just imagine it's some Disney stuff. Walking, talking, animal person."

“...you're a furry? What does that–"

“No, I'm not a furry!" Thief virtually yelped.

There was a sound of drumming fingertips and a sigh from the laptop speakers. “Okay, fine," Sarah said slowly before continuing, “if it can talk, that means it's smart. It's got a soul. It's a person."

“And you'd respect it?"

“I mean… I guess as much as anybody? I hope so. Intellectually it'd be right to."

Something in Thief relaxed a little as he understood he was actually going to roll these particular dice. YOLO and all that jazz. His leg was throbbing. And yet still what he said next sounded like the stupidest thing he'd ever said. There was no great way to say it. “Okay, so. I'm actually a talking animal."

Dead silence met this, for a few moments, before he continued. “A raccoon."

“My profile picture is actually a picture of me."

“And I'm scared of doctors because way too many animals end up euthanized at the vet."

“And I'm not going to talk to them and get myself dissected, okay."

Sarah interrupted his series of blurted statements with, “woah, woah, s-stop-stop-stop a second here."

Thief almost felt like giggling. If he let himself he really would be laughing, and it wouldn't sound amused so much as awful and stressed out. “Video call," he said, suddenly. “Turn this into a video call."

She did, without comment. He accepted, then sat back in the chair a bit with just his upper body and head in the camera. He lifted one arm, splayed his little grey-furred digits, and waved. Then, he said: “Told you so."

The woman on the screen had dirty-blond hair in long curled bangs, green eyes, and a complexion that looked like she'd burn easily in the sun. She had thin, delicate features. She was looking at him now with a range of expressions crossing her face. “..w..wave your hand again," she said, slowly.

He did.

“It.. doesn't look like there's any artifacting," she said, with a scowl.

“And no strings either," he said. “Look."

He reached forward, spreading his hands across the keyboard and playing the keys. She got the notification instantly.

Wintersucks>

Yes this is really me.

She still looked completely nonplussed. Eventually, she took a breath, and exhaled it with a shaky sound. “where.. exactly where, are you?"

He told her. He had to tell her twice, because she was so distracted watching him speak that she didn't note it down the first. “And I'm going to have to meet you by the fire escape, if you're really coming."

“You realize you're asking me to meet you in a dark alleyway."

“Sue me. I'm a raccoon."

She blinked, laughing startledly. “Damn it," she said, finally. She was shaking her head. “I'm coming. I almost can't miss this. I'm going to be bringing two things: bear spray for if you're lying, and a shoebox for if you're not, so this better not be some weird joke. I can be there.." - she scowled a moment - “jeez, six, seven hours? I have to drive it."

Thief's leg was still hurting, but he felt bubbly, light and cheerful in an unfamiliar way. Stress had leaked out of him like he was a water balloon that had been popped.

“Sounds like a date," he said.