Fates of the Ferals: The Carver Cubs
#1 of Fates of the Ferals
Okay, surprisingly enough, you have stumbled upon one of the scarce handful of genuinely "clean" stories on SoFurry, formerly known as YiffStar. This is kind of weird for me because my usual run of tastes would probably turn your hair white and curdle the food in your stomach for months. However, if there is anything anywhere in this series that you consider to be questionable please let me know, and I'll fix the label to "adult." Thank you!
Partial credit for this goes to Kergiby, who is responsible for its starting premise, and his advice and proofing helped the story along immensely.
The Carver Cubs
Mitchell Carver Puma Concolor carefully peeled the bandage off of his wounded paw, and he scowled deeply as he inspected it. His brother had bitten him there three days ago. The wound itself merely itched, and it wasn't even an injury he would have held against his brother. What really chafed against him, though, was being scolded afterward for attempting to correct his brother using a rolled-up newspaper.
"You're not his daddy. You're not his daddy," he said nasally, emulating his mother. "Well, then who is going to be his daddy?" he muttered. "Not Dad. Not you." He wished he had said it then, even if it meant a beating if he did. "They spoil him rotten," he groused, "and then they blame me when he ruins something or gets into something." Mitchell could hardly hate his brother, but he couldn't stand the brat either. And having a special needs child was the ultimate embarrassment.
As if fulfilling the ancient prophecy about how talk of the devil can cause him to appear, Zeke suddenly came scootching along the hardwood floor into the den. Although Mitchell couldn't understand why his parents bothered, they kept him fully clothed and forced him to wear a diaper instead of trying to litter train him. In truth, his parents had taken him to one of those religious healers, and they had been advised to try to "normalize" him. Therefore, he wore clothing all the time even though he would shred it to pieces before he even grew out of it, and he was strapped into a chair at dinnertime even though his back wasn't made for sitting upright. Mitch found the charade ridiculous.
"And young Ezekiel here," he said as if an announcer at a fashion show, "is sporting a red flannel shirt with a brown corduroy coverall!" He looked down at his brother. He had been a cute, little cougar cub four years ago, but he had grown into an obscenely hyper-and troublesome- adolescent. As with most feral-born children, his physical development was accelerated.
Mitchell's eyes narrowed, and he said in his own voice, "I hope you know that's part of my Christmas you're wearing, sport."
The Zeke took the statement as a challenge and lowered his forefront while raising his rump up high as if intending to pounce. This enticed a chuckle from his brother, for Mitch-very few actually called him "Mitchell"-had never actually resented Ezekiel himself. Ezekiel-who was normally called by "Zeke"-was merely difficult. Being held responsible for Zeke's behavior by Mitch and Zeke's parents, on the other hand, did not sit well with Mitch, and he took care to advertise this fact whenever their parents were around.
Mitch humored the pose by reaching for his baseball and tossing it into the air. With a fluid movement, his brother leapt up and caught the object, and he immediately put it down again at his brother's feet. Mitchell's parents didn't like it when he played with his brother this way. "It's demeaning to him," they said. "It encourages him to act like he's some kind of animal." Meanwhile, Mitch had done some research on how his non-anthropomorphic counterparts actually behaved, and he had never heard of a zoomorphic cougar, wild or tame, that would play in this manner.
After having his brother repeat the feat of catching the ball out of the air several more times, he wiped the baseball off and put it back into its mitt. The mitt rested on a plush, red automan that rested in front of a plush, red recliner.
It was high time he sat down and tried to do some homework, so he sat down in the recliner and pulled out his biology text. He started skimming through a chapter on endosymbiosis, leaving his brother to his own devices. In time, he got bored with the book and switched on the television, and he zoned out while watching a hit sitcom involving a mixed-species gay couple that had each brought their own equally matched broods of children into the marriage.
At some point, he heard a clatter and a rustling in the kitchen. Mitch started to get up immediately, but the television had pulled him in and was not going to be quick to let him go. After the program cut to a commercial break, though, he quickly stepped into the kitchen to investigate. To his disgust, his foot came down on a pile of meat scraps, and his disgust was redoubled when he took in the sight of his little brother, sitting amidst a strew of assorted rubbish and gnawing determinedly on a large bone. His clothes were of course ruined.
"Zeke!" Mitch knew his parents would be coming home any minute, and he needed to decide as quickly as he could whether cleaning his brother or cleaning up the kitchen should take priority. The first thing he would have to do, though, would be to get that bone away from his brother. As he reached for it, though, the feral stiffened and began a low growl deep in his throat, pulling it away.
After several trials at getting his brother to surrender the bone, Mitch changed tactics. Instead of continuing to play this game of "grab the bone," he bent down rapidly and grabbed his brother by his coveralls, hefting him up and carrying him off to the bathroom. His brother attempted to hold onto the bone, but he found this to be difficult and soon dropped it.
As Mitch was disrobing his brother, he noticed that the sudden grab had caused the coverall to rip at one of the seams. Expelling a sigh, he unbuttoned the shirt from his brother and slipped it off. Tailoring for feral-born children was highly expensive, and he somehow knew that his parents would be enraged by the damage. Mitch was certain that his birthday fund would be raided over this.
Cleaning his brother was one giant hassle, and this was partly because of the fact that Zeke was very picky about the temperature of the water. If immersed in water that was either too cold or too hot, he would immediately leap back out. Also, the bigger the kid got, the more of a nuisance it was. However, Mitch finally stripped down himself to keep from getting his clothes soggy, situated his brother in the warm water, and got scrubbing.
As always, his brother's rapid sexual development threw him for a loop. Being either late maturing or simply not very masculine, he wasn't coming along well in that area, and he suffered from severe gynecomastia. If he sat just right, he even looked the part of an exceptionally pretty, young queen. Being a healthy, virile, heterosexual tom, Mitch never ever did any such thing.
While he sponged soap suds over his brother's head, he wondered glumly if he would ever be able to ask Michelle out on a date. She had always been nice to him and sat down next to him during lunch, but she had never shown a real interest in him or, for that matter, any male whatsoever. What really attracted him to her was that she was incredibly shapely even for a female. Some people insisted that she was a bit on the pudgy side and had a little bit too much muscle on her, but her padding all fell in the right places to Mitch's eyes.
It was his brother's very loud purring that awakened him from his reverie, and he realized with embarrassment that he had been petting on his brother. "You're a pain," he said defensively, and he rushed his brother through the remainder of his bath. He clothed himself, and then he tugged a fresh diaper onto his brother. Zeke would just have to spend the afternoon in ahis pajamas, given the ruined state of his clothing.
He tidied the kitchen up, and then he fled back to his studies, which was the only lasting escape from his parents' disapproving glare.
The sound of his brother's purr would haunt him for a while.