Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 46078 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46078 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
“Yes.”
“Alright. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to round these girls up, pen them somewhere smaller and then run them one by one through a smaller enclosure that allows me to reach their udders.”
The look I get back upon suggesting this course of action is as if I just suggested something entirely mad. I forget that there’s a whole world of difference between omnivores and carnivores. As advanced as the Leonids are, they don’t really consider animals for anything much more than their meat and maybe their hides.
It’s mad, because cats love milk. Maybe Leonids don’t love milk. Maybe they don’t know they love milk yet. No, I’m sure it would have occurred to them to try the milk at some point in their history.
“You don’t drink milk? You don’t feed your young milk products?”
“If a female is unable to feed her young, there is always a spare teat with another mother. Six or eight teats to a female, there’s always milk to go around.”
“Except when there isn’t. Where I come from, we take milk from dairy animals, and feed it to our young. The milk is usually close enough to nourish them. It’s not perfect, but it is better than starving.”
“We will try it,” Azlan says.
“Of course we’re going to try it,” I say. “It’s all we can do.”
After handing the babies to Nyan, who has appeared to help, I stride toward the goats, eyeing the ones with the biggest udders. They do have milk. It’s just about getting the milk out of them. Azlan accompanies me, his expression curious.
“Do you have a head stall of any kind?”
“I can hold them.”
“Alright. They probably won’t appreciate it. We need some grain or other feed if you have it. A nice distraction as to what’s happening at their udders.”
Talking about goats is distracting me from the horrors of the situation, and the fact that if I can’t get milk out of these does there’s a very real chance I won’t be able to help the cubs, and I really want to help the cubs.
I pick the doe with the biggest udder. It only takes a few minutes to bribe her into being caught with food, and then Azlan holds the doe for me while I get down beside her and start working her teats with a gentle hand.
“Bleheheheh!” She makes a sound of complaint, but is actually relatively good to milk, all things considered. I keep working through the herd, though it makes my hands and forearms ache. Not all the goats are as good as the first one. They are not used to being handled, and their way of communicating that to me is to kick aggressively. They are also not natural dairy animals, which means they are not producing great amounts, but there is a good number of them, and I manage to get a gallon or so out by bribery, begging, and sheer desperation.
Of course there are no proper teats, but we make do with bottles and adapted sippers. They have technology and they are adept craftsmen, so when I explain that I need something rubbery and soft for a cub to suckle on, I have something within the hour.
In the meantime, the pride has been set into new order. The dead have been moved for burial, the sick have been moved into interior caves, and most of the youngsters have found male family, fathers, uncles, and others to look after them. There are just two babies whose mothers were taken by Leonidas and whose fathers were killed in the raid. They are too young to be weaned and must have milk.
I am watched carefully by a ring of curious and concerned Leonids who do not know who I am, besides the fact that Azlan declares me to be his mate, as I take the smaller and weaker of the two infant cubs and set him in my lap. He is whimpering softly, and I feel a welling of emotion in me as I imagine how awful it must have been for their mothers to have to make the decision to leave him and the others behind, not knowing what would become of them.
“It’s going to be alright,” I tell the cub, who is very fuzzy and absolutely adorable, with golden fur and bright blue eyes. He might be one of the cutest things I have ever seen in my entire existence. His little tail twitches when I bring the bottle of swiftly pasteurized milk to his mouth.
I fed Buttface when he was a baby. His mother was killed by a Growler, and if I had not taken him in he would have died of starvation and exposure. That experience has led me to know that an infant animal will not always take milk, even when hungry, if it is not from their mother.