Prologue: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/34519072/
Part 1: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/35266238/
Part 2: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/35277543/
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At the dunk tank booth, Kathy Cymric was having a surprising time of her life. She was sour before, as she didn’t really like getting wet, being the cat woman that she was. Baths were the exception, but her thick overcoat of fur made toweling off a chore. No, it made it an occupation worthy of self-compensation. Luckily, she did have a change of clothes on hand in her car’s trunk, because she thought she was going to be with her kitten to partake in that water balloon battle later. And her clothes were already dark enough that there was no worry about her goodies showing through the fabric.
However, in a twist of the plot, it turned out that her drafting to the position of dunk tank dunk-person allowed to do what she always only thought about doing; insulting people and not get in trouble for it.
“Come on, Jorts, this feline’s not getting damp if you keep throwing with those granny arms.” She hollered at the current patron in his cut-off jean-shorts. Really bad fashion choice, as he had legs so pasty white, they were neon, with an unflattering tan-line from his ankles to his toes, ick.
“My La-La can pitch better. See better, too, Goggles.” She heckled at the next customer, with glasses that had a prescription more powerful than binoculars. This was a riot to her. She could toss as much mud as she wanted, within limits, and no one would be able to give her flack later because she was simply “doing her job.” The job of agitating the customer so they’d keep coming back to get even, thus spending more tickets, thus spending more money.
“Kid, come on, you trying to bean yourself in the beans.” Kathy called out more gently, as the current pitcher was an aardvark cub with their mother. “Every pro knows to let go right here when they throw.” The cat woman carefully hinted at the little guy, demonstrating with her own arm the exact spot where he ought to let go of the baseball to actually throw it instead of spiking it into the dirt. The cub stuck his tongue out the side of his snout, furled his eyebrows in concentration, and let the ball fly. And he still missed.
He hung his head in defeat, but Kathy didn’t let his dampened mood last. “Keep practicing, slugger.” She encouraged, but still with a playfully goading tone. The cub’s mother patted her boy’s back and led him off for a new game, managing to give Kathy a thankful glance and a thumbs up.
“Ugh, really,” A disdainfully familiar male voice piped up in disgust. “They couldn’t have gotten someone pleasant for everyone to look at, instead they got a piggy in a fur coat.” A nearby pig zuman gasped at the owner of the voice and horked at him, stopping off in disbelief. Kathy knew who that voice belonged to, and when she looked to see, her sighting confirmed her worst assumptions.
“Well hey, Blake,” Kathy greeted over to him in a fake-happy tone. “Come to have a go at dunking this cookie?” The feline gestured, complimenting herself. Blake chuckle-scoffed at her choice of words, and Caroline, the harridan he chose to put a ring on, had the same reaction. Kathy knew they were just thinking that she was more like a sausage in a blanket, with a lot of sausage and too much doughy blanket, rather than the tasty sugary treat the cat mom referred to herself as. Whatever, at least most people liked those too. And Caroline was really one to talk, considering her own frame.
“Suit yourself.” Kathy shrugged off, and she returned to her involuntary volunteer work. “Let’s go, Noodle Arms, so that people that can actually throw can go.”
“Yeah, dunk so we don’t need to look at her for a while.” Blake interjected. To most of the faire-goers, this wasn’t unusual. It was standard procedure, truly. Blake, for any number of reasons that would require a psychiatric study to decode them all, had this urge, a need to call people names like he was a jerk jock in a substandard, high school centered TV movie. And his favored targets were weaklings, who could be anyone, and hetero-ab-normative people, meaning “fags” and “dykes” and “trannies” as he called gays and lesbians and the transgendered. But his favorite and preferred targets were “fatties.” Particularly if they were women.
Sure, he’d shut up at Round Table Pizza where he managed, but everyone knew he was trash-talking the customers over how gross and ugly and sweaty they were, from his perspective. But he ought to have spoken for himself, as his profile didn’t cut the outline of the athlete he once may have been.
“When you sweat, is it lard or cheese?” Blake called out.
“Yeah, lard or cheese.” Tripp echoed. Kathy rolled her eyes and attempted to tune out the commentary from the rotten peanut gallery. It was a challenge, like trying to remove a catchy, annoying jingle from an advertisement that showed up at every TV commercial break. Every two- or three-times Kathy would playfully heckle a patron for a failed toss, Blake would toss a spiteful heckle at her. About her weight, usually.
Kathy finally got an excuse to take a break, as she needed to go to bathroom. And no, she didn’t opt to pee in the dunk. The cat woman wouldn’t even pee in the pool.
Once she squeezed the lemon, she returned to the tank and was greeted by Tripp following behind her, chorusing the degrading title of Fat-Cat at her. “Fat-Cat, Fat-Cat, Fat-Cat,” he repeated over and over, with an obnoxious jabbing finger at her to match the boy’s rudeness.
“Child you better get that finger away before something comes along and bites it,” Kathy scolded at Tripp, snapping her jaws and clicking her feline fangs for emphasis. Tripp stuck his tongue out at her, and unfortunately Caroline was in ear shot and heard Kathy’s implied threat to mutilate her demon-child’s index digit.
“Excuse me, but did you just threaten my son?” The human woman called out toward Kathy in a warning tone.
“What, there really are things that could swoop in and bite your little devil’s finger. A lost seagull, a feral stray dog or cat, one of those raptor jaw toy things, my daughter… anything.” Kathy reasoned with a shrug. Caroline however wasn’t satisfied, although Kathy could’ve predicted that like a field reporter in a downpour predicting a one hundred percent chance of rain.
“You think I can’t see it, Ms. Kathy Cymric, but trust me, I see it well.” Caroline postulated.
And, do tell me what it is you see so well, Miss Caroline CROOK, Kathy thought loudly in her head, cocking her eyebrow and not really begging for but not stopping what the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks Caroline had to say to her.
“You think your so special because you think your kitten is so smart.”
Oh, Kathy did not think, she knew. Buddy may have had an attention deficit, but that little kitty-witty had what it took to boldly go where many wished and dreamed they could go. Buddy was inventive, resourceful, a hellion little tigress and, yes, she was so blasting smart. Her report card and extracurriculars at Bot Battles showed that off. Now, back to the battle-ax’s rant.
“And you think you throw your weight around and do and say whatever the Hell you want.”
“Woah, Carol, watch the mouth, kids are present,” Kathy reminded the woman, throwing her hands up in fake defensive worry. Besides, Cooke was one to talk about people throwing their weight around. The white human woman practically could’ve knocked over all the displays at the supermarket just by walking within ten feet of them with the sheer force of her own weight-throwing field. And Kathy certainly didn’t miss how Caroline Cooke put emphasis on the word “weight.”
“And your daughter is a trouble-maker,” Caroline attempted to push on. “She’s constantly making those destructive toys—”
“I prefer to think of them as resume builders,” Kathy interjected, not hiding her pride at her kitten’s ingenuity
“Grr, and she’s always provoking my oldest son and getting him in trouble.”
“Oh yeah, because my kitten totally goaded your All-American punter to try and pour milk on her favorite book series in class. And he totally failed his math test last semester because Buddy made him not study with her secret mind powers.” Kathy laid on thick. “And as much as I’d adore to continue parlaying, unlike you, I have a booth to manage,” the cat mother attempted to end the conversation by turning her back to the human woman and march toward her dunk tank.
“Buddy’s a nerd and a loser and she has a loser mom,” Tripp shouted at the departing feline, still pretty steamed over Buddy beating him at his own, supposed, game at the knockdown clown booth.
“That’s mean,” Mayson chastised Tripp weakly.
“Shut up, ya baby,” Tripp bit at his baby brother.
“Tripp, what you said was rude,” Caroline softly scolded her abrasive eldest, and Kathy thought she might actually be trying to be civil and correct her devil spawn.
“Yeah, you’re brother’s not a baby,” Blake chimed in, and it proved Kathy wrong on her assumption, like she should’ve expected. And Kathy had to wonder who among them was the real adult.
“Caroline,” the cat woman started, turning around to confront the human harpy. “As much as I loathe your caring, compassionate, altruistic, selfless, generous, kindly spirit, I so wish I had your strength,” Kathy listed in such a tone of sarcasm it spawned it’s own t-shirt line. Caroline’s mouth was between a self-serving grin and a quirked, confused grimace.
“I mean, if I knew that, every day, I’d be reminded that that’s what I decided to let put a ring on my ring finger, I’d have said my goodbyes to reality years ago.” Kathy continued explaining. And “that,” as Kathy wholly and unflinchingly referred to with a sideways glance and a point with her pointing finger, was Blake. “You and I, come on, we’re in the same weight class, there is no way little Tripp, the twinkle in your eye, is learning those mean, pointed words from you. Right? Am I right?” Kathy, with the sarcasm again, managed to do the number one thing, of multiple list toppers, that Caroline Cooke despised the most; the implication she was imperfect, without her humble-bragging about the blemishes herself.
“Excuse me, at least I’m actually married.” Married, Caroline mentioned first, not that she actually loved her husband. “Where’s your Mister Right, hm? Where Ms. Kathy Cymric, somewhere in your collection of boy-toys? Or did he decide you weren’t the effort years ago?” Caroline smugly incited, hoping that got back at Kathy somehow by implying that maybe Mr. Cymric, Buddy’s father, couldn’t stand the cat woman.
“Misha is actually buried over in Arlington. Killed in action on tour in Syria.” Kathy told dryly to Caroline.
Yes, Kathy Cymric was the widow to a veteran, as most of the neighborhood, down to all the members of the PTA, knew. However, though unsurprisingly, Caroline Cooke and probably her family unit were unknown, oblivious to, or more likely never bothered to remember this fact. And as an aged eagle, a veteran if the Vietnam cap on his head was genuine, disdainfully shook his head at the insensitive Blake and Caroline, Kathy got to see, up close, how an entitled woman saw within herself that she had, indeed, fucked up. The cat had her tongue, so to speak, and even Blake looked like he was contemplating broadcasting to everyone that he had no idea who Caroline was, and that she was a look-alike.
“And you, Mister, instead of being rude and mean and trying to destroy stuff because someone, a girl, is smarter than you, maybe you should try extending the olive branch and see if she can help you,” Kathy addressed to Tripp, taking advantage of the silence from Caroline and attempted to impart important wisdom on the bully.
“Whatever, Fat Cat, Buddy’s still a loser nerd and she’s bad at sports,” Tripp shot back, not intent on learning any lessons. Kathy tried; she really did.
“Didn’t she win that ball-throwy thing and you didn’t hit one thing?” Mayson spoke up, causing his older brother to get red in the face at his brother for reminding him that he lost to a girl.
“Shut up, stupid!” Tripp shouted angrily at Mayson, so wishing his parents weren’t around so he could punch his little brother really hard in the shoulder.
“Oh, did she?” Kathy asked curiously, focusing her attention toward the brother-intimidated Mayson.
“Y-yeah, Buddy was throwing like one of Tripp’s Nerf Guns, it was like, fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoo—”
“Shut up!!” Tripp screamed to interrupt his brother, stamping on the grass and looking like he would sprout a pair of talon-claws to scratch Mayson’s mouth off his face. Mayson cowered, and that’s when Caroline and Blake seemed to finally break out of their temporary reel of guilt to return to their old, grating selves.
“Ms. Kathy Cymric, stop provoking my son!” Caroline demanded of the cat mom, to the surprise of exactly no one.
“So, she got it from you, huh?” Blake put forth, and Kathy already sensed where his trail of reasoning was going. “Yeah, that’s what happened. That stick-figure broke his concentration and made him miss. Tripp “Cannon-Legs” Cooke is no loser, right?” Blake finger-gunned his oldest son, who was quick enough to agree with his old man on it. No way a girl could’ve beaten him, he had to assert, no way no how.
Kathy inwardly rolled her eyes. There was just no getting to them, at all. At that point, she was done. Blake and Caroline needed to be taken down a peg, and Tripp needed some lesson in humility.
“Hey! Weeks!” Kathy called out to a lined-up customer that she knew, a weasel with his nephew. “You wouldn’t mind letting this kid have a first go, would you? He’s got something to prove.” Weeks looked over at who she was pointing at, Tripp, and then looked at Kathy and her expression. It was her one that forecast that she was planning something, with the only thing missing being a leering look off to the side with a mischievous rubbing of the hands together. Weeks quickly backed up with his nephew in tow, and Kathy returned her attention to the Cookes.
“Lookit that, Cannon-Legs. A spot opened up at the front. So why don’t you show me you got a cannon arm and dunk me.” Kathy threw down the gauntlet, but she wasn’t looking at Tripp. She was looking right into Blake’s eyes while she said, as if she could see into his soul and know how much Tripp doing this validated *him* over anything that’d help the bully grow as a person.
“Alright, son, show her what you got!” Blake took the bait and riled up Tripp, who was only too eager to do something that might get him some revenge against Buddy for, quote, humiliating him, un-quote. No matter how indirect it was, and no matter how much Buddy likely wouldn’t care.
“As Pat Benatar said; Put up your dukes and get down to it, hit me with your best shot.” Kathy got back into the tank and sat there on her trap-door seat, crossed her legs and her arms, and adopted the most unimpressed, grinning expression she could muster from her inner-most catty-cattiness the cat possessed. All to stir the young Tripp to action.
Tripp picked up his first ball and just threw it, missing the contraption’s bullseye by an undershot. He tried again, and this time he overshot it, by such a margin that a poor schmuck the section over Kathy’s part of the School Fair yelped as he likely jumped to dodge the wayward projectile. The third one veered off to the left of the intended target, and it was making Tripp rather, impatiently snarly as he was once again, so-called, cursed from releasing his true potential by yet another insufferable girl cat.
“Come ON, Tripp! Aim it.” Blake tried to encourage, but all that came out was a raised voice.
“I am aiming it!” Tripp defended, only to miss again.
“Let go of the ball when it’s level!” Blake attempted to explain, but his explanations were like a baseball player trying to explain cricket to a European Football goal-keeper.
“I know, Dad!” Tripp insisted, when obviously didn’t, as evidenced by yet another missed toss straight into the grass and dirt. Kathy started to take pity on the boy and decided to offer her own input, in a softer tone than Blake could fathom.
“When your hand is about where you think the target is—” At least she attempted to explain, including needed demonstration with her own arms.
“Yeah, yeah, keep a lid on it, Chunky Monkey, my kid knows what he’s doing.” Though, Blake interrupted her, and his choice of insult caused a passing zuman primate to ook in offense over the selected name called, as they seemed to have gorged too much on the bananas, so to speak. “Tripp! Throw the ball when you have it level!”
“I KNOW!” Tripp shouted back, he wound up wasting his last ball as it soared toward Kathy and she barely ducked out of the way in time, rowling at almost getting beaned.
“Ah, see what you did! You distracted my son, you’re too big!” Blake blamed Kathy, adding in yet another jab at her size. Kathy, with the combo of escaping a goose-egg to her noggin, and after that last prick as the last straw, was on her last nerve with three out of the four Cookes. So, her metaphorical, verbal claws came out.
“Hey Blake, do you call other big women names because you can’t say them to your *Caroline*!” Kathy cupped her hands over her muzzle for that one, and Caroline’s face flipped between three colors like a traffic light, from shocked white, to realization pink, to the burning hatred of fiery red.
“BLAKE! GET HER!!” Caroline ordered at her husband, grabbing one more ball from the bin so that her lackey with the ring on his finger could avenge her sensitivities. Perhaps even bust open the plastic pane around the dunk-tank and give Kathy a black-eye.
“Okay, Tripp, watch.” Blake said calmly and confidently, taking on a pitcher’s stance. Kathy braced, undoing her folded legs and just neutrally sat on top of her dunk-seat, and gave Blake the most unaffected, deadest of dead-eye stares imaginable. The ex-athlete wound up his pitch, raising his left knee up high like the professionals do, cocked his arm back like the swinging arm of a trebuchet, and let the ball fly.
The next moments could’ve and should’ve been recorded on camera and then played on slow-motion for instant replay. The flung baseball turned and flipped through the air as it arced toward its target. Like Blake had believed and intended, and like Caroline had hoped and crossed her fingers for, the ball had flown true and struck the arm of the mechanism that would make Kathy drop into the cold water of the dunk-tank. What happened next, when Blake likely tried to celebrate his successful toss, was more proof that karma was not just a concept but a truth.
Kathy reemerged from her submersion in the tank, to find Blake on his ass and clutching the left side of his face. Kathy quirked an eyebrow, confused, and asked that weasel who’d given up his spot in line for the Cookes, “Hey, Weeks, what happened?”
“The, the ball,” the weasel said between wheezing laughs, “Flew back from the arm, after he-he-he threw it and hit him, in the eye-ee-hee-hee-heee!” Kathy immediately cupped her hand across her mouth to poorly cover up her own laughter, which only got harder to do when Caroline glowered at the curvy cat-woman. As if the white woman wanted to will her eyes into being knives that would stab into Kathy to shut her the hell up.
Caroline managed to get Blake to get back up on his feet, and as expected, the man had this huge welt over his left eye. That thing was going to swell up like a pimple. “Look on the bright side, Caroline,” Kathy called out from the tank as she sat herself back up on the trap-seat. “He won’t need to see to sing at the Revue later,” the cat-mom heckled.
Caroline Cooke had reached her limit toward Kathy and stormed off, fiercely holding on to Blake’s arm like she just might tear it off to use as a blunt weapon against Kathy, dragging Tripp and Mayson just keeping up. Kathy waved farewell to the Cookes, and get ready to take on the rest of the shift. That one moment would be more than enough to keep herself feeling content well after she was finished and back to enjoy the rest of the Fair with Buddy.
“Hey Weeks, don’t do what he just did, got it! Though it’d be funny if you did!”

To be continued…