Member-only story
Hümdinger’s Cats
Don’t Open That Crate!
When Fritz got the job at the Hümdinger Research Center he was thrilled. He and Maggie went out for a fancy dinner and everything. He thought he knew what working in an animal test lab would be like. He was wrong.
The rats. Working with them turned out to be easy once he got past that initial stomach-clutch when handling them. It turned out that caring for rats was super easy and preparing them for “sac” — shorthand for sacrificing which is the euphemism for killing — was basically just another workday chore. Even caring for the ones whose limbs had been broken or had other terrible things done to them wasn’t such a big deal. They were rats.
The white New Zealand rabbits were tougher. It was very difficult to prepare them for saccing. They were so gentle and trusting. Fritz didn’t sleep well for weeks after preparing fifteen of those sweet bunnies for sac. Maggie suggested he think about going back into therapy.
Fritz knew other labs experimented on sheep and even horses or goats or dogs or monkeys. Hümdinger mostly worked with rats and rabbits. Until the day eight crates of cats from Baltimore showed up.
Fritz was the one who usually arranged for new deliveries but Professor Schrödinger came out to sign off on the crates.
