Jellicles: After Man

by Umbryn

After the extinction of the human race comes the highly evolved Jellicle cats and Pollicle dogs. What begins as a peaceful Jellicle Ball turns to disaster, forcing cat and dog to work together to stop Macavity and his plans before it is too late.

1. Prologue

After the humans left a mad scramble began amongst the "lesser" animals to claim the Earth they had left. Most assumed the apes, others the elephants or dolphins, perhaps even the octopuses. But it wasn't them who conquered the planet left in the wake of the superior humans. Their heirs where the animals closest to them, the cats and the dogs. Those that survived being locked in their homes and escaped retained great knowledge of how the humans lived, the strangeness of their ways and the uncanny ability to invent. We rose from the filth into something higher, something better that mankind.

The dogs developed into a more varied peoples, Pekes, Pugs, Poms, and Pollicles. Pollicle dogs make up most of the new military and governments. Pugs and Poms have an equal chance of being as such but they prefer to work beneath the Pollicles, having never evolved out of what the humans had bred into their lap dog ancestors. Pekes, enemies to the Pollicle, have grown from their ancestors human bred ways and control much of the Asian continent, a power still to be reckoned with and perhaps, in the humble opinions of most cats, to be left alone.

Mingling below the dog population is the feline race of the Jellicles, many breeds created by humans still exist, but Jellicle is the preferred term for all breeds unlike the dogs. Jellicles are a prideful and cunning race, some individuals have risen to power though most remain second class citizens or lower. We once thought we were better than our human predecessors. I am afraid to say that we were wrong, we are natural born killers and while most of us no longer kill as a form of play there are those who continue to do so. Many are forced into prostitution, others to vigilantism under the injustices of the "superior" hounds.

In an effort to forget, to escape the darkness of ourselves and the hate of the dog we hold a ball once each year, free to all of the feline race. It is the one night of the year the dogs leave us to our business. The food is good as is the drink and it allows for us to get to know our neighbors better. Many an interesting character comes to the ball, troves of Jellicles from all across the planet and walks of life come for the high culture as well as the games and the dance. From dusk until dawn.

The story I have to tell begins on the twenty fifth annual ball.