~t

Disclaimer: not mine

Warning: mild crackfic leanings

~~t~~

"This is sickbay, not a zoo!"

The harried holographic Doctor barely looked up from examining his current patient as he complained to a thoroughly unsympathetic Captain. The doors swished open and Tuvok entered, escorting two more, this time a tortoise (or was it a turtle?) and an attentive German Shepherd. The Captain pinched the bridge of her nose in a futile attempt to relieve the impending migraine.

~~t~~

Not 20 minutes ago Voyager had been completely peaceful, orbiting an M class planet while away teams gathered supplies. Then suddenly a beam of some unidentified radiation had shot through the ship, penetrating their shields like tissue paper. Nothing appeared to be damaged, but very shortly the crew began reporting animal sightings across the ship, alpha quadrant animals no less.

Security was dispatched to round them up and bring them to sickbay for examination. The Doctor had barely opened his medical tricorder over the first patient (a twitchy spotted rabbit) before he flickered in holographic astonishment.

"This is Ensign Gildman from Maintenance!"

Things had progressed quickly from there. After some haphazard information gathering it was determined that everyone in the beam's path had somehow been transformed into an animal of some kind. The beam was traced back to its point of origin and an away team was dispatched to see if they could find any information on what it was or how to reverse it. In the mean time, the affected crewmembers were being gathered up in sickbay for examination and containment. It was quite a menagerie.

~~t~~

The Doctor was frowning over a scan of an energetic spider monkey when the doors opened and said patient clambered onto his head in fear. The Captain turned to see what had caused the sudden panic and couldn't help but take a step back herself.

"S-seven?"

It was a fair guess, even without a tricorder since the lioness stalking unescorted into sickbay had a rather distinctive metal construct around its left eye. The doctor finally managed to pry the frightened monkey off his head and turned to the door.

"Looks like Astrometrics was in the line of fire."

Looking at the slightly gaping jaws revealing gleaming white fangs, Janeway muttered out the side of her mouth.

"How… domesticated… are the effected crew?"

The Doctor blinked, "Uh… well, so far they seem better behaved than wild animals but they don't show any signs of recognition or language comprehension."

As the universe's first Borg Lioness reached the side of the biobed, the captain had a sudden thought,

"Wasn't Celes on duty in Astrometrics this shift?"

Then the Lioness reared up to put both front paws on the bed and dropped a slightly slobbery and extremely terrified but otherwise unharmed brown dormouse in front of them.

The Doctor blinked again then automatically brought the tricorder up to scan the trembling mouse.

"Apparently she was."

~~t~~

~t

AN: you can blame Daxilla's PWP "Puss in Boots" (which is where I stole the chapter title from) for putting the thought of Seven as a lioness in my head. That stray thought somehow crossed with the Tal drabbles and that last scene popped up.

~t