At heart, Mr. Henry was a modern day Geppetto, bypassing wood and string for steel cables, hydraulics, and titanium endoskeletons concealed by a whimsical layer of candy-colored synthetic fur.
His first animatronic had been small, clumsy, and flat out grotesque. Constructed in his garage for fun after working all day as an research and development engineer somewhere out in the Valley, the thing had waddled around the driveway quacking, which was silly because cats, even mechanical ones, don't quack.
Still it amused Mrs. Henry, six months pregnant with twins. Enthroned in a lawn chair while enjoying the late spring air as the sun went down, she'd laughed so hard she nearly cried. Ten-year old Vinnie Afton from across the street stood nearby on the sidewalk, skateboard in arms, eyes intent on the little mechanical cat as Mr. Henry ran it though it's paces at the end of a long control cable.
Eventually the holy terror of Diego Circle turned and ran back across the street to his own toy-strewn yard - the Aftons were a large family. At last count Mr. Henry determined that there were three, maybe four, if not three hundred little Aftons, but that was just a rough guestimate based on a rather small data sampling – and picked something up, turning it over and over in his hands with a thoughtful look on his brown face. As the cat shaped frame quacked around the driveway, Vinnie thundered back with a battered stuffed toy, a well-loved little black and white cat with the stuffing oozing out of the joints.
"LOOK! LOOK!" The perpetual motion machine in untied sneakers yelled as he ran up to Mr. Henry, enthusiasticly shaking the battered plushie in the engineer's face, "THIS WILL MAKE IT LOOK LIKE A REAL KITTY IF YOU PULL OUT THE FLUFFY STUFF AND PUT THE OUTSIDES ON YOUR LITTLE ROBOT– THAT WOULD BE SO COOL!" (Vinnie didn't talk. Vinnie yelled.)
The curly dark-haired boy with his constant fidgeting and nonstop noise was annoying, but his enthusiasm was infectious— and his idea made sense. The two of them pulled the stuffing out of the toy, and with the help of some scissors and some needlework on the part of Mrs. Henry who was an avid counted cross-stitcher, the quacking robot cat now had a pelt.
Standing back for a better look, Mr. Henry had to admit that little Vinnie Afton's idea had been a good one. His creation still moved and sounded like a duck, but it now looked more like the cat he had aimed for, so he let the boy, who was the terror of the little cul de sac take over the controls and carefully guide it through its paces, sharp face rapt, hands unusually steady for a boy who was generally seen falling out of trees when he wasn't knocking out his front teeth while riding his bicycle down the steps in front of his parent's house because it seemed a good idea at the time.
Mr. Afton, a frequently unemployed advertising man when he wasn't fighting with his wife, Concita, a very tired-looking woman who worked the night shift at a call center, came out of the house across the street in a pair of worn khaki shorts and an old Led Zepplin concert t-shirt, and watched them as he smoked. After a while he picked his way barefoot through the toy strewn front yard and joined them, eyes intent on the quacking, waddling mechanical feline.
Eventually Afton pointed his cigarette at the robot of indeterminate species and said, "You know, Henry, I think you've got something there!"