Ding. “Number 19, please.”
Finally, my number. I checked the time on my phone. Only three hours I’d been sitting there, spinning the same, solitary “Department of Furry Registration” Pokéstop every five minutes. I’ve had worse days, I suppose.
I got up. My entire body felt like it was in a knot, from the blue feathers on my head to my jet-black bird feet. I winced, stretched what I could and brought my paperwork up to the desk.
On the other side of the desk, a lithe cheetah stared back at me with the sort of gaze that looked directly into your soul, but also made it clear they didn’t really care what was in there.
I’m a pretty big bird, but it still got me off-balance. “Guess, y’all, uh, got rid of the sloths?” I said in an attempt to inject some levity into the situation.
“No, they’re still here,” the cheetah droned. “They just work in the back now. After Zootopia came out, we figured it would be best to change our public image. I can still work just as slow, though, don’t worry. Name?”
“Oh, I was jok—, uh, Ahab,” I said.
“Like the whale guy?”
“No, no, not like that. I like whales.” I turned around and scanned the room of people waiting behind me. There was a whale sitting in the back corner, reading a magazine. They didn’t seem to have noticed, but I waved sheepishly anyway.
“It’s more like an acronym,” I said. “Ahab. A Huge-Ass Bird.”
“So, like, do you want me to type that in for your full name?” the cheetah asked.
“Sure, I guess.” I leaned over the counter to watch them type it in. “No, the hyphen doesn’t go there. It goes after ‘huge.’ There you go, that’s right.”
The cheetah hit enter. “Looks like you’re not in the database yet. You have a reference sheet? That’ll move things a long a lot faster.”
“Afraid not.” There was a loud sigh behind me. “Sorry! I’m completely new here.”
“That’s OK,” the desk clerk said. “It’ll just take a while longer, and we may not be able to get you a picture for your ID.”
“But isn’t there a camera right over—”
“Been broken for 20 years. Species?”
“Bald eagle.”
“Anything else in there? Cat, horse, dragon, that sort of thing?”
“Nope, all bird.”
The cheetah frowned. “Aren’t birds usually fluffier?”
“What do you mean?” I puffed out my chest a bit. “I’ve got plenty of floof.”
“I just see a lot of birds come through here with more floof than that, that’s all. Where’re you from?”
I rubbed my neck self-consciously. “The American Midwest. Makes sense for a bird to be from flyover country, right?”
“I guess so,” the cheetah said. “It does explain the ‘y’all’ from earlier.”
I resisted the urge to start an hourslong discussion about the second-person plural. “What’s next?” I asked instead.
“Well, let’s see. We’ll get your height and weight over on that scale when we’re done with everything else, so we’ll skip that for now. Pronouns?” “He/him.” “Age?” “25.”
The cat hit their enter key about twelve times. “Ugh. Computer froze. Give it a minute.”
I put my hands in my pockets, stepped back and looked around the room. It was packed — not surprising, given there were only two people working at the desk. A couple feet away, a springbok was helping a stocky German shepherd with some sort of license renewal. Anthropomorphic animals of all shapes, sizes and colors were sitting in chairs behind me, waiting for their numbers to be called.
The Department of Furry Registration is, on the face of it, not a fun place to spend a day. But the corner of my mouth twitched upward a bit anyway as I gazed out at the cacophony of species represented in the room. Made me wonder why I hadn’t registered sooner.
“There we go,” the cheetah said, getting my focus back to the task at hand. “We’re done with the demographic stuff. But I still need to get some information on your personal interests to complete the registration process. First off, why are you registering? You here to create any content, or are you just horny?”
I laughed. “Oh, probably some writing, maybe some art if I can teach myself.”
“OK, I’ll put down ‘writer,’ and you can always change that later,” the cheetah said. “And do you have an occupation lined up here, in-universe?”
“I guess I’m a bit of a wizard or mage? Spells, potions, that sort of stuff.”
The cheetah nodded. “Got it. Let me just adjust that previous answer, then.”
I leaned over and watched as they changed “writer” to “lazy writer.” (Note: Not wrong.)
The cheetah typed out a few more lines, then turned back to me. “And one more thing. Are you interested in any subgenres of the furry community?”
“Well,” I reached up and scratched the back of my head, “I guess I tend to end up in macro situations occasionally.”
“Yeah, could have figured that out from the name, and the, uh,” — the cheetah gestured broadly — “everything else.”
Someone behind me booed and threw a scrunched-up wad of paper at my back. The German shepherd working with the other clerk turned around, exasperated. “Come on, man! I just paid off my mortgage.”
“I’m still new to this magic thing!” I protested. “Sometimes the spells get out of hand! I’m not trying to be one of those rampaging, destructive macros, promise!”
“Sure, but either way,” the cheetah grunted as they lifted a heavy stack of papers up from under the desk, “we’re gonna need you to fill all this out.”
“All of that?” I recoiled. The stack looked about the size of three dictionaries.
“It’s for insurance. I’m sure you understand,” the cheetah said. “You’ll probably need to take that home to fill out and bring back another day. Don’t want to hold up the line.” They turned back to the intercom. “Number 21, please.”
“This’ll take ages!” I complained. “Is there a faster way?”
“I don’t know, maybe use some magic,” the cheetah winked. “See you next month.”