Albums by TweakUnique

The story of CatOwl

Premise

CatOwl is a story set in an alternate universe built out of often hilarious, sometimes thought-provoking mixes of the animals that exist in our own. It mostly takes place in a portmanteau of god-worlds called VallhallOlympus, and its creatures are aptly named half-halfs.

Synopsis

1. 1 · SpyStudy

   CatOwl spies on GoDevil ZeuSatan, whose television — Lightning Fire Bolt Balls — looks back in time, sculpting temporary 3D images out of lightning and fire. We never see ZeuSatan's face, so hisHer feelings stay unreadable. On the screen, ZeuSatan replays WolfHen latched onto Buffeleon's back, chomping away while Buffeleon stays perfectly still and activates camouflage.

2. 2 · VallhallOlympus

   VallhallOlympus sits on the left wing of PegasaurusRex, one of the TitAnimals. The moonSun rotates for it — spherical, appearing as sunrise light, sunset light, and full-moon glow. The wing flaps and folds ultra-slowly, and that motion raises the landWaves; one great landWave blocks enough sunrise light that a later wave is lit instead by sunset. Every SkyBeach is backlit by moonlight.

3. 3 · A Flying CatOwl

   Our first look at the animal the book is named for: the most likable traits of cats and owls, wrapped in featherfur, pink through brown, flying in a superman pose with the grace of a constant pounce. Shehe is proud — Buckbeak proud — and on the prowl, letting out the signature cry that brings the first letters into the book: "meowooo meowooo."

4. 4 · BlurSpin

   CatOwl skypounces Guppyfinch — out for an Airswim to tease Gophmouse — breaks hisher neck and swallows himher whole, mouth a blurnado. A cascade of emotional commotion follows: Gophmouse shakes violently and runs in semi-perfect spiral-circles, because one leg is slightly longer than the other.

5. 5 · Commoding Commotion

   "Sacré bleu!" ZebrElephant winniechortles — a larger-than-life striped body with an elephant's trunk and the zebra head on the end of it. Bearman ignores the whole scene, feet up on his cancesticles like an automatic La-Z-Boy, neglecting everyone equally including his hiding son Boycub, whose down turns bluer with teenage embarrassment. Bearman grabs at a flower called remotodendron and TreeVee brightens, pulsing waves of sound out of the bloom. Then piGecko rolls in on a wheelchair commode and skates down inside GerbilRaffe's giant neck — a fetish thing gone wrong — and when everyone freaks out, piGecko prolapse-pops out of GerbilRaffe's throat, melting the imagery into the titan realm.

6. 6 · Flipintrospection

   K2 multiplied by Everest: K2verist. Poofy avalanches cascade onto the surrounding peaks, and at the summit stands the sunken Titanic, vertical like a church steeple, gashed open as though it fell out of the sky — and something inside the gash is unnaturally illuminated.

7. 7 · A Darwinist in the Titanic Chamber

   Half-half TitAnimals assemble in a foggy mistbyss court, all in white wigs, to hear Foxrilla's outlandish claims about an alternate reality — ours — evidenced by a picture of a starfish. The blasphemy enrages the bigwigs: PeanutButterFish hurls a furious fin out of his GIF jar, PegasaurusRex tries to cross hisherher arms in disapproval with the moonSun hovering behind those wings. Snog arbitrates, patient and slightly annoyed, wig dripping. Foxrilla, a philosopher, is pleasantly lost in stoned Latin tablets carried here by a Voyager-like craft that crossed a black hole from our dimension — a golden disc of human origin, glyphs of Earth, the wrenchleaf among them. Reproduction and diversity by generations of choice are completely alien to himherher. Only WalRacoon — wig fallen off, unnoticed — is curious, because the pixelated starfish hologram sets himhisher consideremembering: WolfHen, after eating Buffeleon's back meat, began laying eggs and eating them, and the terrible sadness that followed the first time.

8. 8 · Scramblin' Scrabbit

   Scrabbit leaps straight out of WalRacoon's memory — a squirrel's body with a rabbit's tail, moving in jumping-jack bursts, paws always thrown in the air, the Alice in Wonderland clock-rabbit of this world. HeHeShe bitSnacks a carradosh snack, gets broken by the tastiness, trips, tumbles and crack-snaps it into the void; hehe is always in a hurry even when early. Scrabbit is time itself in the Titanic Realm: three rotations in different planes, eyeballs counter-rotating against a bushtail spinning counterclockwise against the clockwise motion of the golden hand-held grandfather clock hehe carries — digits zero to eleven, ticker shaped like a metronome. The stopcock sounds, and a rainbow-brilliant cucukatweet — half cuckoo, half parakeet — pops out.

9. 9 · SmoWOWtion

   The cucukatweet arrives as a spectral occurrence, emitting a whole separate universe: a champbortal holding supernovae, blackholes, and an aurora borealis, fourth-dimensional uncertainty settling into everyone. A new world appears as an inn on a floating rock — NewWorldsInn. Beyond it is our Earth.

10. 10 · The Mirror Page

    The next page is a mirror finish. The audience contemplates themselves.

11. 11 · Dencoup Dilemma

    Back in VallhallOlympus, CatOwl is visibly pregnant, flying above the ghetto that is the dencoup. Below, tiny Chickbee spits through a fast, irritated argument with WolfHen, whose tear ducts erupt in anime geysers — arcs of water throwing a rainbow beneath them. WolfHen is pathetic and sad and mostly furious at himherself for the teenage mistake of eating bits of Buffeleon. Every day shehe drops a delicious-looking egg.

12. 12 · Filicide

    Heshe doesn't want to and can't stop himherself: several chomps, admonished and famished, fishing for pity points from Chickbee — who gives none and keeps demanding rent.

13. 13 · Beach Bummers

    Near the dencoup is the community SkyBeach, where exactly two members of the community ever are, and they are always there. These hippies are good for two things — doing drugs and doing drugs. They crack a rockapple with glrasss, grind it ritually with a snaillop shell, then dipDust: scaly, burnt tongues in the powder, vapliberally inhaling.

14. 14 · Beach Scummers

    The only others who come near the hippies are Milipuss and Octapede. Octapede is kraken-like, but instead of one eight-tentacled creature it is a thousand conjoined octopuses sharing a single eye. Milipuss lives in symbiosis with it, a bottom feeder eating plainKrill from the armpits; the spindly one leaves little dead legs impregnated in Octapede, and instead of blood, trails of unfertilized eggs pop out.

15. 15 · Ahh, Piss!

    Attention shifts to the snackGrill and its permanent sign — T H C L S D, "the closed" — meaning no bathroom breaks: the fruitLoo, red and loop-topped, is unusable. Then the great white pink SharkFlingo wants to reproduce, a fearsome shark-sized toothy mouth on tiny flamingo legs fading blue to pink. Swandog, terrified of being eaten after everything already witnessed, goes for a drink from the river-ish thing threading the SkyBeach.

16. 16 · What's My Reflection Thinking?

    Hehe looks at hisHer reflection, angry that the reflection is thinking about himHer.

17. 17 · ¡FlashNight!

    Suddenly it is night — that is what the moonSun rotation does here. In full moonglow we get a recap of where everyone in VallhallOlympus now stands.

18. 18 · Egg Drop

    Above the dark, sunlight still catches CatOwl, who confidently plops out an egg with winged ears. The egg flaps madly at first, then about two-thirds of the way down settles into a controlled glide before colliding with the watAir around the SkyBeach in a tumbling crack-fall.

19. 19 · JellOceon

    The crack opens the egg, revealing a healthy baby CatOwl — KittenOwlette, with gigantic eyes.

20. 20 · Stare into SpaceSky

    Zoomed close on those eyes: a reflection of the SpaceSky.