Fuzzbutts Discussion: Meat and Pets (Patreon)

Firstly, thank you so much everyone for your support and feedback on my newest project! :D Boy, it’s wild building a whole new story setting from the ground up, rather than using a pre-established world as a sandbox. I’ve been doing some pondering about how the world of Fuzzbutts should work, and I’ve been examining other animal-people stories like Beastars, Bojack Horseman, Zootopia, Aggretsuko, etc. Each of these stories has their own approach to the questions that inevitably arise from a world of talking animals. I’m less sure myself about how Fuzzbutts will operate, please, I’d love to hear your feedback to the following questions:

1.) I’ve already established that land mammals are sapient. Should other species be sapient? Birds, reptiles, insects, amphibians? At first I thought “mammals only”, but I love all animals. What if I get inspired to make some cool snake lady at 3am? But making ALL animals sapient leads into a problem-

2.) ...Where does meat come from? If non-mammals are just regular animals, then Sunny finding a protein source is as easy as buying a bucket of fried chicken. But if one of his neighbors is a talking sapient chicken, then things get weird. Beastars had a hen character that proudly had her own eggs cooked into sandwiches for her unknowing classmates and hoo boy did that give me the willies. Zootopia never addresses the meat question, while in Aggretsuko and Bojack, both carnivores and herbivores are seen eating things like hot dogs, fish, and steak. I guess carnivores in Fuzzbutts could eat bugs or some sort of fake protein slurry, but idk, that feels like kind of a cop-out? What do??

3.) Should there be pets? I kinda like the idea of pets, but it always kinda bugged me that Mickey Mouse has both a pet dog (Pluto) and a dog friend (Goofy). You’re not gonna see Sunny walking a pet poodle or anything, that’s weird. Then again, if there are things like pet lizards or birds, what happens if one eats a small citizen like a mouse or gerbil?

I see now why most animal-people stories just plain don’t address these questions. XD