User blog:InklingBear/Life of Pets - Webcome To The Jam

Story #3 - Webcome To The Jam
It's a warm Sunday evening, the Loud family was nowhere to be found inside of their residence as they all went out about ninety minutes prior to attend a baseball match and have a good time. Downstairs inside the living room, Cliff was there, sleeping next to the computer desk, dreaming peacefully with nothing around the feline to disturb him.

It was very quiet.

Too quiet... to the point that it was very peaceful even.

A few minutes passed by as the sun slowly started to descend down in the horizon before Cliff decided to eventually wake up from his little slumber to the sound of carpet noises from Charles' paws as he approached the cat with Lincoln's laptop balancing carefully on his back.

Cliff stared blankly at the dog, wondering what he was up to at the very hour.

"Dog?" he said. "What are ya doin'?"

"Oh nothin'." The dog replied.

The cat slightly squinted his eyes as he put his paws on top of Charles' head, pushing down on him as his color blind sight became fixated on the laptop screen.

"That sure doesn't look like nothin'. What is that, a portable TV?"

Charles pushed his head back up, making Cliff remove his paws off of him.

"Nope. It's just some item... no wait, computer!"

"A computer? Where did you get that..?"

Cliff became suspicious.

"Upstairs, why?"

"Are you really sure we're supposed ta be messin' with things that humans play with?"

"Don'tcha worry, cat," The dog reassured. "They don't get back 'til late. I'm sure nobody will mind!"

Cliff stood quiet for a brief period of time.

"Ok so ta you... this is like sayin' 'It's not a crime, unless you intend to get caught' or somethin'?"

"Well, I... forget it. Now you really gotta check this out. All this stuff the boy has on this thing is just stunnin'."

The dog stood still as Cliff walked over to the laptop, grabbing hold of it with his own two paws on each side, placing it on the carpet floor. He looked at the screen, amused with the content on the device.

"Wow. This is nice." He said, before noticing a little earth icon on the top left corner of the screen. He hesitated, staring directly at the icon before pointing directly at it.

"Hey, what's that?"

Charles looked to the cat in a slightly irritated motion.

"...Look below it."

Cliff noticed a small word under the icon. It said "Internet".

"Oh, I see." He said, slightly embarrassed for asking about it.

"What's the big deal about it?"

Charles froze, slightly raising his eyebrows.

"You really don't know what the internet is?"

"Fraid not. Why so frozen all of a sudden there, dog?"

"Because it is definitely a big deal! There's lotsa things on there you can definitely do to pass the time!"

"Like what?"

Charles answered the cat's curious question, placing emphasis on each and every word he spoke.

"Food! Games! Education!"

Cliff turned to the audience to give off a quick reminder. "Stay in school, kids."

"I also took the time to find out some more information about my kind. Apparently, I have a way better sense of smell than a human's, sniffin' butts in order to identify another bein', my teeth are cleaner than theirs and everythin' else cool I didn't know about myself!"

"Yeah, even man's best friend."

Charles quickly started to fantasize about the next word he uttered from his lips, quickly wagging his tail in excitement.

"Even the entertainment... Oh yeah. Entertainment..."

He paused in the middle of his own dialogue, rolling his tongue out as he panted. Cliff got really confused to where this was going, prompting him to ask Charles some sort of a follow up question.

"Entertainment of what exactly?"

Charles shook his head, quickly snapping out of his fantasy as he answered the cat's question with little to no hesitation.

"...Pet videos!"

The dog glanced towards the audience, followed by Cliff soon after. "What'cha think I was gonna say?"

The cat looked back to Charles, followed by another question he had on his mind.

"Can we even ask it questions we have?"

"You bet, cat! Ask it anythin' you have and it'll getcha an answer in a snap."

Cliff was now excited to get the internet a try.

"Ooh, okay! So what do you do?"

Charles walked next to him, sitting down on the floor, operating the device. He rubbed the mouse pad with his paw, moving the mouse on the screen as it overlaps the internet icon before he clicked on it, booting up the application almost instantly. It created a rectangular window on the screen, overlapping most of the icons on the background before a search engine website popped up with a search bar in the middle to enter some text.

"Looks nice so far." Cliff said before Walt flew into the living room, landing on the carpet, sitting stationary from the distance, watching the two animals play around on Lincoln's laptop.

"Now what?"

"Type in whatever you want?"

Cliff looked down on the keyboard before he froze. He didn't know what to do as there were letters scattered all over the place, thinking that typing would seem rather uneasy from the inexperienced feline.

"Is... there a D somewhere?"

"Of course there's a D."

The dog pointed to the left side of the keyboard.

"See, it's right there in the middle between S and F."

Cliff browsed around the keyboard, before he eventually found it a few seconds later.

"Oh, here it is."

He firmly pressed down on the key, adding one character into the search box on the window before lifting his paw back up. He hesitated as he was trying to remember what he was going to put in the search box that started with the character he inputted before typing out the rest of the word into the bar, taking his sweet, precious time as he inputted the correct characters into the box to spell out the word "dartfish" before Charles tilted his head, looking at the word as if he's never seen or heard of it before.

"Ah, there we go." Cliff said, satisfied with the input.

"What do I need to do now?"

Charles answered the cat, as he pointed to the enter key on the keyboard.

"All that's left now is for you to press down that key and you're ready to go."

Cliff did exactly as the dog commanded. The two of them watched as the site took its time, sitting on its loading screen for a quick second before revealing hundreds of results with whatever was typed into the search box.

The cat was amused, slowly moving his tail around as he observed the digital photographs on the latter side of the screen.

"Mrow!"

"Oh yeah, that is so satisfyin'."

"Indeed, cat." Charles added.

"Bet those kind of fish taste even better than the goldfish!"

He moistened up his bottom lip, as Charles had a possible thought regarding the last thing Cliff had uttered.

"Wait a minute..." he softly said, irises shrinking ever so slightly.

"Seriously, dog. This is the most amazing thing to ever exist!" Cliff happily stated, loud and proud.

"Yeah, but I hear it's also dangerous." Walt said, walking towards the two with a very concerned look as he intervened with their conversation.

"Wait, really?" Cliff innocently reacted.

"Yeah, you have to be really careful with where you go on the internet. You never know what you could run into."

"Ok then, safety bird. I mean, it's not like we're gonna be on sites we ain't supposed to be on."

The cat accidentally hit a random key on the keyboard as he talked with the canary, bringing up a brand new tab on the application, listing a page of sites that Lincoln has been on before the animals got their paws on his device.

"Oopsie..."

"Whatcha do?" Charles concernedly asked.

"I... might've accidentally hit somethin' and this popped up I guess..?"

Charles and Walt gathered close to observe the history page together, scanning through each and every one of the sites listed on the screen. As they were all fixated on the screen, the canary read some of the sites the eleven-year-old boy was active on one by one.

"Ace Savvy the Game walkthrough... Classroom tips... Hardcore wildlife... Ghost sightings..?"

"Ghosts?!" Charles whimpered.

"That's quite some stuff the boy's been into." Cliff said as Charles looked all around the room, on the lookout for something, walking off momentarily into the kitchen before Cliff noticed a file on the right side of the background of the screen, maneuvering the mouse over it before clicking it. The laptop's system didn't do anything for a beat before the file Cliff clicked on managed to fully load, revealing a slightly blurred snapshot of Charles' hairless butt.

Cliff froze for a brief moment, slightly tilting his feline head before he motioned towards Walt and Geo, telling them to look at the photo. They reacted with a simple smile before the curious cat called out to the unsuspecting dog, who went to go grab something to munch on from the kitchen, eventually returning back to the living room with the others.

"Hey, dog..." He said, smiling.

"Yeah?" Charles answered.

"Looks like the kid's got a photo of yer naked little bum!"

He oscillated the laptop, the screen now facing the dog in from of it. Charles froze, his face turning pink as he was confused as to how the photograph got on the laptop.

"Wha- how'd it get on here?!" The dog reacted, shaking his head in a swift, frantic motion before Cliff answered his question.

"Remember that robotic vacuum that the big man bought? It caught ahold of yer-"

"I know what done happened that day, cat." Charles interrupted. "It disturbed our peace, violatin' more than just our naps!"

"So we killed that thing." Walt added, as Cliff soft stroked Charles on the head.

"Yeah we did." Cliff added.

Charles hatched a thought, immediately getting the sudden realization that destroying the vacuum robot was a mistake.

"But I do kinda regret breaking the thing. I coulda relied on that thing to catch those spooky ghosts!"

"I definitely would want to make a very clever joke about that vacuum situation but I'm not sure if that radar up there is gonna allow it." Cliff wondered, scratching his feline head.

"Let's not trigger that thing, alright cat? Also, you can stop pettin' me now."

Cliff stopped stroking the dog.

"Oh, alright."

Charles looked directly at the screen, still showing his hairless butt as the cat chattered along before he grabbed ahold of the laptop with this mouth before he headed upstairs with it.

"Hey, where ya going with that?" Cliff asked.

"N-nowhere?" Charles nervously answered.

"Um, you're going upstairs with the computer though..." Walt suspiciously said.

"Yeah, somethin' came up that I need to take care of... I'll be back!"

Charles zipped through the small remainder of steps leading up to the upstairs hallway and into Lincoln's open room. Cliff and Walt shared an confused glance towards each other before they both followed the dog upstairs as if he was trying to awkwardly hide something from the two of them.

As the cat and the canary reached the outside of Lincoln's room, they sneaked a little peek inside the claustrophobic room. They spotted the dog hooking up a printer on the table in front of him, printing out the photograph that was still on the laptop before he maneuvered the mouse around, eventually finding a way to erase the file completely off the system, all the while he whistled as if he was playing innocence throughout the entire ordeal. The printer finished printing a photograph as the file was completely removed from the laptop, never to be seen again before Charles grabbed the photo without even looking at it, folding it up only once.

Cliff and Walt looked to each other for a brief moment before looking back at the dog, still being unaware of their presence. As they proceeded to walk in the room without even thinking to knock, the cat omitted a soft sneeze, prompting Charles to look to his left, facing the door of the room where the two pets were stationary, glaring softly at the nervous pup.

He jumped almost immediately at their sudden appearance, he didn't know they were sitting there throughout most of the situation.

"What are you two doin' up here? I said I would be right back..!"

Cliff took a step forward, growing a bit suspicious of the canine's weird behavior.

"What were ya doin' up here?"

"You're literally acting weird." Walt added.

"It's nothin', honestly!"

Cliff squinted his eyes, staring deep into the nervous dog's eyes as if he just lied straight to their face.

"Stand aside, dog." The cat bluntly stated, making Charles feel uneasy as he took a step back from the cat and Lincoln's laptop.

Cliff jumped on the laptop, searching thoroughly on the screen. The remaining windows that were left open was just the internet, now back on the main screen, showing the search box with no characters to show inside of it. Cliff was understandably suspicious, as he asked the dog a couple of questions regarding his activity with the laptop.

"What was the last thing you were doing on the computer?"

"Closing out some things?"

"Like what?"

Charles gulped.

"Like... some files that I needed to close down, like the photograph you found on this thing...?"

Cliff hesitated as he stared the dog down.

"...Are ya sure that was the last thing you were doing on that thing..?"

Charles answered "Yup!" without any type of hesitation to show, with a big smile, including teeth.

"For crying out loud, cat." Walt said to Cliff before he turned his undivided attention to Charles.

"You were printing something a couple of seconds ago. What was it?"

"I'm willin' ta bet a bag of Meowz that it was his own buns!" Cliff smirked to the canary.

"Alright, this is gettin' outta hand! Not another word about this!" Charles bluntly stated to the two, glaring back at them seriously.

Cliff and Walt looked back to each other yet again. This time, showing off a bit a remorse for barging in on the dog.

"Ok, sorry." Cliff said.

"Alright then." Walt added.

Charles stood on his two hind legs yet again, hopping back on Lincoln's laptop as he maneuvered the mouse around to overlap it with a couple of hyperlinks on the history page before one of them caught the dog's attention.

"Canine breeds...?" Charles said, growing more curious by the second before he clicked on the link, leading Charles to a site revealing several breeds of dogs with potential personalities listed beside each of the dogs on the homepage of the site.

Charles was instantly hooked on the site, not willing to look away or anything as he was distracted by a couple pictures of purebred dogs that caused the curious dog to crank out a small little smile.

"My gosh, those dogs are just beautiful to look at... ruff!" Charles said, irresistibly wagging his tail as Cliff stood on his two hind legs, looking at the rectangular screen of the laptop.

"Yep, those are some fine lookin' canines there, dog."

"Interesting, I guess." Walt added.

"I almost wanna get a photo of them." Charles said, bringing his face towards the laptop screen before he accidentally set his paw on the one of the keys on the keyboard, triggering the printer to print out a photo of whatever was projected on the screen. The three pets turned to the printer, omitting noises as it was doing its job before it stopped for a brief moment, while Walt and Cliff turned back to Charles.

"What did you do now?" Walt asked before Charles looked down on the keyboard, his paw still pushing down the keys that triggered the printer for a brief period of time. He noticed that he accidentally printed something else.

"Roh-no..." The dog realized, guilt interfering his voice.

The printer started up again, starting to print out more copies, this time, blasting out numerous pieces of paper as they were airborne, covering up the room one by one. The three animals were in shock, they didn't know what to do.

"Oh no!" Walt exclaimed.

"I didn't mean it!" Charles sadly admitted in shame.

"We gotta do somethin' to stop that printer!" Cliff said.

"I'm all ears, cat!"

The dog left the laptop unattended, walking away to the printer along with Cliff and Walt, trying to figure out how to stop the printer from printing so many papers. The canary went in, flying on top of the printer, pecking away at some of the buttons on the top for a brief period of time but to no effect.

"It's not working, guys!" Walt stated as Charles tried to unhook the printer from the laptop, but it also didn't work. He held the cable in his hand, showing it to Cliff and Walt.

"This didn't work either, not surprised."

"Let me try somethin'." Cliff said to Walt, as he walked to the printer, getting a face full of paper from the printer before throwing his paws up, blocking pieces of paper being shot at the feline, one slightly snipping his paw.

"Meow! Paper cut, paper cut!"

Cliff ducked down for cover in the sea of papers, avoiding getting hit by even more of them.

"What are we gonna do now?" He worried.

Walt thought of an idea, but it involves a bit of destruction.

"I think I got it! Dog, go get some water! We're gonna shorten this thing out!"

"No way, bird." Charles said.

He was filled with determination, brave enough to fix this himself.

"I think I know somethin' else to do to stop that thing. I'm goin' in."

Charles was ready to make a move, crawling closer and closer to the printer under all the paper that landed all over the floor. It was getting intense for him, worried as if he wasn't going to be able to pull this off. The cat and the canary, both watched the determined dog, cheering him on as if he knew what he was doing.

"C'mon, dog!" Cliff said.

"You can do it!" Walt added.

Charles made it to the side of the dresser, pulling on the side as it was brought closer to him after each pull. He managed to create a small disproportionate opening just enough for Charles to at least fit his paw through, before he took a look behind the dresser, finding the plug to the laptop's AC adapter and the printer.

"I think I found it!" he exclaimed.

"Hurry and unplug it!" Cliff commanded.

The dog had two choices to pick from in order to find out which one leads to the printer. His paws started sweating as if he's trying to be extra careful to not pick the wrong cord, but in his case, he has no choice but to take a chance.

He covered his eyes with his paw, and stuck the other behind the dresser, grabbing hold on one of the cords before he yanked it right out of the outlet and onto the floor below. It was the right cord, as the printer soon died down, shooting out one last piece of paper before it was all over.

The pets all took deep breaths, relieved that it was done but soon realized they're all faced with a bigger problem now. The floor was filled with papers, covering each square inch of carpet below.

They were instantly concerned, looking at one another with sad expressions before they huddled together.

"Well, now what are we gonna do?" Walt said.

"I'm afraid they're gonna kick us out in the cold streets for this..." Cliff worried.

Cliff whips up a thought cloud, about to picture the aftermath of the situation before Charles popped it right in front of him.

"There's no time for imagine spots, cat! The sooner we can rectify this problem, the sooner we won't have ta worry about it."

"He's right, let's clean up this place."

The three put their paws and wings in for a second, before they all said "Break!"

 Ten Minutes Later

In the downstairs kitchen, Cliff stood on his hind legs, holding open the trash lid for Charles to throw a trash bag filled with paper in before letting go of the top as it barely closed on its own. The dog and the cat pushed down on the lid as hard as they can, before they couldn't push it down any further. The deed was finished now, both pets getting back down on all of their fours. The pets were finally relieved. Lincoln's room was free of papers and back to the way the interior originally looked, it looked like no one has ever set foot in it ever since the kids were gone for the day. The three proceeded to walk back into the living room, making their way to the rug to rest for the evening.

"Phew. Glad that's over." Cliff stated.

"That sure was... something." Walt said.

"Indeed, bird 'n cat." Charles agreed before putting his head down. "First I would have to apologize."

"Don't be too hard on yerself, dog." Cliff said to the downer, patting him on the head. "Accidents happen, right?"

"Yeah, you could say that." Charles answered, lifting up his canine spirit. "But y'know somethin'?"

"Yeah?" The cat and canary both said in unison.

"At least somethin' good came out of that."

He closed his eyes, whipping out the picture he printed out from earlier in the day before the printer incident occurred.

"I got a cute little souvenir of that dog I really like for me to hang in my doghouse!"

He puckered his lips, kissing the picture as he wagged his little tail, hearts floating around his canine head. Cliff and Walt sat and watched as they smiled on, having trouble holding off their own laughter before it got the better of them a few seconds in. Charles looked directly behind him, turning around as he observed the two animals lose their marbles over him kissing the picture he had in his paws.

"What's gotten into you two?" he asked as if he didn't know what was going on. Cliff hesitated, still trying to gain control of his laughter before answering the dog.

"Dog, that isn't a photo of the dog. It's your butt!"

Cliff and Walt continued their laughter as Charles looked at the photo he just put his lips on this time, his face quickly started blushing before he angrily tore the picture up into several pieces, ears flopped.

"Rats!" He reacted, arms crossed in humiliation.

A minute later, the pets all heard footsteps coming towards the front door. They all stopped what they're doing and pretended to yawn fall asleep, right there on the rug.

The front door opened. The Loud kids all instantly headed upstairs as the authority figures headed to their rooms.

"Hey, Charles."

"Hey, Cliff."

"Hey, Walt."

They all entered their open rooms, closing the door behind them.

The pets still rested without a problem to spot, up until they heard some dialogue from upstairs, coming from Lincoln.

"Hey, what's this on my laptop?"

A small pause had occurred, before Lincoln uttered something else, giving off a rather horrified reaction.

"Aah! That's disgusting!"

Charles, Cliff, and Walt all woke up from their sleep, looking towards each other, shocked and paranoid at what Lincoln might have found on his laptop.

"Ruh-roh..."

~End~

Trivia

 * The title is a pun on the Space Jam lyric "Welcome to the Jam".