Genetically engineered kittens never grow up, and why that's a bad idea

TheDustyZebra

TheDustyZebra

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I'm trying to find this short story, although I probably have it somewhere. Kittens (my brain says possibly puppies, or possibly both) engineered to stay in the "cute and fluffy" stage forever, except the problem with that is their brains continued developing at the accelerated childhood rate, with predictable consequences. From no later than the 80s.
 
I remember one where women were doing that to their babies because everyone could take immortal drugs. They like kept them as pets.

You had these helpless little bundles with old sad eyes
 

Genetically engineered kittens never grow up, and why that's a bad idea​

Actually, the alternative is worse...

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In the case of puppies, dogs have been bred to remain in a mentally adolescent state for the majority of their lives, almost stunted. You can see this through a comparison with wolves that are pretty indistinguishable from dogs in their pup stage but develop much more adult behaviours as they grow.

So, literally the world we live in :)
 
Victoria Silverwolf said:
I believe this is "The Forever Kitten" (2005) by Peter F. Hamilton.
Click to expand...

Thanks, but that's not it. The one I have in mind is about how kittens/puppies were engineered to stay in their youthful stage because everyone likes them that way, but their brains remained in high-development levels and they became super-intelligent and threatened to take over everything.

I said "no later than the 80s" but it could possibly go into the 90s. I definitely think it's in that range somewhere.
 
There are dogs bred with skulls that are too small for their brains so they end up with constant seizures--people assume they are shivering.
Plus dogs get all sorts of health problems that wild ones do not have.

Cats have not been domesticated so long so there's much less of that.

Hairless cats for the allergic etc.
 
I once read a story about a dog that was engineered that way. It ended up ordering a rabies dose from overseas (it was extinct in the US), infecting himself, and biting his owner (anybody know what this one was?).
 
Did the kitten try to use the scientist's child as bait to capture some kind of dangerous beast? I've been trying to find a similar short story.
 
I think I read a similar story where the cat liked to make S'mores. Google isn't giving me anything, so hopefully it wasn't an Analogue story.
 
The story is Puff by Jeffery D Kooistra
Dec 1993 Analog
A scientist breeds a kitten that takes years to grow up, so it learns much more than the average kitten, and eventually turn against its master and goes rogue and breeds...
He wrote sequels as well.
All published in Analog.
He later started writing science articles in The Alternate View in Analog.
 
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