The Twenty Eight Minute, 5-Minute Freewrite ~ Day 466~ Prompt: Cookie Cutter~ Original Story, Original Writing, And Even The Photo Too ~

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~Sometimes, You Just Gotta Finish The Story~

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Tuesday's Prompt: Cookie Cutter

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Whrrrrr.
Schnick.
Schnick.
Schnick Schnick.
Sadge stood at the belt, small knife in hand, slicing away at anything that didn't look like a cat in the wet dough, zipping by his station on the long conveyor line. Cookies, cookies, COOKIES. Glorious, sugar-brown cookies. Row after row, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, the time just kept rolling along like the flour-based cookie blanks, now suddenly motionless on the belt in front of him. The line was dead. The small red light at Station 1 was spinning, way over in the corner of the enormous warehouse, as the alarm horn blared the BLATANTLY obvious. The line is dead! There would be no more cookies heading for the big ovens now.

“What's up?” It was Vern, shouting over the annoying horn from his station on Belt 6. He wasn't that great of a 'cutter', but his uncle worked upstairs, so he got the job anyway. Sadge thought aloud, “his cats look more like a sad possum, than a feline. But no one seems to notice. Or care.”

Vern still had his arms raised in a standard 'what's up' posture. Sadge shrugged in his direction, then shouted, “I dunno. Maybe not enough butter again?” Like last Thursday. You'd think Old Fredd could get it right. How hard can it be, after 19 years. You dump the 700 pounds in the hopper every hour, like clockwork. Vern shook his head in disbelief or indifference, it was hard to tell the two apart, then turned back toward his side of the line.

Twenty seven years on the conveyor, and Sadge had never seen so many stoppage's like they'd had this past month. Yes, it happened now and then, but this was getting ridiculous. He pondered away to himself, as he flipped his knife end over end into the air above today's batch of Mr. Bill's Cat butter cookies, spread out before him on the motionless rubber belt. He deftly caught the knife handle, as he'd done THOUSANDS of times in his career, right before the point stuck into the rubber, then clipped a bit of extra dough off a cat's too-large-for-production-quality ear. “If I ran this place, things would be different. And we'd for SURE have some Opus snicker doodles, coming off the line.” Then again, he wasn't sure Berkeley Breathed would allow such a thing. He made a mental note to write him a letter.

His thoughtful reverie was suddenly cut short by a huge commotion over on Belt 32. Everyone on the floor was moving that way in one massive wave of humanity. He heard the talkative guy from Belt 13 tell his friend Belveeta, “it's Mr. Tibbs. He went through the line.” Belveeta's gasping, gaping mouth of horror reminded him of his lost guppy-fish on the kitchen linoleum floor.

Sadge's heart followed suite, and dropped like a lead sinker. He LIKED Mr. Tibbs. He'd been around for years. The scroungy, resident factory cat that wandered the floor day in and day out, searching for mice that should not be skittering around on a food-production floor. Tears welled up in Sadge's middle-aged eyes.

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He finally arrived at Belt 32, smashed center-long into the throng of workers, crushing him like a ball of raw dough. And sure enough, there was Mr. Tibbs, laying out on the belt. Sadge's heart sank to a new depth, “NOT the blending belt! He's a goner for SURE.” Nothing alive could survive the blending belt. Area 32. The new, Mixa-Matic 2700-XL Line. This was some pretty incredible, new-age machinery in the 'cookie biz'.

Sadge finally shoved his way to the front through the swarm of workers surrounding the station, to a place with a better view. A loud retort echoed from his lips off the concrete floor. “NO-OH!!” Expecting an industrially whisked, fully-blended cat...Sadge was amazed by what was laid out in front of him. Mr. Tibbs was just FINE. Splayed out on the rubber belt, surrounded by doughy, Mr. Bill's Cat cutout slabs in every direction. Though there was a curiously large arc of cookie blanks plainly missing, within paw's reach of the enormous Maine Coon. It was obvious. Old Fredd hadn't forgotten the butter. He'd TRIPLED the batch. Again. Just like a month ago Thursday. No WONDER Mr. Tibbs looked so happy. And FAT.

Sadge could swear he noted a wry smile, as the enormous mouser looked up into the human fray spread out before him on the factory floor. A relieved group-chuckle arose, as Mr. Tibbs happily licked the top of his front paws, then shoved them behind his ears. Amazing. The cat looked none the worse for wear, after such a long and harrowing trip through so many cookie machinations. It was a confectionery, true to the spirit of the world of bakers, assembly line miracle.

The ALL CLEAR blared on the klaxon in the corner, and everyone filed back to their normal place in the line. Mr. Tibbs jumped down once the belt started to move, and sauntered off toward the bathroom doors, no doubt happy with the promise of a long nap after 17,000 calories of wet, buttery dough.

The horn blasted it's two standard procedure, GET BACK TO WORK notes, and the line jumped back into full motion. Sadge took up his spot on Belt 47, slicing and dicing away at the cat-shaped dough, as it sped faster and faster past his station. He took a moment to look up during a short lull in mis-aligned ears, and glanced over into the corner of the factory. There was Mr. Tibbs, draped over the window sill by the bags of flour, sunning himself in the golden rays streaming through the grimy glass. The cat looked more than happy, doing absolutely nothing beyond sleeping off a whole year's worth of Industrial Blend, No.2 Butter Product.

Chuckling to himself once more, Sadge turned back to the belt to slice off a poorly formed tail, “I should talk to Mr. Grimby, about putting out a Mr. Tibbs cookie in our next batch run. Wouldn't THAT be grand?!!” Looking over again at the enormous, rotund cat now fast asleep in the corner, Sadge laughed out loud this time, “but who would buy a bag with only ONE cookie in it?”

Whrrrrr.
Schnick.
Schnick...

~ Finto ~

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Five Minute Freewrite Post by @mariannewest

Post: Five Minute Freewrite-Day 466 - Prompt: Cookie Cutter

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Thanks for stopping in and viewing another Twenty Eight Minute, 5-Minute Freewrite about cookies and cutters and cats and such. If you have any thoughts about factory work, hard jobs doing the same thing over and over and over again, work-based safety requirements, loud noises, fat cats, industrial butter, or anything else this post reminds you of, please feel free to comment away in the spaces below. I'd love to hear from you.

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Please UPVOTE, COMMENT and FOLLOW if you enjoy my works.

And go to @ddschteinn -- There's a whole lot more...

_{Posted: 01/30/2019 @ 11:56}

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Excerpts From Late-Night Conversations With A Mechanical Cat

Fact Number 117

More Stinky the Cat Classics from CatFacts Of YesterYear

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_{Authors Note: The 28 Minute, 5-Minute Freewrite -- It's important for me to note these are NOT true, 5-Minute Freewrites. I DO set a timer, and write for five minutes. It's amazing how that little clock really gets the creative juices moving. And most of these writes come out as a pretty complete 'thing' in that time, though I do still edit. Those are put out as 5-Minute Freewrites.}

_{However, the 28 Minute, 5-Minute Freewrite was invented to continue the story, on the backbone of the original 5 Minute'r. As the moniker in the beginning says, Sometimes you just gotta finish the story. These writes are edited and worked on. After all, this stuff may be 'out there' for awhile. Or at least until the cows come home to roost or be counted before they hatch. So if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it just may be a story about a chicken sporting a rubber duck beak/mask thingy. It just took a bit longer to get there. -ddschteinn}