Jenny actually felt good her wedding with Clemens got closer. They shared a lot of interests and she had found him to be highly intelligent and caring. He wasn't the most musclebound of men, but then Jenny had also figured that being super muscular wasn't necessarily an attractive feature. She had remembered one odd case in which a female body-builder came in wanting tax help. Jenny generally didn't consider herself prejudiced in any way, but she had felt that the woman had lost anything that might make her attractive to most men. Even fully clothed, the woman looked like she had a man's shoulders and she could see various veins bulging on her. It had made her feel uneasy out to a degree, but Jenny also admitted to herself that she wasn't going to do anything that might lead to a fight with the woman. Clemens didn't have that issue. He was fit, but not too much.
She arrived at work as she normally did and started her day by getting a cup of coffee from the break room before heading to her office. Part of her mind thought both in some eagerness at the coming wedding while the other part still wondered about what her sister-in-law had said on the phone. Something about the way her sister-in-law had said what she had said made her uneasy. She ultimately put that aside as there wasn't much that she could do and if something was wrong, Emily Young would tell her. She had just put some cream in her coffee when she heard a couple of steps coming toward her. She looked up to see Jacob coming up toward her.
"Morning, Jen," he said sounding somewhat polite as she ripped the paper container of the sugar she was to add to her coffee, "Have a good weekend?"
"Yeah, it was good," Jenny answered and focused on stirring her coffee.
"Nothing unusual happen?" he then asked.
"No, nothing unusual," Jenny answered, "the biggest thing was that Clemens and I are still getting things ready for the wedding."
"I asked if anything unusual happened," Jacob said, almost as if he was taunting her in a way.
Jenny turned to face the man. Not all of her coworkers were pro-Animal People, and Jacob was one of two that seemed to not only be anti-Animal Person but rather open and overzealous about it. By himself, that wouldn't be that bad, but one of her other coworkers, Jason, was worse than Jacob.
"There is nothing unusual about Clemens Patten," Jenny told him.
"Other than scales, the fact that his voice has a hissing tone to it, he has a tail, and... you know isn't human," Jacob answered her.
"He made his choices, why don't you at least respect that they are his choices?" Jenny asked to him.
"Oh they are his decisions," Jacob shrugged, "but that doesn't make him any less of a freak."
Jenny bit her tongue. Jacob wasn't worth her time and the day just started. The fact that he couldn't see that despite all his inhuman features, Clemens was still a person, and that there were aspects of him that was quite handsome. All Animal People had that sort of quality to them. George and Molly and their cubs had that to a degree. Even with all their size and muscle, their rounded muzzle, eyes, and their fur on their cheeks created the soft and noble sort of quality that people always seemed to give to the big cats. And Clemens had it as well. Humans had their fantasies of women in bikinis and their skin in various oils that made their skin "shine" when under some form of light. Clemens scales did that whenever he came out of the shower, which Jenny felt did look rather good on him. But Jacob couldn't or didn't wish to see that. Deciding not to argue, Jenny side-stepped around him and began to head toward her office.
Jacob, however, wasn't about to let her go without one last parting shot.
"And in the end what does that say about you?" Jacob questioned, "the one who loves the freak."
"It shows that I'm more open minded than you," Jenny answered coldly, trying to hide the fact that his remarks were bothering her, and she didn't know how well she was doing at hiding it. She then walked away, though she thought she heard some snickering from him. She made her way to where her office. The door was only partially shut, but she figured she hadn't shut it fully when she left the last time she was in. She entered to find that there was a cardboard box sitting on an open part of her desk. That actively raised some curiosity, as she didn't remember ordering anything that would go her work office. Of course, that wouldn't mean that it was impossible for something big to come in the mail. Some requests from people wanting deductions on their taxes included many of the things that people used to calculate earnings or other factors. These were commonly returned with the note that the IRS was not a tax service. Jenny figured that this was likely something like that.
She took a sip from her mug and then set it down on a different part of her desk and began to open up the box. Opening it, however, proved to be a mistake for her.
"AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" Jenny gave a startled scream as she found a dead rat laying in the bottom of the desk.
The scream did attract attention, though the first to arrive was Jason, the other of the two co-workers who were anti-Animal Person. For the moment, she wasn't concerned on that.
"Something wrong?" Jason asked as more footsteps were heard coming toward her office.
"Someone sent me a dead rat!" Jenny stated, backing away from her desk and looking somewhat uneasy when she bumped up against a wall.
Jason then came in and casually looked into the box. After a moment he leaned back and looked over to Jenny.
"Was their something wrong with it?" he asked.
"Something wrong with it! The fact that I got it at all is wrong!" Jenny exclaimed, "Who gets dead rats?"
"Well... wouldn't you want it as a wedding gift?" Jason asked, "after all... isn't that what your boyfriend serves every night... squeezed rat."
"You..." Jenny began as she realized that the whole thing was a prank by him.
"Snakes do eat rats and mice, right?" Jason said with a smirk.
"Do I look like a snake to you!?" Jenny challenged.
"You're marrying one," Jason shot back.
"And that justifies..." Jenny began and then shook her head, "You know what, forget it. Take the rat and get out! Go back to work... or do whatever it is you do when you're supposed to be working."
"Aww... poor baby," Jason laughed and picked up the box. As he turned to leave, he found a few rather disapproving looks at him. He slipped by them with the lone comment, "Come on... it's all in good fun."
Jenny didn't think it was fun.