Okay, so the dream was of the weretiger cop investigating the disappearance of a witness protection person who was also a weretiger. The cop was an ASPCA cop and not a normal detective, but was tapped to go undercover to see what had happened to Weretiger 1.

Weretiger 1 had been placed with a zoo/sanctuary that had no idea that W1 wasn’t just a tiger. Only now he’s gone missing and the sanctuary is not fussing up to what happened to him. So W2 ends up getting sent to the same place (undercover of course) to see if she can’t figure out what’s up. Only the folks in charge catch on to the fact she’s not just a tiger and trap her into revealing herself. “Oh look, this pile of food I am putting right here is poisoned and this pile of food isn’t. Time for dinner!” … “So which one you gonna eat? The one closest to you that’s poisoned or the one on the opposite end of the cage that isn’t?” … “Well that was easy.”

Come to think of it, it would be insanely easy to tell if you had a normal animal or not. Hrrr. Then again, if we are going off the idea that the were population is relatively small and that the animal was transferred to the facility with full papers, then they’d have no reason to suspect that it wasn’t just a fuzzball.

Still. *ponders*

But that brings up the point of how many weres are there? You sort of have two choices, a) they exist and everyone knows they exist or b) no one (or a very very select few) knows they exists. Humans are rather intolerant of ‘other’ so if they were a) they would have to be in large enough numbers that they couldn’t be done away with. And if it was b) they’d have to be a very small population.

Hmm.

So assuming it’s the government that is putting weres into witness protection programs (we’ll get into the actual usefulness of such things in a bit) then they’d have to be a decent sized population. Or at least not mythical critters.

Which brings us over to the idea of federally tracked animals. Now I have no clue if this exists (I’m thinking not with all the pet great cats out there! o_O; *twitch*) but you’d assuming that knowing there are weres out there that you’d want to make sure they weren’t hiding out in the zoos. Why? No clue, just run with me here. ^_~

So every large predator would be tracked genetically ala AKC/The Jockey Club. Animals would be registered when they were born and tattooed with a code and chipped. Of course for species with miniscule breeding populations (Cheetahs, Pandas, etc) it wouldn’t be so much of an issue. Still, can’t hurt to track them. So I guess that would fall under the Wildlife protection act, which means the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

But then, if there is a registry for weres people could use it to kill them off. Which, I suppose, is the same things as being able to find ex-cons living near you and no one seems to bother with that. Hmm. *ponder* Still, if there was enough of a threat then no one would want to be registered (shades of Marvel Universe) and that’s a whole new set of worms.

In order to have enough, but not too much… hmm, maybe 1% of the population? that means 1 in every 100 would be a were. Which seems small, but then again thinking ‘1 in every 100 people is a large carnivore in hiding’ is probably scary enough. ^_~ Wonder what WtA’s numbers were. Hmm. *ponders if WtA ever did population studies*

This is, of course, assuming a relatively harmless were group. If they were kill-it weres then they’d quickly be a 0% population. Heh. ^_~

So um, where was I? Oh yeah…

Assuming 1% population and a government/police force involvement therein, it stands to reason that there would be were officers on the force. Most likely in were related jobs (ASPCA, natch) as they are still not best buds with the general population. Personally I’d rather not be pulled over for speeding by a cheetah kthnxbai. o_O;;

Now in order to place the weres in witness protection programs you could either a) hide them as a human or b) hide them as an animal. Will assume that b) is used for those people who -really- need hiding. So the W1 must have been in deep -bleep- in order for them to pull strings and get him into a preserve. But that means they would have to fabricate all of the paperwork to make him seem genuine, which means they either have to fabricate parents or find real parents they can fudge birth records for (hey, this is like model horse pedigreeing! ^_~ *grin*). Easiest thing would be to have some breeders that were willing to fudge the paperwork for you, which means a sanctuary or registered breeding program is on the government payrolls. Or at least partially on the payrolls, because nothing says ‘plant’ more than a non-profile run primarily by government donations. 😛

Then again, isn’t’ the national zoo run on government funds? Hmmm… *ponders*

Still, you’d have to have a good reason to move a full-grown tiger from one facility to another… after all you still have to fund a buyer/home for the ‘animal’ before you can move it. Hrr. Just farming him out to someone (or some facility) on the payroll would be too easy to track. After all, if they are going to this much trouble to bury him then he needs to be -hidden-.

Which sort of makes me wonder again, what on earth did he do?? And that’s a pretty good indication I have either a) and interesting idea or b) a giant plothole. … *headdesk*