This House Ain't a Home (Patreon)

"Children, children, please. Poor Miss Mabel has a headache, and all this carnivore aggression isn't helping. Can't you set aside these silly territory disputes and get along like polite, normal children for just one afternoon? ....Please?"

Virgil and Savannah in their group home, back in the 90s~

Virgil was 8 years old when he was removed from his mother and placed in long-term foster care. Savannah, although just a few months younger than Virgil, had already been living in the home longer, having been surrendered at the age of 6. She was....not keen on suddenly having to share a living space with this spoiled, whiny little tattletale. She nonetheless tries to teach him the pecking order and unspoken rules of the home ("find a good hiding spot for your stuff if you don't want the bigger kids to steal it, eat your meals quickly, the grown-ups can and will lie to you so don't trust them"), but Virgil is a goodie-two-paws that would rather do his homework and sit around waiting on his mommy to come for him. Whatta weenie.

Miss Mabel is/was one of the primary caretakers for Virgil and Savannah growing up. A soft-spoken, sweet-hearted capybara, Miss Mabel is very much in the wrong profession. She has high standards for maturity and rule-following for her young charges, and is thus perpetually perplexed that kids from troubled backgrounds sometimes act out in troubling ways. Because of this, she is frequently stressed, burnt out, and entirely apathetic to what's happening in the home (unless pushed to the point of unleashing her truly thunderous temper). Mabel does care deeply for her charges, though she struggles to connect to them...and she may quietly resent that they don't appreciate all the hard work she does. Like many herbivores, she carries an unconscious bias against predators/carnivores and would sometimes punish Virgil and Savannah for behavior offenses that she'd ignore when done by herbivore kids. Virgil and Savannah hate her, and the very first thing they ever bond over is their shared love of complaining about/messing with Miss Mabel.

notes:

-Virgil and Savannah remain in foster care until they both age out of the system- and are effectively immediately homeless.

-Virgil was shorter than Savannah for a long time, right up until he hits a monstrous growth spurt around age 13. Savannah enjoyed making fun of his gangly-limbed ass

-While Virg and Sav lashed out against Miss Mabel relentlessly growing up, they come to appreciate her slightly upon becoming adults and acquiring thankless jobs of their own. They send her holiday cards, when they remember.