The most disturbing part of this isn’t the picture (so much) — it’s the selling points sprinkled about it. Even before I defaced this image, the animal pictured is some horrible, mutated amalgam of domesticity named “Scoozie”, an engineered “pet” whose native land is the Uncanny Valley that cuts deeply and disturbingly between nature’s own reality and the endless wakefulness of the soulless automatons.
“…and, of course, cuddle-ability!” Yeah, right, until you wake up with its teeth lodged in your jugular, its ears wagging happily, “responding to light and sound” as you batter at its plastic face with ever-weakening blows, the sight of its deranged gaze the last sensation to enter your mind before the “emotive animation” chalks up another point for the monsters and the balance of power between us and them shifts slightly but inexorably towards the Scoozie faction.
I had a Scoozie, although it was the ferret kind and not the lion kind, which that one appears to be. The sounds it made still haunt my nightmares.