Set in an Alternate Universe that spun off from the arc "Down at the Farm", it was inspired by a series of fan fictions set during that arc that explored the "Grapenut" (Grape + Peanut) ship. Attitudes about Interspecies Romance begin to change when a new family, composed of Martin J. Foster and his four pets -three dogs and one cat- move into Babylon Gardens.
It has grown from a mere Grapenut shipping fantasy to its own highly-detailed metaverse, complete with a large cast and crossovers with other Housepets! fan fiction titles, the sheer number of which is far too numerous to name.
The saga is split into four seasons thus far. Each season is split into 20 "episodes" with an average of 3-5 chapters in length each, with a grand total of 325 chapters to date. It occasionally re-tells elements from the actual canon, and sometimes is edited when new details are revealed in the actual canon. (For example, when many of the characters' last names were revealed with the 2012 Art Evolution.)
The saga begins here
. For your convenience, there is also a table of contents and list of characters.
Provides Examples Of:
- Abusive Parents: Mr. Hartford mistreats Sasha, and while not technically a parent, Mac treats his charges at the pet shelter horribly.
- Alternate Universe: Apparently so, though the author tried to fit in as much canon material as possible. Even the first special episode has Peanut and King from canon warped into the universe of this fic. Then there is Episode 16 of Season 2. And recently, the third special in which both universes are fanon.
- Always Identical Twins: Antares and Aldebaran Foster. Louise and Nutella Sandwich. Rigel and Naos Foster provide example of half-identical brother and sister
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: For example, you have normally-colored Peanut alongside Grape, a purple cat.
- Elpis is a green Terrier. Yup
- Backstory: There are fanfics that inspired the author into writing this. This include Starcrossed, Auld Lang Syne, and Symphony in Periwinkle. The latter is incomplete but you should know how it ended anyway.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Peanut. Full stop. Even Bino eventually pushes him to his breaking point.
- Big Brother Worship: Fino is the oldest of the litter composed by Fido, Bino and Joey. They adore him to the point that even Bino melts in his presence.
- Big Eater: Believe it or not, Sasha. (Justified; she was pregnant at the time.)
- For canon, it's Tiger. For fanon, Elliot.
- Broken Bird: Grape has abandonment issues that her friends tried hard to console her from. Tarot is revealed to be this as well. Volant is a male example. Even Bino is revealed to have a bit of this.
- Butt-Monkey: To say Alcor's situation is less than stellar following the birth of Naos and Ringel is an understatement.
- Chirping Crickets: When, during a party, Peanut publicly asks Grape to marry him, thus causing instant mass silence.
- Contrived Coincidence: According to The Rick, the blue-eyed wolf cub’s unofficial name is Darth Vader Sanchez. In this fic, it’s Lightsaber and she’s a girl who tends to choose a boy’s name. Whether or not this is a
Fandom Nod has yet to be indicated. - Cut Short: The fic is no longer updated, due to Valerio's rather hectic personal life and it doesn't appear to be continuing any soon.
- Cure Your Gays: Flash' parents attempt this, and fail.
- Disappeared Dad:
- Budweiser. He allowed his career as a K-9 officer to break up his family. He wouldn't allow the same to happen to his son Peanut.
- Mod was Spo's grandfather. He is back as a ghost.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Budweiser. Former instructor at the K-9 academy, he gave his own son, Peanut, quite a hard time.
- Temno and Natalie Domina: Black wolf, Captain of the Special Security Forces at Xanadu, and his human partner. Wishing them a good night is a sure way to spend a night of sufferance!
- Easily Forgiven: Peanut called out on Spirit Dragon for manipulating Tarot into escaping to another dimension when the problems could’ve been solved with the help of her friends. After SD was penalized into breaking contract with Tarot, Peanut insisted angrily that the former is not needed anymore. About fourteen episodes later, SD helped Peanut and Grape on another miracle and the dog, being who he is, actually thank her and said she’s still the coolest.
- Elaborate Underground Base: Xanadu is a facility where Gottschalk creates the coolest, most futuristic stuff, military and civilian.
- The Kingpin is an underground replica of Terrace High, and it is intended as a luxury emergency shelter
- Everything Makes a Mushroom: Every morning, Antares and Aldebaran wake up their Dad in a most funny/destructive fashion.
- During a snowball fight at Terrace High, a particularly immense snowball created a mushroom cloud of snow.
- Female Feline, Male Mutt: Inverted (and thus averted) immediately with the introduction of Mizar and Alcor.
- Flatline: Averted. When Peanut wakes up from a week-long coma after his run-in with a crazy Rottweiler, Grape hugs him so passionately she snaps off his ECG leads, giving his doctors a scare.
- Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better: In rare occasion, dogs and cats can walk on all fours which they consider primitive. Grape spent episodes as a quadruped to save herself the back pains from being pregnant with five kittens.
- Freak Out: Zachary, after his tragic experience, spends some time in isolation ward in the company of his lucid nightmares.
- Gender Equals Breed: Averted with Peanut and Grape: their children, 3 female and 2 male, are all kittens.
- Inverted with King and Bailey. They (will) have two corgi females, and a husky male.
- Generation Xerox: Dayshaun looks exactly like Peanut, except he's a cat.note A spoiler picture revealed King and Bailey's pups will match their fur color, too.
- Glorified Sperm Donor: Sgt. Ralph quickly befriends Alcor and Mizar after giving them pups, Joey and Blanch are also WAY too excited when Max volunteers to donate. Averted with Alcor, who chickens out of donating for Sabrina and Fido.
- Good Shepherd: Saint Anthony Abbot, protector of animals, is known to have founded an order dedicated to the non-human creatures. After being persecuted in Europe during the XIV century's Great Plague, the order moved to the Americas.
- Brother Lazarus, a cat who survived multiple attempts to suppress him at a shelter, was ordered as priest by the Order, though Rome doesn't still recognize this authority.
- Happily Married: Peanut and Grape's marriage was the first in this fiction. They started a new social trend!
- Followed by Alcor/Mizar, Bino/Sasha and yes, King/Bailey
- Heroic BSoD: An example is when the barn cats flirted with Peanut. Or when Tegan steals a kiss from the dog, short-circuiting him.
- Heroic Dog: The Lucky Charm Grove has guard teams of humans and military dogs.
- Police dogs watch over Terrace High
- Military dogs are employed to look over the FNERL and Xanadu
- Laika was actually the first USSR cosmonaut and she returned alive from her mission of orbiting Earth three times. She became a hero and left her pawprint in the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Peanut almost loses his life to defend his Dad from a vicious Rottweiler.
- Even Zachary, of all pets, risks his life to check on the kits of the raccoons who adored him.
- Martin Foster's Self-Sacrifice Scheme allows him to save Babylon Gardens from one of the vicious dogs, but he loses his arm in the process. Averted when the surgeons reattach it successfully.
- Later on, that same dog Martin killed reappears as a ghost, and sacrifices itself to help Martin.
- Hiding Behind Your Bangs: Volant grew his head fur to cover his left eye which was redden by acid being poured on by his abusive owners.
- Honest Corporate Executive: Raimund Radulph Gottschalk. While richer than the Milton Ferrets, he will go as far as possible if this will help him reach social equality between animals and humans.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Taken to the extreme with Saga, a mouse who’s as short, if not, shorter than Spo, who hitch a ride on Samson, a Saint Bernard who tower over even the Foster twin. Of course, for the romantic example, Tegan and Samson were this as well.
- I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!:
- To pets, orange soda acts like alcohol.
- To dogs, anise works like strong drinks for humans, while catnip acts like cannabis for cats.
- Identical Grandson: Rufus’s granddaughter, Joline. Bud even look like an older version of his son. And don’t get started on Dayshaun.
- Interspecies Romance: Explored in detail, especially early on. Specifically, we have Peanut and Grape, as well as OCs Alcor (male cat) and Mizar (female dog). Fido and Sabrina from the canon remain a couple as well, though Joey and Squeak's relationship comes to an end. Later, Joey started dating and eventually married one of the Bigglesworth Cats.
- Just in Time: At the last minute before the bomb inside the Foster mansion was triggered, Kevin Marsh managed to defuse the transmitter with a sniper rifle. Averted with Episode 16 of Season 2 where the heroes had 24 hours to rescue Tarot and spared several hours left upon succeeding.
- Kick the Dog: Thomas and Celia Milton abandoned Volant when he was a puppy.
- Grape was abandoned by her owners, and years later they came back to take her away in order to squeeze money from her co-tutor, Martin. EpicFail.
- Killed Off for Real: Silver and Zen, the raccoons who originally worshipped Zach. This is when it gets dark for the first time in this fic.
- Rufus, the dog of Peanut and Grape's Uncle Reuben, dies of old age early on.
- LEGO Genetics/Patchwork Kids: Peanut and Grape's eventual children. With a touch of mysticism.
- Luxury Prison Suite: The Lucky Charm Grove for the Abandoned and the Ferals is THE shelter where any stray would willingly spend the rest of his/her life. Martin made sure that all guests are treated at the finest even should they not find a new family. Heck, they can even be PICKY with the people coming to visit them! The place has also school, laboratories, theater...
- Mood Whiplash: Emotions can get yanked every which way like a rag doll at times. For the first time in the middle of Season 1.
- My Biological Clock Is Ticking: Tegan has developed a strong attraction to Grape's kittens and will gladly spend all time she can with them.
- And then there's Blanche (one of the myriad Bigglesworth legion, a dog lover who married Joey), who dropped strong hints that she wanted kittens.
- NoSocialSkills: Averted. King finally decides to sniff butt in public to show he's a social dog after all.
- O.C. Stand-in: The actor dog who is stated to be nobody in particular is none other than Elliot Bannister. Allegra, the cat waitress, is a minor example. Delusional Steve became this, recently.
- Oh, Crap!: The faces that T.J., Tsuki and Zane do at the sight of an incoming humongous snowball christened Gamilon Planet Bomb
- Old Friend: Felix and Lucky, Grape's old kittenhood friends. They too were abandoned before they came to live to Babylon Gardens as well.
- One-Steve Limit: Defied when Grape names one of her kittens Tarot.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Several times, ghosts of animals have had an important role in this fiction.
- Joel's and Martin's pets were furious for being mistreated in life and wanted Martin back with them, to the point of drawing him to their realm
- Martin's house in Babylon Gardens proved to be an actual haunted house, where its former owners used to hold a bloody pet fight business. At a point, its restless spirits started seeking revenge.
- Morrigan is the affectionated guardian ghost of Elizabeth Rozen
- Parents as People: Alcor gets fed up frequently with Naos' antics.
- Pet Heirs: Averted. The six ferrets who inherited the Late Henry Milton's fortunes have lost everything to Thomas and Celia Milton and now live at the wolves' house.
- Plausible Deniability: As weird as things sometimes get in Babylon Gardens, it would be hard for people to accept that Peanut and Grape actually produced offspring together. So their cover story is that Alcor is the father. Their children were made as kittens, and one even has almost all white fur.
- Self-Destruct Mechanism: A real hydrogen bomb, hidden in Xanadu, ready to go off in case of an emergency that cannot be solved with any other means.
- Self-Insert Fic:
- Grape writes one of these and is incredibly embarrassed when Peanut reads it. But it is later revealed that she was writing it as a Christmas Gift for Peanut.
- Show Within a Show: Pridelands, a fictional work of which Peanut, Grape and mainly the pet cats are very fond.
- Doc & Smith, a TV show featuring a sleuth cat and dog duo.
- The Song of the Forest a tale featuring a wolf befriending a female dog named Daisy.
- Spirit Advisor: Peanut is snapped out of a depression after a fight with Grape by Rufus. He realizes at the end it was Rufus's ghost. The old dog had just died.
- Mod was the friend of puppy Bino, before ending up as cat snack. Today, he is the spiritual advisor of Bosco, son of Bino.
- Squick: Bino, Fido and Fox are disgusted when they learn that King is actually Joel, a former member human turned into a dog by Pete. What makes it especially off-putting is the fact that King's girlfriend Bailey is pregnant with his puppies.
- StockAnimalName: Averted. The Bigglesworth cats names have been revealed. Joey's wife is called Blanche.
- Surveillance as the Plot Demands: Martin and Gottschalk are not the bad guys, but they protect their premises and business with the best Big Brother network money can buy. It is said that Martin's employees
must accept cameras in the restrooms as well. - The Bully: Fredd, Diego and Armando. Three junkyard dogs who used to give Max a very hard time and still conspire to make him suffer.
- The Cameo: Characters from the fancomic ''Housepets!1X'', and from the webcomic ''Newshounds'' appeared repeatedly during this fiction.
- Tranquil Fury: Martin is known for this. You do not want to mess with him.
- Uncle Pennybags: Martin has turned his lottery win in an animal welfare business, AND he co-adopted Peanut and Grape, AND hired their owners at a ludacrious wage.
- Vague Age: Although The Rick stated the dog and cat’s lifespan are twice that of real-life counterparts, one of his short stories retconned this to an average of 40 human years. In this fic, it’s hard to determine especially for ones who are between 5 and 20. One example is Pawdrick who is 16 years old and T.J. is stated to be about the same age as him, which means the same for his twin sister Daisy. Same thing applies to Tegan and Elliot who are 15 which is about a decade older than Peanut and Grape.
- Xanatos Gambit: Bino encouraged Peanut to join the Academy with him with the notion that if the latter became a good cop, he’ll owe the former big time thus improving his reputation and if not, it will be proof that cat lovers are too soft. Of course, this is not without challenge when Grape found out about it.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Tiger gained his deserved self-esteem from the beginning and things mostly end well for him…that is, until he learned that his love for Celestia was not meant to be thus reverting him back to his old self. He’s still working out though, albeit excessively.
