They were quite literally birds of a feather. Chase was a cute blue jay, standing at about 5’8 with well-groomed azure, black and white feathers and a bit of a beer belly. He was a very simple man who enjoyed watching baseball and curling up with a good book. He wanted to be a poet someday, although he wasn’t the best at it right now. He’d met Xavier when he was a freshman in college, and they very quickly became friends. He was an orange and black Baltimore oriole who was an inch taller than him, with a much skinnier build. To Chase, Xavier was smart, funny, and brave, sheltering him from the various hungry predators of their world. To Xavier, Chase was cute, caring, and incredibly huggable. Over the years, their relationship deepened significantly. They went from friends to crushes, crushes to boyfriends, and finally, from boyfriends to a married couple, eager to start a new chapter in their lives.
 On one chilly November night, just before Thanksgiving, Xavier came home with some big news: he was getting a promotion. “I can’t believe you’re gonna be a manager now!!” Chase exclaimed loudly as he enveloped his love in an unexpected hug, squeezing a flustered chirp from the black and orange avian. “All of our dreams are finally coming true…” the couple went out for drinks at a neighborhood bar to celebrate, and they spent a good portion of their time there fondly reminiscing and planning for the future. It wouldn’t have been an especially interesting night out, were it not for the fact that they caught a particular person’s eye. Chase and Xavier were interrupted in the midst of their conversation by a tall, handsome, rather pudgy black cat in a red turtleneck, who asked if he could sit with them. The oriole was wary, but his husband was able to talk him into letting the kind stranger sit at their table. Once the kitty was situated, he introduced himself by his first name, Quentin, and joined their conversation, and they ended up enjoying each other’s company to a surprising degree.
 “So… you two have been married for a year now?” the cat asked, sipping his drink. His voice was deep and smooth, and his tail waved behind him like a charmed cobra as he spoke. Chase responded cheerfully. “Well, not quite, but we’re almost there! Our one year anniversary is actually next month!” Quentin chuckled. “You’re such an adorable couple. I wish I had that kind of stability in my relationships…” He sighed deeply. “I had a messy breakup with my last boyfriend. Smug bitch clogged the toilet on the way out.” The blue avian gave a reassuring smile. “Aww, it’s ok. Some people are just full of shit. I’m sure he didn’t deserve you anyway.” The cat smiled back, but neither of the birds picked up on the fact that it wasn’t so much of a warm grin than a cheeky one, like he’d found something Chase said amusing.
 They talked for a while longer, minutes fading into hours. Xavier had to admit, Quentin wasn’t as bad as he was expecting. He was charming, and he had a certain way of speaking that would send him into a near-trance. He even had a few shameful thoughts about asking him for a threesome, which he forcibly suppressed. He and Chase were both enjoying their time with him, and they were considering asking him to meet up again sometime, sexual or platonic… only for Quentin to beat them to it.
 “I was just wondering… Thanksgiving’s coming up, and I probably won’t be spending it with my family this year, but I already have meal plans. How would you like to come over for thanksgiving dinner, maybe watch the football game afterwards?”
 The pair of avians looked at each other, considering his offer. Neither of them had family in this city, and travel was expensive. It would be nice to spend some more time with this kitty, get to know him even better. Sure, they’d only just met him, but he seemed nice. Besides, they almost never got invited to events like this, why turn an opportunity down?
 Xavier turned back to Quentin. “Uh… we’d love to!”
 Quentin grinned. “Great! I’ll just put my number in your phone, and I’ll text you where you need to go! I’m sure you’ll like it, it’s a nice place.”
 Xavi looked back at his husband, who seemed excited about the dinner. Quentin paid his tab and left, and soon after, the oriole was hit with the mild fear and suspicion he had pushed back earlier. It was like his mind was trying to tell him something about this cat…
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“Hic! Uuuhhhh… oooommmfff…”
 Quentin wondered if he had maybe overdone it for turkey day this year. A little passerine, like a sparrow or a swallow, would fill him up, but he’d remain fully mobile with just an abnormally big beer belly. Even a larger or fatter bird wouldn’t hamper him too much, it would just be a heavy weight hanging off of his abdomen. Yet here he was, lying on his back across his couch, his furry black gut almost twice his size, swollen and squirming with two whole birds. Every square inch of his insides felt filled. He’d never felt this sickeningly stuffed in his entire life, he almost wanted to throw up… and it felt so, so good. He suppressed a burp and licked his chops clean of gravy and feathers.
 He thought back to an hour ago, when the terrified poultry wriggling in his stomach was a pair of well-intentioned bird husbands who wanted nothing more than to enjoy a nice Thanksgiving dinner with him. He was there to greet them at his door, wearing his cute brown turkey sweater, telling them something along the lines of… he’d forgotten, honestly. Everything went to shit the moment he revealed his true colors.
 It had been enough of a chore making the gravy he poured on their nude bodies. The feline had to lie to the adorable kākāpō across the street to talk him into coming over and helping him “clean his kitchen”. He liked a screamer as much as any other cruel bastard of a pred, but four straight hours of the parrot screaming while he was oven-roasted for his drippings wore on even his nerves. If it was any consolation, his voice was tired out by the time Quentin devoured him, leaving only some nice, subdued struggling that lasted about an hour or two, before he finally fell into the porcelain grave he was always destined for this morning.
 The signs of his struggle with the couple were everywhere. Forcibly removed clothes strewn across the floor and hanging off of furniture. Gravy and stuffing spilled all over his countertop. Orange and blue feathers all over the place, even sticking out of Quentin’s fur. He remembered trying to shove stuffing into the oriole’s mouth, and instead receiving a harsh, sharp bite to his hand in defiance. Two could play dirty at that game though, and he and the jay each ended up taking an entire bag’s worth of stuffing straight up the ass. That might not have been such a good idea, however. They probably would’ve been filling enough without such plumped-up tummies…
 “P-Please!! Let us out!!!” Chase cried out, his hand and cute face bulging from the top of Quentin’s belly. The kitty pushed it back in without care or interest. “Guuuhuuuhh… Just accept your fate. You’re - Hic! food now. Just like you were always supposed to be…” His two meals continued to squirm in fear and despair, aggravating his already not-too-good condition. “Come on, please! Help!!”
 “Ugh, you two should stop, you’re gonna make me - bbbBBBWWUUUUURRRPPPP!!!”
 The cat’s gaseous belch spilled most of the unneeded air from his gut… as well as a few threads of saliva and even more feathers, which landed atop his stomach and his sweater. Without so much bloat, Quentin felt much more comfortable and back in his element, and started to rub and soothe his groaning, meat-filled belly. “Aah, that’s better. Sorry, um… Chet, but even if I wanted to vomit you and your cute twink of a husband out, I don’t think I could. Getting a big meal in is one thing, getting one out is something else - slrp - entirely.”
 Xavier, a writhing form pinned beneath the blue jay, frantically spoke up. “What!? No… n-no, no!! Come on, you’re gonna at least reform us after, right? Y-You can’t kill us!!!”
 There was a low chuckle.
 “Reforming? No, sorry, I’m not that kind of pred. Neither of you tasty little chickens are getting away from me. After all…” He paused and licked his fingers clean. “What’s the point of eating someone if you can’t completely claim them… body and all?”
 “N-No, you can’t just-“
 “Fuck you, I can. I’ve done this a hundred times before. No one’s found any of those missing birds, and no one’s connected the dots.”
 The struggling weakened, replaced with panicked and horrified sobbing. “You’re a monster!!” Chase screamed between gasps and sobs. “How could you do this to us? We didn’t do anything…”
 He patted the bulge on the head. “Awww, don’t feel too upset. My meals don’t exactly die… instead, they join me. Their precious souls become part of the fat deposits they contribute to. You two will spend get to spend the rest of my life united on my belly, or my ass, or my thighs… depends on where you gravitate towards. But hey, not like you’ll be lonely. I’ve got hundreds of souls for you to talk to… aaalllll inside of these few inches of chub.”
 “T-That’s even worse!!”
 “Oh well. You’re never going to leave, so why not get comfy and melt down without any hassle?” The cat yawned, his toothy jaws stretching nearly as wide as they were when he started shoving Chase down his throat. “Unfortunately for you, it’s now time for my annual Thanksgiving food coma. If it’s any - mmm - consolation, you were my best turkeys by far… better than the year I caught that fat peacock, even… zzz… zzz…”
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“*Gasp* AaaaaAAAAAAA!!! Someone fucking help!!!!”
 After a few hours boiling in this hellhole, Xavi and chose looked much more like butterball turkeys than anthro birds. Most of their feathers, weakened and damaged by acid, had fallen off, leaving only delicate, goosebumped pink skin. While his surroundings burbled and churned, his body was being subjected to a horrific acid bath. In some spots, his skin felt like it was on fire, burning like a wasp sting. Worse, in some places there was just… numbness. Like there was nothing there, and it had been eaten away. The oriole was pretty sure that his talons were gone, now part of the blood scented slip around him. He was glad he couldn’t see very well in here. He definitely would’ve hated seeing what happened to him.
 His position shifted uncomfortably as he tried to paw around for the exit, if there even was one. That was when he accidentally brushed beaks with his blue jay lover. Chase, like his husband, had been reduced to a tearful, whimpering, featherless, gory mess, slowly dissolving into calories for the hungry cat’s body. Xavi ended up looking into his eyes for a bit too long… and he finally understood. There was no point fighting anymore. They were both doomed to be digested into fat by this fucking demon of a feline. There wouldn’t be a one year anniversary, or a promotion, or anything else in the years to come. This was the end of their story. Xavi’s beak bent into a guilty frown. This was his fault, he knew it. He should’ve known Quentin would want to eat them, he should’ve fought harder when they were being prepped, he should’ve protected the love of his life instead of going down with him. Why had he failed?…
 Xavi felt Chase’s wings, or rather what was left of them, wrap around his torso. It reminded him of just a few nights ago, just before they met the person who would kill them. For the first time since the acids started kicking in, he felt somewhat at peace. Though reluctant at first, he eventually moved to hug Chase back, hands gliding over his blistered body. Without saying a word, the couple embraced one last time, waiting to finally pass out from sheer pain and exhaustion. At least they had each other as they died. And if Quentin wasn’t lying, they’d be together forever…
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Quentin woke up from his food coma the next morning, mumbling and brushing feathers out of his fur, and was relieved to discover that he was fully mobile for the first time in hours. He licked his lips as he removed his turkey sweater and pressed his hand into the orb his gut had become. “Mmm, my my, you boys aren’t even halfway done yet. I really overdid it this year, huh?” Indeed, his stomach was now at the size it would usually be if he ate just one bird the same height as him, round and undefined. Beneath his paw, he could hear the squishing of meaty slush and the crackling of weakened bone. At least it was digesting at all.
 After throwing away all of the avians’s clothes and other evidence, the black kitty spent most of his Black Friday lounging around without a shirt on, just doing whatever, taking his sweet time in finishing off what remained of Chase and Xavi. He caught up on the football games he’d missed while prepping, eating and sleeping. He rubbed his stomach, trying to soothe it as its contents melted. He did some online shopping, finding his belly to be a convenient laptop table. As the day continued, the two lovebirds broke down more and more. The squishy orb of his tum shrank smaller and smaller, until most of the meat was in his small intestine and his abdomen was as large as a medicine ball. He started to feel a bit sick while getting up for a glass of water. “Ugghh… What’s wrong with me - HGGGCKK!!!”
 He fell to his knees and spewed something onto his kitchen floor like a hairball, gasping for breath afterwards. It took him a minute to realize what exactly had come out of his mouth. “…Skulls? Huh… been a while since I could nab one of those from somewhere other than my toilet bowl.” He picked them up. They were wiped clean of any meat, each a perfect shade of pearly white with a black beak. He could only tell them apart by the size and the beak shape. “I’d better save these for later…”
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DISPOSAL AHEAD
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The bathroom door slammed open with enough force to kill a man, and a furry paw slapped the lights on as its nude owner rushed towards the toilet. “Stupid motherfuckers, you’re seriously going to wake me up in the middle of the fucking night just to get you out? Assholes.” Quentin mumbled as he planted his thickened ass onto the seat and started to let loose. Immediately, he groaned with relief as his packed bowels emptied, pounds of fecal matter splashing and plopping as they dropped into the toilet water like steaming snakes. “Nnggh… oh fuuuucckkk!!” His asshole had never been stretched this wide before… goddamnit, why couldn’t he have just eaten them one at a time?
 The logs felt odd, or as odd as they could to someone who ate people whole on the regular. Quentin could feel the hard clumps sliding through his colon, clanking when they hit the porcelain. No matter how much he pushed out, it felt like it kept coming. He was exhausted, having to constantly flush the toilet to keep it from clogging up. It took three flushes before he finally stopped.
 The kitty wiped his ass off, and out of morbid curiosity, took a peek in the toilet bowl. He’d seen this so many times, but he could almost never get used to the sight… or the hellish stench. A bowl’s worth of brown, coiling shit, flaked with pieces of skeleton and soiled feathers, forming some kind of demented rainbow. He saw something shining in the top of the dump, and thought he was hallucinating out of sleepiness for a moment… then he remembered who he ate, and deduced what it was. That shine was Chase and Xavier’s golden wedding bands, sticking out of the top. Never in a million years did they think the precious rings would ever end up in their soiled remains. Quentin flushed the toilet and patted his stomach as the sparkling bands swirled down the drain, flicking the light off with his tail. “Third time this month. I hate when prey takes revenge like this.”
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END OF DISPOSAL
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The kitty rubbed his belly, feeling proud of himself for destroying another few lives. That cute married couple he’d invited over had done a real number on his figure. Most of the weight went right to his gut, giving him a pretty hefty, squishy potbelly. There was a lot of them, however, and plenty of fat was distributed towards his hips, buttocks and thighs, making them jiggle and adding even more to their sex appeal. “Oh, these birdies make me so fat, but they taste so good…”
 Quentin could still feel the presence of the blue jay and oriole. Just like he could feel the presence of everyone he had ever eaten, all locked away within his chub. He could sense Chase and Xavier, their sorrow for the loss of their old lives and their regret for falling into his trap. It had been a long, long time since he had a bird soul that gave off an emotion other than crushing fear and helplessness. It was quite refreshing. On his shelf, he had placed the burped-up skulls, after a bit of clean up and “labeling”: One skull was marked on the forehead in red sharpie with the word “LOVE”, the other with the word “BIRDS”. A fitting tribute to two wonderful meals.
 Quentin sighed as he opened up a dating app, already starting to think about his next meal. Hopefully, he’d be as easy to convince as those two idiots were, whoever he turned out to be. “Alright, who’s it gonna be? I’m in the mood for a nice, buff falcon…”