Which weird species is the coolest?

Coolest to look at or coolest to have? Those could be very different things, I think the Ri are absolutely great, a tiger-horse that the berserker can ride with pride, but having one as a pet mmm-maybe not so much (since they'd just as soon eat your face as take a treat from your hand)
But a wing-cat would be great, ditto on the scarf-snake(I love the idea of a fuzzy warm-blooded snake) and I add my chalk to the domoctopus
~Blue

On the one hand, wing-cats are so inherently cool that they pop up everywhere, in literature, video games, and even Saturday morning cartoons. In the "take a normally awesome creature and add a feature to make it even more so" lottery, they come home with the economy-breaking jackpot.

On the other hand, that very ubiquity makes them somewhat passé. The scarf-snake is, at least, uniquely yours. I haven't seen enough of them to determine whether they can rival the wing-cat in terms of sheer cool, though.

While my vote is for the obvious, I can't really resist the call to invent a creature. Monsters are among my specialties, after all. Let's see . . .

The octopus can be a wondrous pet. Vastly intelligent, intensely curious, and largely affectionate, they recognize and are grateful for where the food comes from. They learn their names, and can learn tricks. With their color-and-texture-changing abilities, their beauty is endlessly varied.

But they're very difficult to keep. Curiosity and boredom will drive them to escape from nearly any aquarium, and lacking a lung they soon expire in the cruel, dry air of the average home. They are susceptible to various diseases, and their water must remain of matchless quality. If only they were a bit more . . . amphibious.

The Domestic Octopus was not so hard to create. The genes for affability were identified within five generations of breeding, and so were able to be built in from the start. Genes from apple snails were spliced in to replace one of the gills in the octopus' mantle cavity with a lung, and a septum and extra pair of siphons were added so that this would not interfere with underwater jet propulsion.

The resultant organism did not have the top speed of its wild relatives, and it still had a tendency to vanish from time to time, but this was often out of mischief rather than fear or predatory cunning. ("Ocho! THERE you are! It's okay, Mom! He was pretending to be a light fixture!") To satisfy its natural urges, it was recommended to feed it Octopus Kibble in closed containers, such as jars or Mister Potato Heads. It still needed a plentiful water source to keep its skin moist, and developed a distressing reputation for sleeping in toilet reservoirs.

After the Fire, the Domestic Octopus kept popularity with ocean-going vessels (not many Captain's Pets can keep the ship de-barnacled) and coastal communities ("What's that, omores? Snails in our garden? Apan! Dinnertime!"), with more of an "outdoor cat" attitude than before. The octopi come back home for much the same reasons: humans are easily exploitable into giving you oysters or haddock in exchange for Big Sad Eyes or tentacle-hugs.

How's that?

-msst