Friday, September 05, 2008

not how you thought things worked: short short fiction

It is well known that domestic house cats are nocturnal. Actually, most mammals are nocturnal, even if you factor out bats, which are most species of mammal. As it turns out, however, there is one house cat who is diurnal; his name, as far as people know, is Chick: Chick the cat. He is diurnal - the only diurnal house cat.

To be sure, this is weird, but it's merely epiphenomenal to the truly interesting thing about Chick. While it appears as though he has an amazingly "in tune" schedule of going to sleep when the sun goes down, and waking up when it rises, believe it or not, it's the other way around. The sun goes down when chick goes to sleep and it rises when Chick wakes up. Yeah. I'm serious. No, no joke. Scary, huh?

For real - the sun is being controlled by a cat. This puts lots of things in a very different light. Your place in the grand scheme of things? The solidity of a cycle you thought you could trust? How long has this been going on?

Okay, I don't know how long this has been going on, but my first question was, "how did it work before Chick was born?" Before Chick was born, a different cat - one named Belle - in a little town near Halifax controlled the sun. Apparently randomly, at the instant that the diurnal cat dies, another kitten born at precisely the same moment somewhere becomes the torch bearer. That's it, really. That's all I know. Honestly, I try not to think about it.

Chick is a nice, friendly cat. I understand Belle was not. I feed Chick when his owners are on vacation - if you can call them owners. Given that their "pet" controls the sun, the whole relationship has taken on a different tenor, for me. Maybe he has a secret cat name that means something amazing to other cats. I bet even the regular cat names are pretty fascinating.

1 comment:

Simon Jo-Keeling said...

Credit for the concept, here, goes to my step daughter.