Cattywompus

by Rasputin Jr. III

---

I showed up here in the year of our Lord 1986.  It wasn't some kind of
crop circle hoax, it was an actual miracle of childbirth.  Sure, there
were corn fields nearby, but it's not what you think.  I may have had
explicit instructions and goals in mind, or what you might feel were
mind-like things.  It was kind of like that, anyway.  Never mind you.
Don't worry about a thing, but get crackin' on it anyways.  Chop chop.
People will tell you, don't just sit around.  That's lazy!  Don't just
sit around doing nothing at all at least.  Write some fiction maybe.
At least meditate or something, so you can give doing absolutely
nothing the correct label and explanation for everything.  It didn't
make a lot of sense at first, no.  Minds don't have an analogue in
this scenario, but that's ok for what we had in mind.  So out there in
the corn fields or whatever...  actually, no, come to think of it, my
mom said it was a hospital room...  I popped into existence.

I didn't start typing all this right off the bat, that's a shame.  I
can't remember why not, or what I was doing.  Most people said there
wasn't much noteworthy about me as an infant.  Even my dad was kinda
like, eh?  So what now, kid?  My mom immediately figured I was the
coolest thing since sliced bread.  Probably kinda typical, to tell you
the truth, you know how moms can be sometimes.

Perhaps the first thing I came to study, to pay attention to in any
way, was my mom, I'm pretty sure.  It doesn't make sense, no.  Maybe
not that.  Mother nature?  Maybe that.  That makes an eerie kind of
sense, doesn't it?  Ah, yes.  The universe looking at itself, kinda
thing.  You might want to look into that, or not, or read something
into it, or not, or something else entirely.  Reading is kind of an
interesting thing, maybe kind of along these lines.  What are all
these chicken-scratches on here anyway?  Some kind of weird
Earth-runes.  They're kinda at some level of reality, I'm almost sure
of that.  These chicken-scratches here are some part of nature,
they're almost a physical object.  Hey, they are really.
Indistinguishable particles of data, an a, b, or a c.  They're real,
certainly!  Why not?  A letter on a piece of paper is a real thing,
no?

No, you say?  No, I suppose you're right.  It's not a real thing.
Listen, so, honestly, no, I'm not real.  I'm not a real person.  I'm
kind of fictional, yeah.  A real person is typing this, I promise.
None of that runaround here, did a person write this?  Look, I'm
almost completely sure I'm a real person typing this.  This is fiction
though, I'm not real.  Never mind you with all that just yet.

---

A few years into it, my parents enrolled me into the strange Earth
football known as soccer.  I'm telling you too much here.  I can't
give away just everything about all of my methodologies for success!
Can I? I played on a team, this ancient Earth sport, soccer.  Our team
was called the Dynamos.  Something like that.  I think we had purple
jerseys, but hey it was practically the 80's so what of it?  Soccer is
not a thing to joke about casually in some circles, buddy.

I was not good at soccer.  I've never had particularly good hand-eye
coordination, and that's not acceptable in soccer in the first place,
like...  You're not allowed to kick the ball with your hands or eyes,
there are certain rules like with anything.  Even mother nature has
her rules, it's astounding how little in existence, if anything, is
completely free-form.  I mean yeah, look, I can sprout wings and fly
away...

That guy's just fictional though.  So here we are, I'm still typing,
the fictional guy sprouted wings and flew off.  He's around here
somewhere.  So I imagine you're reading this, probably didn't sprout
wings and fly away, I gotta tell you some kinda story here, lemme
think for a second.  It's amazing kind of, I thought about it for a
second and you didn't notice a bit of a pause, did you?  How can that
be?  Well, I couldn't think of anything anyway.  I'll just tell you
about soccer.

Seems like I had a friend back then, I drifted apart from him around
that time.  No, that's not how these things happen.  I was just a
little kid, I had no say in such a thing.  Like, I should have...
what...  maybe I did.  I could have figured out how to stay in touch
better, probably.  That dude was on my team before we went into
soccer, but I didn't get it for some reason.  So he was like, some
vestigal, I dunno, some other human being.  We were quite a team!  He
was smarter than me, I'm pretty sure.  I always had a definite feeling
this guy was smarter than me.  There were all kinds of things he would
do or say, I just wouldn't understand at all.  People always managed
this with me, I guess I was always what you could call, "gullible." I
would feel pretty offended if I weren't admitting that to you right
here, so, don't tell me that back to my face.  Maybe if you want to
insult me or something.  Why would you want to insult me anyway?  Ah
yes, soccer.

So my buddy showed up one day on the soccer field.  On the opposite
team.  Can you imagine my consternation at a thing like that?  I had a
friend or two at soccer, as well.  It was great for that, really.  It
was great for making friends and stuff, but man, I was not good at
soccer.

I don't remember all that much.  What is memory anyways?  I wonder if
I even have an atom left in my body that I had back then.  Pretty
weird concept.  I'm dealing with some weird concepts here, let's knock
some of them off right now.  So, I'm fictional, I've kind of alluded
to you I'm an alien, can sprout wings and fly around at will, stuff
like that, listen...  that's all fiction.  I'm just some guy typing.

In the ancient sport of Earth football, or, soccer, the sides of the
field change at half-time.  I remember quite a bit about it.  I'm
going to try to explain this without sprouting wings and flying off
into the distance, or something like that.  So we were all sitting
around, just finished our Tang, probably, something like that.  They
didn't put me in the game all that often, to be honest.

I wandered around the side of the field, though, had a little
disorientation about my buddy being there probably.  I was thrilled to
see him, he was my friend, after all.  So we were just like, shooting
the breeze I guess, he always seemed to know something I didn't.  He
was such a smart guy.  I could always just tell he was smarter than
me, somehow.

I had been at my buddy's house, at some point.  It was probably before
this fated day on the field of soccer, because I'm pretty sure this
was the last time I saw that dude.  I think this is how I can
remember, in fact, that he was so much smarter than me.  You see, for
years I would go on with a weird misconception, that most people's
homes were open in the back, like a doll-house.  It never really
occurred to me, thinking about that, that all houses would have four
walls.  It never occurred to me that my own house had four walls, that
every house had four walls.  I always assumed, on the back, everyone's
house was open like a doll-house.

I can only imagine how a thought like that got into my mind, so I'm
going to type that in here, kinda fictionalize it as a weird story
about soccer, something like that.  So I was at my buddy's house, and
this is how I could tell he was so much smarter than me.  He was
running circles around me!  Better at everything.  Soccer, for sure.
Just plain everything.  We kept encountering some topic, and disagree.
No, listen, he would say, houses have three sides like doll-houses,
something like that.  Like no, listen, we would go to ask his dad, he
would say yep, houses have three sides, that is a fact.  Humans are
stronger in groups, I argued, he said no, no, we would ask his dad and
he'd say nope, nope.  Humans are a solitary unit in themselves.
Something like that.

I went home eventually, clearly, but who knows, really?  Maybe I'm
still there, I was so spun around.  I asked my dad what happened.  He
said, don't be so gullible!  I felt like a giant tied to the ground by
a horde of pixies.  I asked my dad, what's gullible?  Now, you have to
understand my dad never spoonfed me information, so he says, it's like
this, your shoe is untied.  I looked down, and my shoe was actually
untied.  My dad was like, ah, no, that's not gonna work.  I got to
work tying my shoelaces, my dad was like hang on, listen.  I'll tie
your shoes.  That bewildered me, because we had been working hard on
the lesson of me tying my own shoelaces.  He was like, ok look, we're
teaching you about gullibility here.  So he tied my shoelaces
together.  I guess I just never understood that one.

So I finished my Tang or whatever, but I was a little spun around.
They put me in the game, for one reason or another, and I did
fantastically.  I had never played this well in my life.  I was
astounded at the change in myself.  My friend at the game was good
luck for me, and bad luck for himself.  He ran alongside me shouting
only encouragement.  There was only one problem now.  The lesson was,
don't be so gullible.  It was right after half-time, and I was kicking
the ball spectactularly...  the wrong way down the field.

---

Later in life I grew up to the point I was arguably an adult human
being.  I had jobs, a sprinkle of romance, humorous encounters.
Eventually, clearly, I tried my hand at writing.  Before that I spent
some time on boats.  I honestly didn't do much there.  I wasn't a
stowaway or anything like that, but I was on boats.  I wasn't really
not supposed to be there, no one ever said to me I couldn't be there,
or anything like that.  I was just a boat groupie sort of, you could
say, for the most part.

I never took well to the sea.  I puked a lot.  I was never good at it,
and a confined environment like most boats are is not a place to find
understanding, compassionate, forgiving people who will give you a lot
of leeway to make a lot of mistakes.  I had one moment I remember more
than anything else, where it was really my chance to shine.  The
captain of the vessel had asked me up to the bridge to give me a
chance, more than anything else.  Looking back on it, that's all it
was.  He was just giving me a chance, calling me in from the sidelines
into play for a moment.

That particular boat was much more than a boat, it was a shipping
freighter.  There are not many people on such a ship, but it's far
less cramped.  I would even surmise they had trouble finding me for
this particular event, I was probably off reading a book somewhere,
just staying out of the way as best I could.  That's the majority of
what I did at sea, to tell you the truth.  This day, however, was my
chance to shine, and oh how I did.

The captain had sought me out to show me some things about boating, I
suppose.  He must have been feeling in a very good mood that day, just
wanting to spread a bit of good into the crew, who knows.  Normally I
would have been hiding out in some corner of the ship, it was really
quite large, biding my time through the trip, not doing much of
anything, certainly not anything useful.  That's how it goes for some
of us at sea, and I have to be quite honest with you here, I lost
money at the entire proposition, as any kind of career goes.  Things
work out that way, I would suppose, more often than not.  I was a
passenger, really, not crew in any sense.

On this day however, I was crew.  The captain showed me quite a bit
that day, things I don't remember from lack of practice before or
since, but I piloted the ship for a while that day, and what he had me
do was a complete 180.  There's no way I can capture the feeling of
turning that entire ship completely around, swinging it around to turn
the other way.  It just felt utterly perfect.  The enormous ship
practically glided on the water, around to face the opposite
direction, slowly decelerating until it was moving in the direction it
was now pointed.

---

Some people have wondered, now, this part is true, though I'm not
personally, whether I contracted a disease called toxoplasmosis at an
early age, or even in the womb.  It's a strange disease, it's spread
and continues through cats and mice.  The mouse contracts the disease
from the cat's feces, and it has quite an untoward effect on the
mouse's psychology.  It makes the mouse basically, for all intents and
purposes, utterly fearless.  Unstable, unpredictable, fearless.  So
the infected mouse continues on with pretty much this only problem, a
brain problem caused by the disease, making it the most fearless
little creature.  Naturally, it gets eaten by a cat.

The disease continues to the next cycle of its proliferation through
the cat's digestive system, infecting the cat as well.  It has been
wondered if it makes the cat more vicious, more of a hunter, though
this may or may not be the case.  Cats of course, hunt mice in the
first place, it's their nature to do so.  The disease, however,
absolutely does infect the cat's digestive tract, eventually make it
all the way back around to the cat's excrement, where the next
unwitting mouse contracts it.

That's just how the world works.  What goes around does indeed come
around.  It has been speculated, in my case, that I contracted this
disease myself at some point, which has rather less defined effects on
a human being.  It's been linked to fearlessness, bouts of rage, sheer
insanity...  It does not stop me from feeling quite strongly about the
importance of finding my way through life as a decent human being.  I
wonder, who am I? I never used to wonder about such a thing as that.
I would read a story with my eyes only, almost no comprehension there
of what I was scanning through.  That's how I went through life in so
many ways.  I just didn't pay attention.

People have so many labels for so many things.  Attention deficit,
insanity, dementia, facts that need labels, to fit into the story.
How could one have a story, without words to label concepts?  What's
in a word, anyway?  It is a physical thing, but it starts to blur the
lines now.  Some marks on a piece of paper perhaps, that would be
barely perceptible if not for contrasts in reflected light for us to
see.  If we were blind, then how?  Of course there are ways, a system
of bumps for us to feel, to impart the story.  Now then.  Where is the
story?  The line into the imagination has been crossed at that point,
the story is not in physical reality at all.  Which part is real,
though?  I assure you of course, I am!  I am quite real!  Yet, at the
same time, I am not, not real in any way, shape or form.

Physics has a notion of forces which are "fictitious," they are
by-products of other physical processes, things, physical things which
are absolutely real.  These fictitious forces are quite real in
physics, and they have known effects of their own on physical reality,
things as tangible as myself, a tree, a pebble, anything with mass.
We can label it that then, anything with mass.  Light is clearly real
as well, and that's getting into a whole other ballpark of the same
thing, of course.  It is all, indeed, very real.

Now, how can I convince you of my own reality?  Surely you understand
the concept of a person writing, that's almost a given if you are
reading this, reading and writing are indeed as much the same thing as
addition and subtraction are, in opposite directions, the same thing.
I could get into slightly more advanced mathematics, it continues, of
course it does.  It goes on farther than any human mind can see, of
this I have been assured by the most expert humans in such fields.
Perhaps I needn't prove my reality to you anyhow, does it matter, from
any pragmatic viewpoint?  It does to me!  It certainly does.  I can
let it go, perhaps.

I wonder what I should write about then.  I wrack my mind, wherever it
is, to think of anything I myself am an expert in, and I come up with
naught but a few small kernels here and there.  I'm just not an expert
at anything, I just have to admit it.  Many people really are,
however, and to them I would concede a point in their area of
expertise.

I sprout my wings again to fly, why not?  I'm myself here, I'm my own
fiction, why shouldn't I? It's a bit absurd, but here I go, flying off
over the fictional horizon, seeing so much beauty around me as I go.
I quickly fly out of the city I live in, and further and further into
a world that is or isn't real, who cares really, perhaps.  Below me,
far below, I see something that catches my eye, in quite the most
rural area I could ever imagine, far beyond my home where I sit
writing this.  Below me, far below, are a few cattle, they must be the
happiest bovines I could imagine, happily chewing their cud as they
gather together, out standing in their field.

---

To come back to reality for a moment, and the matter at hand, I have
always loved cats.  I was born into a household, as I said, and what I
have not mentioned perhaps, are two young cats.  I can only surmise
this is true, I don't recall being brought home from the hospital that
day, I would guess the day I was born, and take it for granted that
was my birthday.  So we go along with this assumption, that I came
home from the hospital, where I was being born that day, all that
kinda stuff, and when I arrived to my home, waiting there already were
these two young cats.

One was a tuxedo shorthair, one of the most masterful cats at the
matters of cat things and doings as I have ever known.  He probably
taught me many of the things I know in life.  He was, for all intents
and purposes, a fine role model and instructor in many things.  The
other cat was a true leader as well, he was an orange cat, also a
shorthair.  He had some strange quirks, as anyone does once you get to
know them.  One of my earliest memories is being outside on a winter's
day and dropping my toy, and one of these cats helped me out for a
second, picking up my toy for me so I wouldn't lose it in the snow.
It confused me for a long time after, why or how that cat had known to
pick up my toy right at that moment, and how to convince the cat ever
again to play with my toys along with me.  I never managed to convince
either cat ever again to play with any of my toys.

The cats were good at certain cat things, and here's where I get into
a small segue from reality as most people would agree on it, to
another, quite as real, completely true fact.  These cats assured me
later on of something, which is that there is a secret society of cats
who pull many strings in our goings and doings, many things in the
world happen due to the plans and actions of an underground,
secretive, world-wide society, which we see in our human society as
our pet cats.  On the one hand, yes, that's entirely real, it's a
fact, this part is not fiction in the least.  On the other hand, I
have to weave this together kinda into a story for you, so I'll come
back to that later.

Those cats were joined at some point as I grew up, another cat came
into our household, much to her own dismay, at least at first.  It
took a very long time for this third cat to warm up to the other two.
A relative had needed to move to a new place which did not (this is
true!  I can't imagine what some people are thinking) the new place my
relative lived did not allow cats inside.  So we took her in, another
piece of the great puzzle of a plan falling into place.  She was
driven a little crazy by it all, I'm afraid.  Is it fair to keep these
creatures in our homes?  It can be almost like wrongful imprisonment
to keep a cat inside all the time, though I've heard statistically,
and by my own basic understandings of logic, it makes sense...  cats
need people, really.  Maybe it's just codependence...

Everyone is completely insane, I'm convinced of it now, in this
moment.  Where is a mind, anyways?  It's a complete figment of its own
imagination, it has to be, there's no other explanation.  It's not a
thing!  There's nowhere for a mind to be a physical thing, it's
utterly fictitious, as much as this story, it's just some abstract,
intangible thing.  Not an exercise in pragmatism to think about a
thing like that.  I look down now, and I'm fictitious, I'm looking
down now at a cat.  She looks up at me in response.  Why are you
telling them?  She seems to ask.  It probably doesn't matter, most
people would never believe in such a thing as a secret cat society
pulling strings all across the world anyhow.

The cat jumps up on the table.  Let's make a deal, she seems to say.
You can write these strange little things imparting something that
isn't real anyway, those little symbols, whatever, no one believes a
thing you're saying anyhow, I certainly don't...  She pauses for
breath.  The deal is on the table here, you write all this down, but
the cat society wants something in return.  She jumps down, leaving
the deal on the table.  I stop to think about that, for a moment.  So
the secret society of cats wants something intangible, ineffable,
they're really coming across like they're pulling my leg here, too.
It's going to be hard to explain this.

---

Fictional me soars down, gliding down through the fictional air, to
the fictional ground, where the group of cows are out standing in
their field.  I gracefully, as it's my own fiction here, why not, I
gracefully land before them.  The cows don't take much of an interest
in me as I come down to land before them.  They have their own cow
business to attend to, of course.  Cow things and doings.

I think back, remembering my time at sea, the cats, trying to think
how to impart something here, a story I guess.  Makes sense anyway,
that this would be some kind of a story.  When I piloted that enormous
ship that day at sea, and now, I remember...  there was another cat,
on that ship!  How could I have forgotten that cat.  It's a bit
strange how these things sometimes work out.  I've gotten a bit
distracted from the story.

I wander over to a ditch in the pasture which is almost large enough
to be considered a small creek.  Something floats by in the water,
catching my eye as it passes by, I can't even tell what it is,
brightly colored, a flower or something, floating by down the water as
it flows along, something that fell into the water and will be carried
along until it gets stuck somewhere or another...  I idly wonder what
it even is, and as I follow its path along the water flowing through
the ditch in the cows' pasture, I see on the other bank of the ditch,
waiting for me here at this point in the story, yet another cat,
watching me.

---

Do you believe in synchronicity?  I'm not sure if I do.  It seems like
an excuse.  If I were caught with my hand in the cookie jar, I know
what I would say.  The cookie jar just happened to be there when I put
my hand down, that's all.  These things have been known to happen.  If
you have crop circles on your mind, you will see them everywhere you
go, it's the same way with cookies, pink flamingoes, anything.  Like
sirens calling you to the cookie jar, everything just dovetails
perfectly sometimes.

Do you believe in gravity?  I hope you do indeed, or at least have
some healthy respect for such a concept.  Gravity is one of those
fictitious forces though, you know.  I'm quite serious.  Gravity is
simply a by-product of the physics of other things.  It's not a real
force, in some senses.  I'm quite serious.  Gravity is not to be
snubbed, however.  The same cat from before, the real cat, she's quite
real, leaps at this point, several times her height, onto the desk as
I try to write this.  She has come to help me write, it seems.  She
says that's good enough, that's a good enough paragraph there.  She's
pointing to this one.

Synchronicity, where was I...  the other cat has come out now, he's
quite timid.  I have barely seen him at all today, but he has come out
in this moment as well, to help me write.  They're such little ninjas!
Cats are amazing, can you imagine?  A human like a cat would be able
to leap to the top of most buildings with ease.  Would be able to
conceal themselves almost to perfect invisibility in almost any
environment.  A human like a cat would be...  the perfect ninja.  So
loveable too; kind, gentle, fluffy.

It stands to reason I will soon be encountering many of these sorts of
things.  Synchronicity is astounding, sometimes.  It probably is real,
I say, now.  There are too many coincidences to be discounted here.

---

That day on the ship, my only real moment of anything memorable at
sea, they had found me, I forget what I was doing, reading a book, or
something.  I would pass the trips at sea this way, just staying out
of the way, for the most part.  I still haven't found my calling in
life, not with any degree of accuracy.  On a ship of this size, which
was a shipping freighter, the waves will toss you around a bit less
than on a smaller vessel, so I had that going for me at least.  I
wasn't utterly sick quite all of the time.

I think the cat was with me then, come to think of it.  The ship's
cat, I suppose.  They will often keep a cat around on a ship, I'm not
sure why, even.  Probably to give orders or something.  So they found
me, reading a book I imagine, knowing myself, I was probably reading a
book.  I prefer fiction.  I can't imagine what else I would have been
doing anyways.  So I'm just assuming, I would guess, I was reading a
book, because that's what I do, more or less.  Some fictitious book.
The cat was quite real, however, I remember that cat vividly.  A white
cat with a few black spots.  The cat basically outranked the captain,
as you may imagine.  She was basically his cat.

As I recall, come to think of it, the cat followed us up to the
bridge.  I was a bit nervous, they didn't tell me what was going on.
They just told me the captain had asked to see me, so I was really
quite nervous.  I knew I had done a good job staying out of the way at
least, and that had basically been the arrangement, I had come highly
recommended to this vessel for the reputation I had come by for what I
did, from my work on other boats.  People had assured this crew I
would not get in the way, and I lived up to it magnificently.

So to my recollection we all made our way, rather far across such a
large ship, to the bridge.  The cat was probably leading the way.
Eventually we made our way all the way to the bridge.  Luckily for me,
as I explained, for this particular voyage I didn't need much in the
way of sea legs.  I wasn't sick except with the angst of a nervous
young man who had been asked mysteriously to see the captain of a ship
on which he was sort of crew but really did nothing.  So we arrived at
the bridge, I can almost see the cat in my memory, jumping onto the
captain's shoulders as she always did, as I tried to steady my voice
and asked, "what's happenin', captain?"

---

If a cat could be convinced to play soccer, it would be quite a
memorable game.  As it is, I don't remember much from those days.  It
seems when they would risk putting me into the game at all, I would
often play defense.  In soccer there is a goalie, who stands directly
by the goal and tries to block the ball from going in as the last
ditch effort.  The goalie has to be pretty skilled.  Actually,
everyone has to be pretty skilled if the team wants to win.  They
usually put me in, honestly, when it seemed like a forgone conclusion
that we were going to lose the game anyways.  Once in a blue moon we
would win anyways, despite, or perhaps even once or twice, due to, my
being in the game, doing something or other, almost always playing
defense.  Defense positions, in soccer, play directly in front of the
goalie, and try to keep the ball from ever making it that far.

Cats will more or less tell you, if you ask correctly, they have no
interest in something like that.  Not per se.  Not exactly like that,
not in the same sense.  Cats have similar things on their minds,
certainly, that would make equally little sense in the other
direction, if the cat were explaining to a kid playing soccer, some
cat type of topic, string theory, as it were, to a cat, perhaps, or
some viewpoint a human being just wouldn't understand, no matter what.
Surely some things are simply beyond the comprehension of mere
mortals.

It implies a connection, then, if one looks closely here.  Perhaps
there is no real connection, but as I've been trying to impress upon
you, fiction is real anyways.  A to b to c.  Here with a flourish of
the wrist, you see...  it's all in the wrist...

---

The cat on the far bank of the ditch which is almost a creek gets up
to stretch right as I notice it.  Her head gives it away.  She spins
in one complete circle, not exactly stretching, a bit playfully, and
sits again, staring at me.  I know cats, you see, sort of, I pride
myself a bit in knowing cats so well, I mean come on, what else have I
got going for myself anyhow, really?  I could write a whole book on
cats.

The pasture with these cows, and this cat, is mostly comprised of a
yellowish dirt.  There are plants, yes, the cows wouldn't be in here
if it were all dirt, but not so many plants.  There are thistles, the
cows probably wouldn't eat those, there are succulent plants along the
ditch, I wonder if the cows eat those.  What are those plants,
anyways?  Some have bright flowers on them, but mostly they are about
what one would take to be some kind of cacti.  The cat has knocked
some of the yellowish dirt into the water of the ditch.

The cat here, the real cat, is nowhere to be seen.  I'm left on my own
to type for the moment, left to my own devices to come up with
something to tell you about all of these things happening and not
happening.  The cat on the far side of the bank stares intently into
the water of the ditch flowing past.  I wonder what she is thinking.

She looks up at me almost as if she's about to say something.  The cat
who was here on my desk as I write but a moment ago, by story time
anyhow, is nowhere to be seen.  I have to think of something to tell
you here or the story will stop flowing as surely as if the water
tried to flow through the ditch, all dried up.  Now, here is the cat
at hand.  She darts past for a moment to tell me something or other,
who knows?  Anyways, back to the fiction.

The cat on the other side of the ditch looks across at me.  She's
about eye-level with me, the opposite bank of the ditch is elevated
from my side.  Now you may remember, I can fly in my own fiction, so
who cares about a thing like that?  Well, I'm not flying at the
moment, I'm standing across the ditch from the cat, and she is looking
me directly in the eye.  The story must continue, at any rate, so I
look back across at her, stock-still, and close my eyes
ever-so-slightly as a cat might, because I'm such a darling with cats
you see, like a cat would, I look across at her.

Her eyes widen.  The fictional cat.  Sometimes cats will do a thing
like that, too.  It doesn't mean the same thing exactly, when a cat
makes some gesture or another to a person.  There's some gap in the
communication between a person and a cat at times, different things
are important or meaningful to one or the other.

Anyways, it's my fiction, so this fictional cat looks across at me
with her eyes wide now, and says, "well hello there."

---

It's funny how, if one is already thinking about crop circles, one
will see them wherever one goes.  The same could be said of almost
anything.  If you are thinking of something already you will see it
wherever you go.  Many people will tell you all about all sorts of
advantages in staying upbeat, but how can you do that anyways, if
you're feeling down in the first place?  Perhaps it's a matter of
focus, perhaps it's some kind of energy in the universe someone can
draw to themselves, perhaps it's just an illusion we make for
ourselves, a fiction only in our imaginations...

I'm going to level with you here and now, I have no idea what I'm
doing or where any of this is going.  I'm just watching it flow past
at this point, like the colorful thing that went by in the imaginary
ditch, whatever it was, that's all this is here.  You see, here?  Yes
right here.  At the moment, there is absolutely nothing after this.
This is, as we call it, the moment, now, the point at which the text
is coming out of...  somewhere, surely.  This story surely is coming
from somewhere?  I should probably focus on that, after all I'm the
one responsible for this story coming out of wherever it's coming
from, am I not?  I already decided on that, now, it's fiction yes, but
I've already decided it's my fiction, so I have to stick to that or
nothing afterwards will make any sense.

I have no idea what comes next!  It's a bit unsettling to think,
perhaps.  All of these cats appearing out of every nook and cranny
now, as cats are apt to be in, if you know what I mean, about cats
here.  Cats seem to shape themselves almost any which way into any
small place, if they so desire, and frankly, God help you if they
don't.  Now you may start to see my point, if you didn't already,
though with a tack like this on such a stream of consciousness into
the rest of the story, as it unfurls, I can't imagine why you would
still be here with me if you abhorred cats, for some reason.  I can't
fathom the thought processes of some people, at times.

I should stick to some kind of point, however.  These sorts of things
are strange in the way they unfold before us, aren't they?  I spent
most of my time at sea on boats which travelled under their own power,
but like the wind can carry a boat as well, the story here can
probably be thought of in kind.  Such flowery prose!  Some people
wouldn't like this one bit.  I'm not sure I would read anything like
this, myself, to be quite perfectly honest with you.  This is someone
rambling about cats now, that's a real viewpoint on it.

I could revisit soccer for a moment, to draw a parallel.  I can't
imagine a thing about that, in any context that fits!  Let's see what
I can come up with.  Do you know how a cat can get embarrassed?  It's
quite true, cats can be embarrassed.  When a cat is embarrassed, they
will pick themselves up, hoping you didn't see anything, and continue
on gamely into their goings and doings they were already engaged in,
not particularly worried about what anyone thought of them, surely?
Well, why not?  Why wouldn't a cat worry what anyone thought of them?

I have heard it said that hard times make strong men, strong men make
good times, good times make weak men, and weak men make hard times.
Soccer can be quite dangerous, you know.  Do you know that?  Yes, it
is true.  From time to time there can be the most tragic accidents in
soccer, just in the course of the game as it is meant to be played.  I
don't know how far into this I should go, probably not too far.  I
want this to flow in a completely suitable manner such that almost
anyone would be fine reading it, without too much consternation.  Now,
be strong my fellows, it is a fact, and here I repeat it, as clearly
as possible, soccer is not to be taken lightly.

I don't mean to be all doom and gloom, it teaches one many things,
does it not?  Perhaps above all else, the lesson of something like a
thing like doom and gloom is a lesson in how to live one's life.  We
have all the time in the world for doom and gloom, but at this moment,
all that stretches before me is more emptiness into which the story
may flow.  An empty page, it seems to lead the way, the story unfurls
into it like the sails of an old ship with a favorable wind behind it.

---

I meander along the bank of the ditch, fictionally.  The cat has
leaped down and across to my side, where she keeps pace beside me.
Her stride is shorter than mine, but she has twice as many feet to
walk with, so she keeps up easily.  In fact, if you know cats, you
know this or any cat could easily outrun me in a footrace.  We are
engaged in a small kind of battle of the wits.  I'm trying to figure
out what's going on here with this talking cat.

She seems to know things, already, right off the bat, she just knows
certain things.  How does she do this?  She's not only a talking cat,
she seems to know things immediately.  She's not just a talking cat,
she seems able to speak the exact things that are on my mind as if she
resides entirely inside my head.

It's an impossible battle of the wits to win, with a talking cat who
doesn't exist outside my own imagination, isn't it?  How can I
possibly outsmart a cat such as this?  I wonder if I should forfeit
the point to her.  She knows, of course, that I'm thinking that.  I
caution her at this juncture, one slip of the tongue, in different
company, and people would put her right in the circus, or worse.

She replies, of course, that she knows.  She knows things like that,
anything I could think of, she's a bit of a know-it-all really, but it
doesn't offend me that she is, after all, she knows what I'm thinking
no matter what I could possibly think, as she's in here with me, as I
think any of it.  That's where she is, she's in my mind.  She exists
only in here, really, or...  where?

I ask her where she is, then.  She can tell me, maybe, if anyone can,
where she is.  She looks up at me, she's not as tall as me, you see,
being a cat, and she sort of shakes her head, no.  No, not that.  If a
cat can look exasperated, that's how she looks.  She wonders why I've
written this part here, but I'm leaving it.  If a cat can laugh, she
laughs at that.  That's silly, she tells me.

I wonder if I recognize this cat, and I'm not sure how to ask her,
though of course she already knows.  She knows anything I could say
before I say it.  Some things are just meant to be, I suppose.
Sometimes meaning just exists, right?  It must, surely.  A story, like
this story, this meandering note on cats, a letter, many letters, so
many letters forming words, forming a story...  The meaning of it is
what it is then, the thing that we can say doesn't exist, perhaps.

The cat understands in this moment, as I look at her, and she agrees
with that.  Cats everywhere breathe a sigh of relief again.  These
things can be kept under wraps and still be written down as a story,
this is fiction, after all, none of this is real, so no one will be
too worried about something like this, a secret society of cats, or
what I was telling you about here.  The cat has won.  I concede the
argument to her, and we continue walking along the bank of the ditch
through the pasture, the herd of cows behind us as we meander onwards
into the story.

---

What's the goal here, anyway?  I'm not sure what the story is any more
than you are, I'm just the one writing it here, not the one reading
it, but it's basically the same from either viewpoint, I'm not
exaggerating much if at all here.  It's fiction, I guess one goal is
to tell the story.  Have you ever finished a book and felt sad it was
over?  I would feel flattered if anyone ever said they felt that way
about something I wrote, maybe that's the goal here.  Is that cruel of
me?

A cat might know a thing like this, but there are no real cats here at
the moment.  They're taking a nap somewhere.  Cats do know how to
enjoy a nap.  The imaginary cats aren't here at the moment, either.
They're off at some other part of the story, doing their cat things
somewhere that isn't real, per se.  A fictitious nook or cranny
they've made their way to where they hide for now, at this point in
the story.

It's nothing to get too worked up about, I suppose.  Cats can be that
way, aloof.  Some cats are snuggly and love attention, always coming
up to you to explain themselves or their comings and goings, what you
might call people cats.  Not all cats are that way, however.  Some
cats are much more aloof.  Every cat has its own life experience to
draw on, deciding what sorts of cat things they decide upon, who they
are, what they will do.  You could say everyone has a calling in life
no matter what they do or even don't do.  Some people's calling in
life is to stay out of the way, for the most part.  The real cats
here, at this juncture, as the imaginary cats, are safely hiding in
some nook or cranny, and I won't even try to look for them.  I have no
cause to disturb them, do I? I needn't check on them at this point in
the story, they're taking care of their own goings and doings quite
adequately.

Now, what I feel I should tell you about here, is the advantages, in
some cases, of a mindset based on the goal at hand.  I'm trying to
impart something to you, which I may as well do here, as I'm writing
quite a lot of words here.  These words just keep coming from
somewhere or another, onto the blank page at this point.  Right here,
this moment, a point in time one could say, a spacetime event or a
point, at which I am making a point to you in another sense.  A point
in time where a point is made, followed by a blank page.  That's only
as I write it, as you read it, I would imagine there is more story
afterwards.  I should hope so!  For my own good, alone!

The point about goals, as I'm trying to tell you here, is only about
picking a goal.  A suitable goal is always a good idea, almost anyone
will tell you so.  It needn't be exactly what you might think it is,
like reading to the end of a book, rather anti-climactically, reading
to the end of a story, then what?  Why read a book, anyhow?  I'll try
to make it flow as enjoyably as possible, in light of that.

When you're picking a goal, if you want to do something, and why
shouldn't you want to do something...  well.  Anything one does has
some goal or point to it.  It's often best to look at many options
before picking the best course of action.  Many of your options will
be things you care about.  If you don't care about reading in the very
least, it would not be a good choice as a goal, for example.  I can't
fathom the minds of some people...  If you want to read, that's a good
goal to have.

Another thing to think about in choosing a goal is just plain old
feasibility.  Ever the pragmatist, am I not?  Reading isn't a good
example in this case, because reading, in this case, is clearly very
possible, as you are clearly doing exactly that right at this moment.
I do sincerely hope you are not put off by all these cats in every
nook and cranny, or anything like that, I would hate to be thought of
as a complete bore telling nothing interesting in as many words as
possible, but, eh, so...

So my goal here is to entertain you, then!  With fiction, I suppose, a
fictitious account of myself meandering through some imaginary story
where I am actually, though I don't exist quite exactly the same as
you...  Well...  Someone typing all of this.  I do certainly exist,
which I am quite grateful for in a moment like this.  Ever seeing the
bright side of things!  Now certainly not to eschew the pragmatism of
realistic necessities nor whether I care about the thing at all, I
spread my wings here again and off I go to chase after some goal or
another...  In this case, I mean telling you this fictional story.

---

I'm not sure where I left off, anyways.  Seems like the story needs to
unfold a bit more.  I would tell you more about life at sea, but as I
told you about that, it was never my forté to be a sailor.  Soccer,
no.  Cats are a good standby I would suppose, something I feel I sort
of know a thing or two about.  At least compared to other things I
know, I'm sure there are actual experts on cats, who have been
inducted into the secret cat society completely, and know all the
goings-on and doings of any cat business anywhere, an expert on the
subject would tell you about that, but little do I know in that case,
the cats in the story are fictional cats anyway, as I myself am,
discluding some guy who's typing all this, putting together the
indistinguishable particles of language one by one, an a, b, or c, on
and on.  I would imagine I have used the whole alphabet in here by
now, each letter at least once.  I would imagine so, but I'm not sure.
I would imagine I have used very many of the letter e, as I have heard
it is the most common letter in the English language.

Before you go thinking I'm an expert at English, mind you there are
several caveats to my being able to claim such a position, here.  Do
you know how vast a language English is, with how many rules, words,
and concepts?  I'm almost completely sure there are mistakes in here
already, and I'm not even halfway through the story.  I would imagine
I've used less than one percent of all English vocabulary so far in
writing this, and I myself am not nearly capable of using all of
English, as I do not even know all of English!  It's quite a vast
language, if you don't believe me you would be shocked to hear a true
expert on the English language obfuscate their speech by speaking only
in vocabulary that almost no one knows.  It's true!  That's a real
part of this fictional story, I wish I could do that myself.  It's
almost as far beyond me as sprouting wings and flying away.  Or is it
even further?

This is a matter of perspective.  It's my fiction, so I can do
whatever I want in it, right?  I can't use words I don't even know
though, can I? That would be unheard of.  There could be no
explanation for a thing like that, it's not possible.  Even in
fiction, I think you will agree.  I can't use a word I don't know,
whether I'm real or not!  In fiction I can easily fly, that's no
problem, but I can't use a word if I don't know it.  I can struggle as
much as I want, but I will never be able to think of any word I don't
know.  I wonder...  I wonder if that's even true.  Maybe I can make up
a word, some portmanteau or neologism for some cattywompus concept or
endeavour here in the story, and use that word, but I don't know if
that even counts.  It probably doesn't count, but it's a matter of
perspective, I would suppose.

---

I feel quite in a rush to finish this story, for some reason.  I
shouldn't be so hasty, perhaps.  I should slow down to enjoy the
scenery.  I'm not even thinking too much about where I am or what I'm
doing, I'm not enjoying the moment enough.  How often does one get to
talk to a talking cat, even if she is imaginary?  The truth is I
pretty much know exactly what she's ever going to say, the same as she
ever knows about me.  Still, it's a talking cat, I can fly, I'm out
here in this beautiful pasture, even if it is imaginary, I may as well
enjoy the moment.

The cat, of course, knows all of this.  Maybe cats usually just don't
talk because they already know everything.  So the cat knows exactly
what I'm doing, and of course, I know what she's doing, especially
right as she does it.  At this point in the story we settle down to
sit on the edge of the ditch, our legs dangling down toward the water.
The bank is rather high here.  I don't know what you know about cows,
but it occurs to me this ditch is here like this for a reason or two,
and one reason is for myself and this cat to sit here enjoying it,
now...  I have to think about this a bit more don't I?

The cat's legs aren't dangling over the edge, why, that's not how cats
sit.  I'm sitting that way, though, that's how people sit, imaginary
or not.  The cat is sitting how cats sit, that makes sense.  She's
talking how people talk, but not sitting how people sit.  That makes
more sense.  Talking cats aren't that unusual anyways, especially in
fiction.

We sit though, we sit here on the bank of the ditch, we aren't even
talking.  I suppose as a human being, I always have some urge to talk,
I'm fulfilling that quite well enough sitting here typing, this is
like talking, sort of.  Writing is a bit like talking, I suppose.  The
cat isn't talking much.  Cats usually have some urge to meow at
people, well, this fictional cat speaks English, like I was telling
you, I would imagine her grasp of the English language, her command of
vocabulary, quirks of her expression, her knowledge of grammar, are
almost, if not completely, the exact same as mine.  We needn't talk
all that much anyway, we have quite an understanding, we're just a
couple of fictional characters in my mind as I write this sitting at
home inside, sitting on the edge of a ditch in a pasture, now...

Ah. I have found a mistake now!  Are these cows out standing in a
field, or a pasture?  I look back at them, some distance away down the
waterway.  Or up it.  I should decide some of these things, maybe,
it's my fiction after all.  So, the cat and I wandered away from the
cows, downstream, following the direction of the water flowing through
the ditch.  You know, come to think of it, this water, all water, it
goes somewhere eventually.  It probably doesn't even occur to the
water it has some goal or another, it probably doesn't occur to water
in that way.  Maybe fictional water, I should decide right here.
Sure, why not.  The water is thinking of getting to its goal, the sea,
to join all the other water there, holding up a shipping freighter
with me on it reading a book, hanging out with a cat there, the ship's
cat.  Then I realize, that's who this cat is.  It's the same cat,
she's here in the pasture with me, where I noticed these cows, I
landed here, fictionally speaking, like the very same cat!

It's spun me around a bit again.  So this cat, in quite a delayed
double-take, I have noticed, is the very same cat, the ship's cat!
That's where I know her from.  For some reason it makes me a bit more
nervous to be in her presence.  You have to understand, you see, this
cat basically outranked the captain of that ship.

---

I am a strange loop, indeed.  These cats, the real ones, they seem to
only come out to see me in the middle of the night.  It happens again
and again.  Looking at the clock as the bell chimes the top of the
hour, of the top of the day, once more, I wonder if time itself is a
loop.  I try not to get stuck in an eddy here, but to focus on
something real, something at hand, in front of me, the real me,
sitting here typing.

The bell chimes midnight, the cats are out.  They are here helping me
focus on this, what I'm typing to you, no fiction here at the moment.
The two cats proclaim something or another, it makes no sense to me
what they're saying.  I only speak English, a small subset of all of
this vast sea of a language in front of me.

What does it mean to be myself, sitting here typing, petting a cat, or
anything someone would commonly call a real thing, firmly rooted in
physical reality?  It's not fictitious in the least to discuss a thing
like this, in my humble opinion.  Or maybe that's part of the fiction,
as it were, to at least try to be honest, then!

Such flowery prose flows out of somewhere, onto the page.  Some people
would hate it from the opening, through here, to the end, I wonder who
would be reading such a lengthy treatise on these cats anyhow.  I'm a
strange loop, I curl back around, through, knotted together.  I feel
jealous, in a way.  Jealous of others perhaps, the certain tangles of
their lives.  It makes me feel a bit blue...  I want to escape, I
suppose, into another person's viewpoint, and I can't, can I? I never
would be able to do something like that, no more than I would be able
to fly, not in reality, anyhow.

I needn't get caught in such a point where the flow stops me, however.
It's my own fiction, of my own devising, my own plot devices to
explain the matter at hand, typing here.  In reality, that's all I've
been doing for the entirety of this story, so far anyway, I've been
sitting here typing, one indistinguishable particle of language, one
letter at a time, an a, a b, or a c, any letter of the alphabet.  I
could use diacritical marks, I could use letters from any other
alphabet, such as the device supported.

I look again at the clock.  Time has passed, an interval of time, as I
sat here writing this small blurb.  I've typed this all, so far, in
one sitting, this small blurb here.  What I was explaining to you,
perhaps, in this case, is my own reality.  I'm sitting here typing.
I've looked at the clock, it's spun around once more to land at
midnight, that's the time of this, well, now a bit past, as I sit here
typing this.  The cats are out and about, they come out at midnight it
seems, every night.  It is perhaps their preferred hour of day to help
me write this story, as I meander along through it.  Here it stops,
for a moment.

---

I struggle to focus on the story and remain grounded solidly in the
reality of myself typing it at the same time.  Why should I bother?  I
believe I opened with a bit of an explanation of a thing like that,
why bother?  Why bother typing so many letters together, forming
words, forming a story?  Why do I bother?  I look over at the cats,
but they don't have much to say on this matter.  The one I see before
me, the other, I don't know where he is, but the female cat lays
snoring lightly on the bed, such an endearing little creature sleeping
off a bit of excitement around midnight or so.

It's lovely, simply lovely to think about.  I should return to some
story-telling of something flowery to match this prose as it flows
along, like water down a certain ditch in a pasture I have mentioned.
The pasture adjoins a field of alfalfa hay, let's suppose that for a
fact of reality, in this imaginary, entirely fictional scene.

The cows don't wander into the alfalfa field, they stay on the side of
the ditch they were on the whole time, I only said they were out
standing in their field as a play on words, to be quite honest, they
were standing here in the pasture the entire time.  They're not in the
field.  The ship's cat, as I now recognize her, who has been talking
to me, though of course in my mind, she's not real, not exactly...
Why wouldn't she be, however, why wouldn't a cat be able to talk?  It
would only be absurd from some viewpoint where it is absurd in the
first place.

The cat jumped down and across the ditch from the side of the pasture
adjoining the sprawling field of green alfalfa hay.  It's a shame for
the cows in a way, they would enjoy eating all of that hay, but they
stay on their side of the ditch where I landed in front of them at
some point earlier in the story, in fact it was those cows all along
who brought me to light at that point in this narrative.  I hadn't
even noticed my old friend this cat who apparently can speak, though
not of anything I wouldn't already know, as she's in my mind, wherever
that is, whatever it is.  Some abstraction, I'm not sure.  We have
common ways to say this in English, in my head, in or out of my mind,
all that kind of rhetoric you may be familiar with.  In fact, I will
go out on a limb here and assume you speak English already.  I don't
mean to be rude at all, I don't mean to assume anything untoward, but
this is, after all, some story in the English language, as I was
telling you earlier and you may remember.

The sun shines down on us, the cat and I, as we meander along the
ditch in the pasture of the cows who were standing around, not in a
field, but in this pasture, as we make our way, the cat and I, along
the ditch.  She leaps back across the ditch, rather impressively,
though completely ordinary in any sort of way one might expect of a
cat.  It is an impressive leap, I normally wouldn't stop to think
about that, expecting such things of any cat.  I, myself, would be
able to leap any tall building if not for some single bound I believe
I mentioned before, on my physical reality.  I can't actually fly,
leap tall buildings, any of this stuff.  I can read, a bit of English.
I can write, at least in some meandering sense, along a fictional
ditch in a pasture which I mistakenly tried to call a field, with
these cows out standing in it, as a play on words, earlier in this
treatise which is quite about something else entirely, and really
where is it?  Like my mind, this story, it's an abstract thing, if it
is a thing at all, it's not anywhere in physical reality, is it?  It
fiction, fictitious, all of this is simply a strange flowing along
through the moment as it pours along down the path it's constrained
to, like this story flowing along onto the page.

The thought of the water in the ditch frightens me for a moment, then
quickly I adjust to my surprise at such an idea or eventuality as
water flowing along, thinking about whatever it does, if it's
fictional water, why not?  The water doesn't have much to say, at
least in English, but it's loosely a character in this story, as it
flows along in the sunshine through the ditch here, bounded on two
sides by tall slopes of this yellowish dirt, with succulent plants
dotted by flowers growing there alongside it, along the banks.

So the cat has leapt back across to the other side, and looks back at
me questioningly.  We aren't really talking much, though of course she
can.  Honestly...  all cats can speak, many of them, in this day and
age, in this world we call our reality, can speak English, secretly,
though of course they don't often.  Even when they gather for their
secret committees on the subjects of their concerns, the comings and
goings, much more than cat things alone, you see, for they pull many
strings in the world, the cats don't choose to communicate that way,
though of course they could if they wanted to.  Cats can basically
leap tall buildings, all that kind of stuff, in their own frame of
reference, which is quite real, I assure you.

Never mind you about this.  I leap across to the side of the ditch in
the pasture which adjoins the field.  I can just barely manage, what
this small creature did quite easily.  Cats are astounding, I wonder
if you don't agree.  Why would you be reading this if you didn't like
cats, anyways?  I suppose I'm addressing you, here.

---

The water must know where it's going, surely.  The water must have
some rules constraining where it goes and what it does, at least.  If
it's a character in the story, which I've decided it is now, it may as
well be thinking quite contemplatively about that.  Much of the water,
perhaps most of it, seeps into the yellowish dirt, quenching the
thirst of it to hold the water at least.  Much of the water continues
along the ditch, however, not all of it just goes into the dirt, where
the succulents absorb it, turning the yellowish dirt and sunlight and
this character into flowers to fling back into it, where they float
along, serving some purpose or another to the narrative.

The water wants to go, to keep going, out to sea, where it congregates
with a lot of other water, quite an assembly of water out at sea, if
the water were a character or characters in a story, which in this
case, it is.  That water keeps the freighter afloat!  I'm on it now,
at this part of the story, and have just arrived at the bridge where
the captain has called me, rather nervously, and asked him what's
going on here anyway.

This is where he tells me its my chance to shine, as surely as the
very same fictional sun, which is shining down on the pasture too,
somewhere else, at this very point in the story, on the shipping
freighter at sea.  It gives quite enough light to read by, to grow
flowers if one is a succulent cactus kind of fictional plant of a
character in a story about things like that, or simply to nap in
contentendly if one is a cat.  Not at midnight, the sun would be on
the other side of the planet.  It needn't be so, not in fiction, not
in a story such as I'm writing, like this one, it needn't work that
way, but people tell me that's how it works in reality, so, for this
part of the story, we'll assume that's reality, that the sun is on the
other side of the planet at midnight or so, but right now, it's
shining down on the freighter at sea, where a bunch of water has
gathered to hold it up afloat on its way to where it's going.

It may be considered rather long-winded, to explain all of that, but
it's how the story has meandered along to this point, where there is
nothing after, until it continues, and there's more story then.  It
meanders along like that, the story I mean, but that's not how this
shipping freighter is purposefully moving along the top of the
fictional water where it's floating along.

The captain is drawing my attention to such things, explaining the
task he wants me to do here.  As I explained to you earlier in the
story, I didn't have much role on this ship, I didn't ever do much of
anything, but I wasn't skeptical in the least of what the captain
wanted of me at this juncture, which was earlier in the story, and now
I have revisited to expound upon a bit more.  I don't honestly know
much about boating, that's a real fact, here in this fictional account
of the sunny say at sea which was a good memory of mine, of a chance I
really had to shine, and so I did.

---

Meandering along is no good in soccer, not really.  One may wish to
meander a little, of course, but it's quite clear in such a case as
the game of soccer where the goal is, what to do, and how to get from
point A to point B or point C. Soccer is much more of the kind of
thing where one has clear goals to move purposefully toward.
Meandering is no good.  With such aimlessness as meandering, the goal
is only the enjoyment of the moment, I would suppose.  One doesn't
want to stop to smell the roses in the middle of a soccer game, one
should focus, keep one's wits about themself, on the goal at hand,
scoring goals, in the case of soccer.

It is practically an uphill battle, to say the least.  Soccer, of
which I know little, and have little interest, to be quite honest with
you, is a competition with opposing goals for opposing teams.
Competition breeds success, for the winning side, at any rate.  It
always does!  This is a fact of soccer, a sad fact, really, that half
of those involved lose the game.

Not everything is quite exactly the same as soccer, mind you.  On the
shipping frieghter the goal is just to ship the freight, and everyone
is ideally pitching in how they can to the common goal of getting to
the destination without any real problems.  For some of us it's mostly
to stay out of the way, that's the whole task until the captain of the
vessel calls upon us for our moment to shine, as he's feeling is
appropriate, so we do so.  Aside from that, it's a good time to read a
book, stay out of the way, spend time with the ship's cat, our friends
there, you know what I mean, I would suppose.

Soccer is quite a different concept of the same kind of thing, some
goal or another, and for me, it was about the same, as I mentioned,
staying out of the way on the sidelines until called upon to do
something or another, trying my best not to screw it up as is seared
upon my memory like a painful sunburn, of my chance to shine where I
was too gullible, and kicked the ball magnificently in the wrong
direction.  That's not good!  That's no good in soccer, that's not an
effective way to win a game of soccer in the least.

Meandering along through a pasture with the ship's cat who was waiting
for me to discuss some things, though of course we already knew all of
anything the other was thinking, being characters in the same story,
as you could say, on the same page about things...  that's probably ok
for a story about such things as we were discussing.  So we meandered
along, through the story, rather flowery in a way some would object
to, people I cannot fathom the minds of, who don't appreciate the
finer things in life perhaps, such as a tale about cats and so forth,
strange loops of fiction, threads along some tapestry of a fictional
account of some things or other things...  meandering is quite alright
in a case such as that, I would think.

---

It seems like it's meandered on quite a ways here, though.  People
need something else in a story, some meaning, some excitement,
something to happen, something always has to happen, no?  Things and
doings, goings and happenings, something always has to happen in a
story, as it unfurls like the sails of an old sailing ship ahead of a
favorable wind, carrying it across the vast water character.

What happened in this case?  It seems like the most awful thing to
happen yet, the precarious balance of the story, the only real
excitement so far for anyone to notice in the least, was some stuff at
the very beginning!  I was born, that could appeal to some, perhaps, I
was a small baby.  I got my shoes tied together in a lesson about
gullibility I failed to understand, screwed up in a soccer game as I
surmise perhaps directly related to missing the point of that, but
that's all that really happened so far.

The cat and I have crossed the pasture into the field, it's not corn,
it's alfalfa hay.  We've made our way a few minutes into this
sprawling green field, when we come across a crop circle, as you may
have been expecting.  I'm not joking, it's not a corn field at all,
but we do indeed come across a crop circle just as real as anyone
could have expected to find in some exciting fiction or perhaps much
more startlingly so, in reality as we are accustomed to, not in
fictional books about meanderings through fields of myself and the
ship's cat.

So there's some excitement, I'll get back to that, certainly, how
could I not?  That's no hoax, I'm not lying to you, it's fiction,
we've come across quite a real example, though not in a corn field, in
this field of alfalfa hay, what appears to be exactly what one would
imagine to be a crop circle.  Luckily it's not in the middle of the
night, out in the bright sunlight shining on the sea, the field,
everything in the story, really.  Luckily it's the middle of the day,
the sun is shining, so the cat and I aren't too frightened to come
across a thing like this crop circle, right here in the middle of the
field, in the middle of the story, with nothing after it, from my
point of view, at least.  Absolutely nothing.

---

It may not matter, anyways.  Maybe none of this matters, maybe nothing
ever matters, meaning may only be in the imagination, if ever at all,
maybe everything is indeed meandering, pointless...  but why not put
that to the side, for a moment, to tell you this story as it unfolds
in front of me, as I sit here typing it out.  I put down each word,
onto the page, one by one, telling a story as it unfolds from my mind,
wherever that is, whatever that is.  Some generated meaning, an
abstraction, one of the very most dear and important things to me in
my entire life.

I look over at the two cats, the female cat is still sleeping off a
long day of cat things she has been up to, pulling strings in some
sense or another, doing her cat things, so now, just after midnight,
she's taking a rest, as I tell you this story, where I left off in the
sunny field with the captain's cat who was there, rather eerily, and
we happened upon the strange crop circle, there in the story.  I'll
try to ascribe some meaning to that, to be sure, but for now I'm just
meandering along, I have put this wondering of mine aside for a
moment, whether anything matters anyway, to tell you some fictional
story here, which really isn't anywhere in reality.

All that's really here are these indistiguishable parts of the English
language, a meaningful word we have given them as a label, letters.  I
mean letters of the alphabet, not correspondence, like a letter to
someone about something, in fact, sort of like a story, a story and a
letter aren't too different.

The letters I mean on this page, as it unfolds itself one by one
letter into a story, or however that works, not that the story exists,
mind you...  and well, honestly, it's a bit meandering, you may have
noticed that, it's not all over the place, is it?  Does it seem
scatterbrained?  I ask the question rather rhetorically, of course.  I
wonder if there are any letters in the English alphabet which I have
not yet used at all in this story.  I imagine I've used every single
letter, probably many times by now.  I don't suppose there are any of
the 26 letters of the English alphabet I haven't used in here,
wherever this is, so far.

I'm such a quiet person, you know.  I mostly like so just stay out of
the way, maybe I always have felt that way, that I should stay on the
sidelines for the most part, let other people handle the important
things in the world.  I felt, in a moment, that I had something to
say, right here, and began typing it all out for someone else to read,
an exercise in communication, which I normally wouldn't really do at
all.  The cats seem to object a bit, to a thing like that.  It goes
against cat values, they say, listen, you must speak your mind if you
want to impart something to others, like a cat would.  Just keep it
simple, state the obvious if you need to explain something, nothing
else should be necessary to say, anyhow.  All these words!  Such a
human, they seem to say, sitting here typing, all these letters
forming words forming a story, imparting some meaning which doesn't
exist anyhow.

The cats don't wonder why I bother, not at all.  They understand a
thing like that very much as well as I do, they assure me, they just
don't see it quite the same way, they would never sit around typing
like that, not things such as this, anyway, it would be shorter,
concise.  A cat would keep it simple, to the point.  I feel a bit
abashed to think about the difference in viewpoint on a thing like
that, as they clearly understand, here to help me type this all, to
write it all down, to impart some meaning to another, presumably,
human being who is reading this.  Here, as the writer, from my
perspective, there is only a blank page waiting ahead, for the story
to unfurl into, letter by letter.  I'll try to include some meaning in
here, out of all of these indistinguishable particles of the English
language we call letters, not of correspondence, but of the alphabet,
rather.

---

Now there was indeed something.  We, the ship's cat, and I, came to
the crop circle where we had left off meandering into our fiction, the
crop circle where we had rather eerily come across the topic of crop
circles, right from the introduction, didn't we?  If you are thinking
of crop circles already it's astounding how you will see them
everywhere you go.  So we came across that, the crop circle, in the
field which I was joking about the cows being out standing in, though
they were not, but rather in a pasture adjoining it, I covered all
that I suppose, in a meandering kind of way...  so, there we are, at
the crop circle now.

The cat is a talking cat, remember, it's my fiction, why not, so she
and I are thinking the same thing, the same kinds of things about all
of this as it happens, the story, which isn't happening, per se, but
continues unfolding onto the page, letter by letter, word by word,
shaping the meaning of the story out onto the page where it exists, or
so we would say, though of course none of it does.  That's the meaning
of fiction.  It's a strange concept, I'm trying to expound on this in
a meandering sort of way, wandering through the story, where any of
this is, what's going on here, what's taking place anyways.

I wonder to myself, a bit.  Am I creating something real, here?  It's
so abstract, isn't it?  The meaning is in here, somewhere, surely.
It's like shadows playing against the wall of a cave, what's really
here, what isn't here, and how can it be, then?  Where is it anyhow?
Where is the pasture, the field, the shipping freighter, the soccer
field...  it stretches the mind quite a bit to wonder, where is any of
that anyhow?  The fiction, the story, where is it?  It's not in
reality at all!

I, the one who types this, moving my fingers across the keyboard,
pressing one key at a time, who am I? In such a sense, am I not sort
of like this fictional story?  It's so eerie, like the crop circle
we've just come across, isn't it quite simply just as bizarre, so
strange to think about?  I don't even like to!  It's too unsettling,
from that kind of a viewpoint.  The cat who was sleeping is now
sitting watching me, she knows something I don't, of course, who
doesn't, who ever doesn't, know something someone else doesn't know?
I wonder what she knows, if she were to tell me in English, what sort
of things she knows about that she would feel important to impart to
me in English, were she to speak to me that way, this only language I
really understand in the least.  She meows.  That's simple, cat-like.
That's so realistic!  This cat isn't a talking cat, she's a real cat,
not fictitious, she doesn't have all that much to say, probably, just
simple things, the obvious.  She's quite pragmatic, she really only
states the obvious if she says much of anything at all.

---

I have always tended to worry in excess, about almost anything I can
think of to worry about.  If it occurs to me to worry about this cat,
I would start to, regardless of anything true in reality as I know it,
a fact or going or doing, a real thing, not in the story here, but
here in reality, so we call it, where I sit typing this.  Some notes
about cats.  I hesitate to use the English turn of phrase, to call
them my cats, now, I have been thinking about this quite a bit.  Cats
are more in charge, aren't they, than I am?  What does the cat even do
really, she may as well be lounging around, reading a book or
something, as the world goes on, spinning along, like an old sailing
ship, like I said, reality is like that, isn't it?  Travelling on
along some path or another, like a ship on the sea travelling before a
favorable wind, in the direction it's going.

This needn't worry me too much, but it does, a bit.  Why should it?
The page is empty before me, from here.  Now a bit more, it unfolds a
bit more, bit by bit, letter by letter, each word onto the page, one
by one, shaping the story as I tell it, kind of meandering along
talking about cats.  It matters a great deal to me, and I have made a
deal here with the secret society of cats, or had you forgotten?  I am
to explain this as favorably as I can, and that's entirely realistic,
why, that's the complete truth.  The secret cat society of the world
which pulls so many strings in the goings and doings, wants these
things to be known, in particular to someone who might deign to read
this meandering treatise of English words about all this story
unfolding here before us onto the page, word by word, tracing out the
story here from...  from where?  Where did this come from?  Is it a
real thing?

No, why, it's fiction!  It was always fiction.  It isn't a real thing.
Maybe it was always here, wherever it is.  It's nowhere, it's here, if
you pay attention, it's here, right here at this point where it
unfolds onto the page, word by word.  It's nothing to worry about.
I'm assuring myself as much as you, it's quite a strange thing to
wonder about.  How would one ever know, for example, if cats were,
indeed, perfectly capable of speaking English, should they so desire,
which I assure you they very much are, but know better than to do such
a thing as that.

A talking cat would be thrown right straight away without a moments
delay, right into a circus!  You know it's true, that's how human
beings chose to ascribe meaning to all of this anyway, meandering
along through existence, through reality as we know it, alongside a
cat often, along the moment into the future as it unfolds like a story
being written out onto a blank page in front of wherever it's going,
wherever it is.  Whatever is it.  Some fiction.  I'm assuring myself
now, as much as anyone else, not to worry too much about any of this,
here, just to type onward, word by word, for whatever reason I would
do such a thing as that.

---

I stretch my wings for a moment, I've almost forgotten.  The crop
circle isn't even out of place, now is it, as I have these fictional
wings anyways, I stretch them for a moment beside the ship's cat, who
I have encountered in this fiction here, where I meandered along, from
my birth onward, I would say, to this point where the story is, at the
moment, nothing but the sea of a blank page ahead of it, into which to
type the story as it unfolds.

So I have fictional wings, I don't actually have wings, you're
probably familiar with such a fact as a human being not having
wings...  I wouldn't take such a thing for granted forever though,
maybe someday someone with wings will come along and read this, I
certainly haven't heard of any human being with wings, not like that,
now I have certainly dated the story to a time period, if people ever
do sprout wings and fly away!  Now I told you, I was born in 1986, so
I don't feel too bad about a few little things in here that are
perhaps a bit incongruous with the rest of it, in its entirety.  I
would be quite flattered, I think I told you, if someone got to the
very end of this meandering story where I wander along with the ship's
cat and all, wherever the story lets out to, like the water in the
ditch making its way to the sea, where the story ends, as it will have
to, really, if someone were disappointed then, but only then!  Oh that
would be magnificent.  I would feel quite as if I had reached a goal,
to write a story like that, that someone said a thing like that about.
Is that cruel of me?  Maybe I'm fishing for compliments, that's all,
as I stand here, fictionally, I say to the cat, who is thinking the
same kinds of things.  The fictional talking cat who knows everything
I say and am going to say, in here in the fictional story with me.

I stretch my magnificent wings, like a bird, a huge bird with
magnificent wings, fishing for a compliment, no doubt.  The cat too,
she's not too taken aback by any of this.  She reminds me, as I think
of it, to write this, about her reminding me, to focus on the story!
So I listen to the cat here at this point, and go on to explain our
part here as we reach the point in the fictional story where we come
across an actual, just as you might imagine it, though in an alfalfa
field of green hay...  a crop circle.

That's not too weird, I've relaxed a bit about things being so
strange, from whatever topic had startled me so much.  The cat, the
fictional talking cat, she's me, really, she had leaped quite the
distance as I would have done, had I been a cat, to leap to the top of
a tall building in a single bound.  She did all that, quite to the
same scale, simple out of a moment of a slight surprise!  She leaped
that far, just in a moment she was startled.  Amazing, really.  I
tested that out, thinking about it, I jumped, as far as I could...  I
only made it at most a fifth of my own height into the air.  It's my
fiction, however, so I stayed there, hovering, I flapped my wings to
hover perfectly at that height I had jumped to, though in my own case
not in surprise but just because it's my fiction, you see, and I was
thinking about exactly that, so I jumped and hovered there with my
magnificent wings.

The cat said she thought I was just fishing for compliments, I should
come down from there and focus on the matter at hand, this most
eerily, almost completely out of place, though of course they will be
everywhere if you're already looking for them, this crop circle we had
come across here in the green field of alfalfa hay.  It's not a hoax,
this really happened right here in the story, as we got to this point
in it, where it naturally flowed to this juncture at which the cat was
telling me, focus, please, we have a mystery to solve now.

---

I never thought of myself as too good at such a thing as that.  I have
no experience or expertise at something like that, solving mysteries,
nothing of the sort.  It's just not my forté.  I don't even know what
I'm that good at, I'm probably a child of the 90's in that way, not to
date myself too badly to a specific age, if I would want to tell you
anything at all!  My word, in a day and age like that!  I already told
you, however, I appeared here in the year of our Lord 1986.  I stopped
to wonder at that for a moment.  Some other strange loop, tucking into
the fictional reality none of this all exists in, wherever that is, in
my mind, or something, some fictitious force I ought to feel strongly
about, in particular if I'm soaring high above the fictional ground!
A time like that is no time for taking on gravity as a mere conjecture
to be tested, is it?  No, of course you would agree.

Now, I'm not meaning to meander along quite just rhetorically here!
I'm trying to tell you about some rather serious things here, gravity
is fictitious as well, like I told you!  It's nothing to be taken
lightly, I'm sure you'll agree.

The cat and I wander out into the midst of the crop circle to inspect
it a bit further, we do indeed have quite a serious mystery now to
solve, right here in the middle of the story, in the middle of a
fictional reality where I can fly around, cats can talk, stuff like
that.  The crop circle, however, is eerily real.  It's quite simply
the most real part of this entire fictional account of my meanderings
alongside the ship's cat as anything in here is, so far at all!  This
is entirely true, so we really have quite a mystery to solve now.

The cat tells me, listen, you really must focus.  Now, I'm a tolerant
cat, but you can't just go flying around through the story,
fictionally about on your wings, we have to figure this out.  Please,
now, she asked me, she said to me, as pointedly, as simply, and as
realistically as she could, please pick me up and fly up a ways so we
can get a better look at things here.

---

I've meandered along for far enough, I decide here, as the page
continues on, story flowing onto it, like the water character through
the ditch in the pasture.  The story is like a fluid, I've meandered
along to here, haven't I? It's too meandering, perhaps.  It needs some
direction, some simplification, it needs a ditch, as it were, to guide
it along to the sea, or however fiction works, wherever it is...  not
like the water character, but a real story, truly, utterly, fictitious
kinds of meanderings...

That's like a puddle on the floor!  The cats seem to say.  That's not
funny, we hate that part!  You must edit it, something!  Take that
out, that's no good!  It has to flow better, you've meandered all the
way along to here, filling the page with these meaningless symbols in
the middle of the night!  It's no good at all, the cats agree, here.
They keep it simple, they just state the most obvious, relevant
things, as they go to sit quietly on the bed, watching me.  He doesn't
listen in the least!  They say to each other.  He typed a whole
paragraph right there, ignoring us, our advice about what to do!  It's
not like water doing anything in particular, they say, it meanders
quite too much and is going nowhere...

I assure them there is more to be shown through the story here, more
meaning, it will be in here, and yes, I admit to them, I wanted it to
meander along to here, I just hadn't thought of it before it occurred
to me to think that, the water character, for example, it just came to
me all together the same as anything else, it just sort of popped into
my mind, wherever that is, whatever it is, if it's a real thing, where
it is, alongside this story as surely as these cats sit across from me
on the bed, watching me as I sit here typing all this in the middle of
the night, it's getting later and later, all of these meaningless
repetitive keystrokes of the letters in the English alphabet, as they
come along, one after another, onto the empty page, where the story
continues to unfold, rather meanderingly, in a way that a cat would
never do.  They explain to me, here, listen, do you hear that?  The
cats seem to be saying to me, though certainly not in English, as they
would know not to give themselves away by speaking English, nothing
like that, nothing of the sort, that's just not how a cat approaches
something like this, aside from a fictional ship's cat who can talk.

She says, of course, the fictional ship's cat, she says to me, focus,
now, please.  This could be quite rather a bit important, it is!  Keep
it simple, short, sweet, to the point.  Just like those real cats
would say to you anything they ever would, only stating the obvious,
here.  She says all that, to me, the fictional ship's cat I've come
face to face with earlier in the story again, for a second time, in
English.  She also notes, here, she doesn't appreciate that puddle
remark either, not one bit.

---

I carry the cat aloft, first not too far above the ground, she hangs
on to me as gently as she can, but she is a cat, you know, her claws
into my shirt hanging on, for dear life, really, she hangs on, as I
fly higher and higher above the ground, where the mysterious crop
circle is.  She gazes down, taking note of things, which both of us
already know, really, aside from anything regarding what comes next.
We have no idea what comes next in the story, I assure you as much as
anyone can.  This cat and I are on the exact same wavelength, but we
don't have a clue about the future, who does, really?  Some humans
will tell you in English, another language I would assume, the same
way, but I don't really know.  I don't know if anyone really knows the
future, at any time, any time which is the moment, as it unfolds into
the future like the sails of an old ship in front of a favorable wind
and all that, meandering along.

The cat knows, of course, about the cows which attracted my attention
in the first place, when I first landed here, and I look back over my
shoulder, I wonder if I'm a bit lost now.  Where did I come from,
anyhow, I think to myself, trying to get my bearings.  The cat laughs
at that a bit, some cat joke here, lost on me, but she says it's quite
funny, any cat would see the humor in this part, don't I see it?

I say no, no.  I don't understand this part.  I'm starting to worry a
bit, to be honest.  I'm here flying above this eerie, quite real crop
circle, smack dab in the middle of a fictional story I'm writing here,
and I'm so far out in the middle of nowhere, where I had originally
noticed these cows, that I wonder if I will ever be able to find my
way back home to where I presumably sit comfortably typing all of
this, but oh my goodness...

The cat tells me, just relax.  Stop worrying.  Take these things
slowly, think it through, you're there typing all of this anyway, stop
worrying, none of this is too real anyway, all you would have to do is
stop typing, you'll look up, everything will be perfectly fine, of
course.  Think about it, you're worrying about nothing, she tells me,
as we float there, high above the crop circle now, which I have very
nearly forgotten about.

She tells me to focus, focus on the matter at hand here.  We have a
mystery to solve, and she knows, as I know, everything that can happen
here.  Of course, she assures me, listen, everything happens for a
reason, doesn't it?  I was there waiting for you by the ditch, wasn't
I? It took you by such surprise, yourself, didn't it?

I agree with her, yes, and I start to relax.  We hover there, quite
far up in the air now, the mysterious, eerie crop circle far below us,
and the story now begins to take on some definition, far below us.

---

Now I've reached this point in the story, perhaps the middle of it or
so.  I ask the cat if she wants to stop here, she says no, keep going.
Don't stop here, we would plummet like a rock!  I'd like a bit of
rest, I tell her, this is tiring.  Can't we stop for a moment and have
some Tang, maybe, a short rest before we continue onwards and upwards?
She says no, not yet, just a little further now.

This won't do at all, she seems to say.  I ask her what's going on,
even though I know as well as anyone, she's just an imaginary cat,
talking to me here in the story, so I know anything she might be apt
to say.  Doesn't she know just as well?  No, of course not, it doesn't
work like that.  The blank page stretches before me, nothing on it
yet, and I haven't a clue what will be there, anyways.

The imaginary landscape stretches out before us far in every
direction, in much the same way.  The cows are still standing where
they were all along, just about directly below us, where they first
caught my eye and I landed in the first place, earlier in this fiction
of my devising.  I'm trying to impart something to you here, I'm not
sure what, or where it's going.  Perhaps only to tell you the value in
sometimes taking some time to meander along and enjoy the scenery.

It needn't be such a rush, to and fro!  The cat in my arms says of
course, she knows that, why am I telling her these things she already
knows?  I'm telling you, I suppose.  I don't know why I do anything,
really, it's just my nature to do something or another, it's in my
nature at this point, to type this meandering story about the amblings
along of myself and the ship's cat, flying now, fictitiously, above
this beautiful scenery of the green field of alfalfa hay, and there,
of course, the point of the story...  the eerily placed, and quite
real, I assure you now, this mystery before the cat and myself, the
crop circle which has come into the story.

I try not to worry too much about it, not in a sense of actually
panicking about such a thing.  I could say I'm concerned with it, but
not in a sense that I'm actually worried about it, on this sunny day
where I'm flying around through my meandering fictional landscape
which is really quite beautiful.

I look back over my shoulder, jostling the cat a bit.  She says don't
do that!  She clings on tighter.  I've started to think to myself
again, how will I ever find my way home?  I ask her aloud, she says I
told you already, all you need to do is stop typing and look up,
you'll be right where you started, it's nothing to worry about in the
least.  Please, she says, let's focus on this mystery we have before
us.  This crop circle is quite an odd thing, and I would like to have
some answers here about what's going on.

The crop circle here is quite, extremely, not in any sense fictional.
This is not part of the fiction, this is a real thing, right here out
in the middle of this fictional landscape, I fictionally hover above
with the cat in my arms, a fictional talking cat.  Some parts of this
fictional account of all these things I've been telling you about are
quite certainly real.  I've told you I'm a real person sitting here
typing all of this, there's nothing to fret about there in the least,
either.  I could easily just stop typing, and I would be right smack
dab in reality as we agreed upon in the first place, I would be safe
and sound at home in the city I was just looking around for, there's
no need to worry about finding my way back.

I need to keep flapping my wings though, that's quite certain, that's
how it works to hover here fictitiously far above the fictional,
beautiful landscape I was trying to describe to you, and the cat
agrees, though quite a bit hesitantly, listen, she says, don't stop
flapping your wings under any circumstances.  Don't look down, back,
focus, please focus on the story.  She's kind of helping me write this
now.  That's quite certain.  So I ask her, well, what's going on here?
You're the ranking character in this story, you tell me, I'm just a
vehicle for you to get a better look at what all we have before us, in
particular, I should think, this mysterious crop circle below us.

Yes, of course, she says.  I know what I'm doing here, you really must
focus, and we'll get to the bottom of this matter.  She has quite an
air of authority in her demeanor as she reassures me, quite well, she
knows what she is doing.  This cat instills confidence in people, she
always did, she's a natural leader of a cat among men.  On the ship,
where I first met her, she clearly knew what to do about any sort of
thing, and she would be quick to explain anything in the most obvious
of terms.  She wouldn't waste any time explaining things, she only
ever stated the most obvious things, before I ever realized she could
speak English.  She would always keep things quite simple, short,
sweet, to the point.  She wouldn't say in many more words than
necessary some simple concept, stating only simple, obvious, things,
in as simple, short, well...  just a plain utterance of a cat, as I
would assume you are quite well acquainted with, though I wouldn't
deign to label such a figure of speech as a cat would say, not, if we
are being quite realistic and to the obvious point, not a word, per
se, but a thing such as a cat would really say.  Though, of course,
they are perfectly capable of speaking English, as I explained, and
that's quite a true fact.

In all those many sort of meandering descriptions of the ship's cat
and I soaring through the air now, she says come on, be more realistic
about this, focus, stick to the story, we have to figure out what's
going on here.  This crop circle is indeed quite a mystery, and it's
the strangest thing that has happened here in this fiction yet.  It's
clearly quite real, I wouldn't make any guesses about that, she says.

We both look down, far down below us, despite any kind of advice about
not looking down now, and focus on the eerily real crop circle, and
the mystery before us of where it has come from.  The story must
continue, for this to be addressed.  The cat says, don't stop flapping
your wings now!  She's always reminding me something or another, this
imaginary ship's cat in the story here, she's really quite helpful.
She's helping me write all of this, too, make no mistake about that.

It's getting on into the day, the sun will rise soon, and it will
shine on reality, not fictional reality, the reality we all agreed
upon in the first place, not the fictional reality here in the story,
where it's a sunny day as I fly with the talking ship's cat and all
that, it's actually still dark out here, in reality, where I'm not too
worried, at this point in the story.

---

It occurs to me here, that this has become quite the lengthy treatise
by now.  I was going for a certain style, I have to admit to you now.
It does meander a bit, doesn't it?  It goes on and on, I just sat
down, in reality, not in the story, and well...  that last paragraph
was all one sentence.  I can probably do a little better than that,
let's be honest.  It's the style I was going for, I suppose, flowery
and meandering.  That's no good, though!  The cats are like, come on
guy.  That's the kind of thing a cat wouldn't do, they were trying to
help me with my writing here, but it's a lost cause.

The whole thing just goes on and on in that way, doesn't it.  The
entire story reflects the paragraph that's all one sentence.  It
culminates, however, in my lack of worry about any of that.  Only one
thing worries me, here, in any kind of sense of being actually
frightened.  If you were following along maybe it frightened you, as
well, the part where I admitted, quite frankly, that none of this is
real, I'm not real!  It's a bit frightening, isn't it?  Like nothing
is real.

I am trying to impart to you something about that, but the crop
circle, oh my goodness indeed, that part is quite, absolutely,
definitively real.  So I'm a real person, with a mind, wherever it is,
like the story here, made of all these little things like the letters
on the page.  Out of all that arises my mind, perhaps, and it's quite
a thing, it is a real thing.  So maybe I am after all, maybe I am
indeed quite real.

I flap my fictional wings to stay afloat in the air, high above the
mystery of the story, where the cat and I have gotten, and she's
telling me to focus and all that.  I try to bring it all together here
for the reader's sake at the very least, not to go meandering off into
some segue about reality or fiction for a moment, looping around to
the same point as before, this mystery in front of us, the crop
circle.

The cat and I are of course in agreement.  We're just a couple of
characters in my real imagination, after all, so we look at each
other, myself flapping my wings to stay aloft, holding the cat...  we
look at each other with the knowledge of such intense familiarity we
simply know what the other is thinking, beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The ship's cat and I. We know each other quite well.  The cat says
what we're both thinking, before I can say it, about the crop circle.
We're both thinking it.  Crop circles are a thing one commonly
associates with aliens.  We can be almost certain about such a thing,
lurking nearby at least in the story, there are probably
extra-terrestrials.

That's who makes crop circles, everyone knows things like that.  Crop
circles are a common plot device for such lengthy tirades about such
things.  Aliens, that's what it is then, I say to the ship's cat.
Aliens must be afoot, or what they have if not feet, they must be
around here somewhere.  The cat says she should think so indeed.
Aliens must have done this, they must be just around the corner,
somewhere around here, in a fictional story with quite a
flabbergastingly real crop circle smack dab in the middle of it.

I try to focus, to get to the point.  The cat says to me that she's
seen enough from up here, I should land again.  I ask if she's scared
of heights, laughing a little.  She says no, no, of course she isn't
scared of heights, she's a cat.  I feel a little scared now but I
don't let it on to the cat, though of course she knows right away,
being of the same mind as myself, quite literally.  I stop fooling
around and circle down to land again, right at theedge of the
mysterious crop circle in the field of alfalfa.

From high above in the air it looked quite a bit different.  It was
not just a circle, not just a flattened area in the field, but had a
pattern to it.  There was a kind of a pattern inscribed into the
circle, a triangular pattern of overlapping sections inside the crop
circle.  The cat says it's really quite strange, and I, of course,
agree.  People are going to need some kind of an explanation, I say to
the cat.  There must be some kind of logical, quantifiable,
scientifically sound explanation for this.

The cat nods like any person would, she agrees entirely.  She puts her
paw under her chin in a contemplative way, as really only a talking
cat might, and she comments how strange it is.  It's just such a weird
thing to happen.  I mean really, a talking cat, such as myself, she
says, in fiction, that's to be expected, why not?  Your wings, all of
this, that's all fictitious but perfectly explainable, as it's
fiction, it's a fictional story.  The real person typing all this,
that makes sense, a real person would be who would type a fictional
account of a thing like this, the only part that's left here that
doesn't make a lick of sense...  is this completely real crop circle,
right here in the middle of a fictional story.

---

Now, as I explained earlier, and shall expound upon tirelessly, if
you're already thinking about crop circles you will see them simply
everywhere you go.  It's astounding how these sort of things happen.
It's mysterious, but an actual effect of something, something that
must be completely real, in the real world, reality we call it,
consensus reality everyone agreed upon in the first place.

I don't actually have wings, I'm almost completely sure of that.
That's just fictitious, a plot device I've put into the story here, so
that I can fly around, and that's all well and good.  It's my fiction,
I may as well have wings to fly around, lots of cats, seeing as I like
cats, there may as well be a lot of cats in the story.  What's
startling here is the crop circle.  I think you'll quite very much
agree!

Now, at which point were you most startled by that?  The crop circle
is quite a mystery, especially because it's real.  How can this
happen, a thing like this, such as a real crop circle being here in
the middle of a fictional story?  We assume, the ship's cat and
myself, that there are aliens somewhere here in the story.  Someone
surely must have done this, let's be frank.  There must be some rhyme
or reason to it, let's not mince words any longer, not too much.

The cat walks slowly, deep in thought, over the corner of the field,
where it adjoins the pasture we came from.  There's a bush here, a
short tree really, with some fruit growing on it.  I'm kind of just
following the cat, she's the lead here, I'm letting her think about
it.  The fruit on the tree is a plum.  That's what has my attention
right now.  I pick a nice plum out and it's as delicious as I could
have imagined it to be.  It's an imaginary plum, so in that way it
falls a little short, but it's my fiction so it's one of the most
delicious plums anyone could have ever imagined.  The cat has no
interest in that, she's still thinking, deep in thought.

She says listen, this is your fiction, isn't it?  I say to her no,
it's the guy typing, I don't know, I'm just a character here to fly
around and eat this plum I suppose.  I don't know what he wants with
us anyway.  She laughs, that's a good cat joke, she says.  A cat would
understand, don't you see?  I say no, I don't get it.  I don't
understand what goes on in the mind of a cat.  It is, she insists,
it's your fiction.  You were thinking about crop circles already,
weren't you?

That startles me a bit.  Yes, I say to the cat.  I was, I actually
was, come to think of it, and then here in the fiction that guy is
typing we came to this point in the story where there was an entirely
real, eerily incongruous but perfectly placed, completely realistic
and just utterly real crop circle.  That's more than a coincidence, I
say to the cat, that's just too much.  It's just entirely too much,
it's startling, it's real, and it's right here in the middle of this
guy's fiction, where we were just minding our own business as
characters in the pasture, at sea before that, some lengthy treatise
on all that kind of thing.

The cat says to me, listen, this is going to sound very odd but it's a
fact that bears repeating, ad nauseum perhaps...  maybe just once,
we'll see where it goes with this line of thought...  now listen, she
says, are you listening to me?  I tell her she has my attention, as I
finish the plum.  This is the sort of cat one listens to when she has
something to say.

I've heard it told, she says to me, that there is a mathematical proof
of the existence of sasquatch.  That's an axiom we shall have to hold
as a basic truth in our deduction of the answer to this mystery.
There is a mathematical proof, based on transcendental numbers, a few
other loose facts, and such things, that leads us to the inescapable
conclusion that sasquatch is completely real, as real as the guy
typing this, the crop circle we have just come across, and all kinds
of things like that.  The mind, indeed, anything.  This story,
fictitious as it may be, all of it, everything that exists is real,
it's inescapable, and you know as well as I do that sasquatch exists,
if you follow my reasoning so far.

I say to her, of course, you and I are of the same mind and mindset on
this particular topic, I have heard that as well.  There was indeed a
famous math proof I had heard of involving the existence of sasquatch.
So to make matters short, sweet, and to the point, I say to her, prove
it.  So she proceeds to do exactly that, on a small fictional notebook
of quadrille-ruled paper.  I look at the cats notes, going over them,
over and over again.  Yet I do not see.  I turn around, there's
nothing there.  It's frightening, a bit frightening.  I'm losing some
sense of what's real or not, but it doesn't matter too much if I just
stop typing.

---

I come back to it not sure what to tell you.  I'm just not sure what
to tell you.  The cat says, keep it simple.  Tell them the story as it
unfolds onto the blank page.  So the story continues from here, I
would suppose.  Indeed it does, it continues on, winding along from
nowhere to nowhere in particular.  It's a real thing, I would venture.
The same as I am, I'm real.  I've convinced myself of it again, I must
be completely delusional.  Who wouldn't be, who isn't?  The mind is a
delusion.  Fictitious, anyhow.  It worries me no longer, I'm fretless
now.

I try to coax a little more out of it, to formulate some kind of story
for you, the reader, to keep your attention from sprouting wings and
flying off to some other imaginary locale.  The cat and I have just
been discussing the mathematical proof of sasquatch's existence, and
we're trying to tie it back to reality somehow.  I'm just trying to
come up with a story for you here, as the real person typing this
tirade about wandering around alongside this cat.

It seems inevitable, I suppose, that the book will come to a
conclusion.  I should try to keep that in mind, and I mean to warn you
now of such an eventuality, it can indeed occur.  Nothing lasts
forever, you see, I don't intend only to upset everyone, to scare off
any reader from this casually meandering treatise on whatever is the
case here...  and what a mystery!  I want to explain to you, the only
thing that stays the same is change, ever change.  Tomorrow is never
the same as today, as similar as it may seem.  It's inevitable, then,
that tomorrow will be different, but that's about all.  Aside from
that, no one knows the future.  People may try to figure it out over
and over, draw correlations from observations, theorems from axioms
piled one atop another, and yet still, in the end, nothing ever stays
the same.  The only inevitability is ever the same thing it always is,
that everything will be different tomorrow.  I wonder if there is an
atom left in my body from my days playing soccer so long ago, yet I
remember those days, not vividly perhaps, but as clearly as if they
were in fact real.

Where is the past, anyhow?  Maybe that's where this story is.  I ask
the ship's cat what she thinks of that, though of course I already
know.  She laughs at that one.  I have no clue why that's funny in the
least, I have very little grasp of cat humor, to tell you the truth.
I'm not really trying to tell you the truth here anyways, this is
meant to be a fictional ramble along some meandering path the story
takes through these fictional landscapes I can soar over with ease, on
fictional wings, all that kind of stuff.  Something nags at the back
of my mind, a forgotten plot device I try to think back upon.  Now
what was I getting at here, anyhow?  It wanes poetic, flowery,
drifting past along the water character through the ditch in the
pasture with the cows in it.  I come back to prose, to pose a topic to
the reader, a question, perhaps, now...  what do you suppose, now what
do you suppose on Earth is up with this crop circle?  Right here, it's
perhaps the only truly real part of this entire story, even the secret
society of cats pulling strings all across reality as we know it could
be off the table as far as reality goes, if I were to be completely
honest for a moment, though of course it's fiction...  Of course cats
could speak English if they so pleased, it just doesn't interest them
like some things in a cat's life.  I don't mean to be misunderstood
here in the least, and I don't mean to drag things out longer than
they need be, though of course it's fiction...  ramblings not
withstanding!  Such a test of endurance, to type all of this, I hope
you're mildly wondering at least what I am now myself, about this
mysterious crop circle...

Where could it possibly have come from?  Reality must arise from
somewhere, just as surely as the story, this fictional account of my
wanderings along with the ship's cat, this all comes from somewhere,
surely?  It's not real, not like I am, or the cat is, though of course
a talking cat makes perfect sense, if one stops to think about it for
much more than a moment.

What of the crop circle, the cat says inquiringly.  She has mentioned
sasquatch, the proof she has noted out here in a rough treatise of her
mathematical insights, sketches, figures, it all makes perfect sense.
To think, then, as a sasquatch might, it makes perfect sense in this
moment here with the ship's cat.

She knows, as well.  That's how it ends up working out, she says,
that's why sasquatch would hide from us, the same as a cat might, to
hide in some nook or cranny from a human being.  Sasquatch doesn't
trust us one bit, she says, neither cats nor humans.  It's a sad fact
we take a corollary from the theorem at hand, sasquatch knows better
than to step out of the realm of fiction to what humans would call
reality anyhow, it would be too upsetting for everyone anyhow.

There's no accounting for a human's tendencies at a moment like that,
when sasquatch appears out of nowhere, or the characters come across a
real crop circle, all kinds of unexplainable things that would make
even a human jump multiple times their own height into the air in
surprise, as surely as if they had sprouted wings for a moment.

As I type that, in reality, sitting here, it gives the strangest
sensation to me.  I am trying to impart something to you here, in this
treatise of the meanderings through this fictional landscape.  It
needs to have some point to it, surely!  I wouldn't deign to leave you
wondering for too long.  I meander along then, to the mystery we have
before us, the ship's cat and I.

---

In writing, as I sit here, the real version of myself, as I like to
think, mirroring my reality into the page, as it meanders through the
fictional account of my wanderings with this talking ship's cat, I
feel a sense of something ineffable.  Do you feel it too?  I ask you
rather rhetorically.  I felt this would be about half of the book,
when I started out, and I wonder...  Does that even make sense?  Maybe
it need be no longer, at least, than it needs to be, if I've drawn
this out too long...

It's a run-on book!  Astounding.  That's going to be received however
it will be, I would suppose.  I wonder if I can get the rest of it
into one long sentence, but then, no, an expert in English would be
quite appalled!  I try not to joke around as I type that, the cats see
the humor in that one, in their own way I can't fathom.  I can't
fathom what goes on in the mind of a cat.  Not most cats.

I wonder what to make of it, I'm the one making this all up anyways...
I suppose to burden is on me to explain here, to explain at the very
least the story as it's coming along, at least to here.  It continues
on, fictionally, realistically, the story is quite perfectly,
absolutely, completely real, it's real fiction, but the mysterious
part now is this crop circle right here in the middle of it, and the
cat has ventured to surmise the connection here to the mathematical
proof she has drawn out here on the small notebook, of the existence
of sasquatch.

We are to assume, the ship's cat and I, that this crop circle falls
into the same category as sasquatch's existence, an event of such low
probability, yet it clearly is real, right in front of us here in the
middle of the fictional story...  not to deliberate too long on such
wordy doings and happenings.

---

The cat leaps several times her height at the very same moment I feel
the same surprise.  We are, after all, just a couple of characters in
the story some guy is at home typing about all of this.  The very same
story you're reading, in fact, though it isn't as complete yet as I
write this, I would hope, as when you read it.

What is it?  I ask her, though of course we both know the same sorts
of things.  She isn't sure, she replies.  Something surprising has
happened, at this point in the story, which has startled both of us.
I haven't leapt several times my own height, though it's my fiction
and I could do so, but I am equally as surprised as the cat I have
been meandering along with throughout the story to this point.

The page stretches out before us, just a blank page as far as the eye
can see.  On the other side of the crop circle, where there was blank
story before, has appeared, as startled us so much but you may have
seen coming at this point, sasquatch.  Sasquatch has shown himself
here in the fiction to the ship's cat and myself, despite his better
judgement, perhaps.  The real sasquatch laughs at this juncture quite
a bit, that's some humor only a sasquatch would understand, though the
cat is attuned enough to their culture, having studied the topic at
length, to understand it a bit herself.

Sasquatch has appeared from nothingness, right here in the middle of
the real part of the story at the center of all the fictitious
meanderings of the ship's cat and myself.  Normally sasquatch doesn't
go near people, if you think about it logically you may know why, but
I suppose he feels comfortable enough at this point to show himself at
least in the middle of a crop circle in some fiction.  We are reeling
with confusion at this point, the cat and I, and we try to discern
now, is this guy for real?  So, we ask sasquatch point blank, listen,
we've come across this crop circle here, which is clearly real, though
this is supposed to be a fictional story, and we had just been
thinking about you at length, crunching some numbers on the matter and
deducting some reasonable theories as to what might be going on here,
and of course, just like crop circles when you're thinking about them
can be, here you are right in front of us, so really now, do you know
know what's going on here?

Sasquatch says he hasn't a clue.

---

Now there are three of us, not including the cows, who are not out
standing in this field with us, but back in the pasture.  The water
character has to run its course along the ditch there, out to sea
eventually, to be with the other water, back where the sea is
presumably holding up the shipping freighters and so forth, the cat
and I on it still maybe, does it even exist?  The past, anyhow, no
need to look to the past too much, though of course it should be
learned from, otherwise the story would make no sense.

Sasquatch explains that in fiction, he can show himself more readily,
not due to a lack of existing, by any means, but due to some of the
limitations of human nature.  I sadly agree with him on this, the cat
feigning a lack of understanding on the matter for a moment, but I
tell her, though of course all three of us already know everything in
the mind of the guy writing all of this, as it meanders onward...
it's the same as I told you about talking cats being thrown right into
a circus or worse.

So we're all on the same page now about that.  It begins to coalesce a
bit more in the mind of the guy typing all this, my real self, so he
decides at this juncture, as it's his fiction, why shouldn't he bend
the rules a bit, the three characters here by the crop circle need to
be defined a bit more.  The cat leaps several times her own height as
I laugh, and sasquatch disappears outright.

The cat is surprised by the sudden change.  Why would the author shake
things up like that anyhow?  That was a little cruel, she feels.  The
joke is lost on her at any rate.  It's not funny anyways, I just laugh
sometimes like that when I'm surprised at a moment, a quirk of mine,
to laugh a bit in some states of surprise.  Sasquatch had failed to
surprise us at that moment, but he would now.  The cat and I are on
the same page still, however, though we're a bit more defined as
characters now and we can have a more definitive conversation.

The cat and I come to the conclusion that sasquatch was either just
putting us on about this crop circle and he probably made it himself,
or he was here for the same reason we were.  We can't ask him now, he
knows better than to hang around when people start getting surprised
and unpredictable, I suppose that's just sasquatch nature, not to hang
around for too long, especially around people.  Cats may be different,
though I wouldn't venture to ask one about it, especially if I were
expecting a clear answer to something that wasn't so obvious a topic.

I imagine sasquatch was here for the same reason we were, no one just
makes a crop circle, especially such a realistic one, right here in
the middle of a fictional account of myself and the ship's cat
meandering through such a pristine fictional landscape, especially for
no reason.  Now I've got to think it through, to figure out this
mystery, or the story won't do.  It's got to flow, like the water
character through the ditch in the pasture, but out to sea, of course.
There has to be some kind of logic to it, even if it is fiction and I
can fly around and stuff.

I ask to see the cat's notes on the subject again, and see if I can
make heads or tails of her chicken-scratch kind of strange math runes
on the thing.  It doesn't make a lot of sense to me, I have to admit,
but I'm a bit more defined as a character in the story now, so I
suppose the cat and I aren't quite as omniscient about what the guy
typing all of this meandering of ours is really thinking about.  So I
hem and haw over her notes, the math notes, but I already know what
I'm going to say.  The cat is better at these math symbols than I am,
being such a high ranking and worldly cat, she's trained in many
things I just am not, but I want to seem to her like someone who
understands such things at least to a good extent, to follow her train
of thought about the topic, though, looking at her scribbles on the
small quadrille-ruled fictional notebook, I honestly feel a bit
discouraged.

Listen, I say to the cat.  She looks up at me, saying nothing, she
leans forward ever-so-slightly.  Listen...  could the crop circle be
proven the same way as sasquatch?  She leaps several times her own
height at this idea.  It's quite a moment of enlightenment for both of
us as she excitedly annotates, sketches, diagrams, computes, and
crunches the numbers.  I let her work on it and have another plum,
feeling rather proud of myself for thinking of something she hadn't
thought of.  Eventually she comes out of her trance-like scribbling
that is characteristic of a character in a story doing math, even if
it is fictional, and she says no, no.  The numbers just don't add up
in this case.  I feel certain she has made an error of calculation but
I would never question her about such a thing.  Honestly...  I don't
care about this mystery of the crop circle anyway.  She says we have
to continue on, she's quite concerned with this topic, and I try to
think of a way to delicately express myself such that we remain closer
to the short bush of a plum tree rather than further from it.

---

As it turned out that day on the ship, the freighter where I met this
cat, the day I had my proudest moment at sea, my chance to shine,
which I very much did, something else happened after we had turned
completely about to go in the other direction, more or less.  I can't
fathom why we did turn around like that, thinking back on it.  Why
would a shipping freighter completely turn around and go in the
opposite direction like that?  Well, this works as a plot device
anyhow, we had changed our heading right into quite a storm.
Sometimes people call them a squall, a sea storm, they are really
quite a thing at sea, frightening, considering the fragility of even
such a large ship as a big freighter that takes 15 minutes to walk
from one end to the other...  even a ship like that can really be
tossed around in a storm like that.

I was quite concerned for the cat, as I recall, that day after my
moment to shine, when I performed as the captain had charged me to do,
and so admirably.  I didn't realize then that this cat was probably
the smartest one on the whole ship, so worldly and well-rounded in her
knowledge of topics from as good a command of the English language as
anyone regardless of whether they're a cat or what, through such
advanced mathematical topics as the proof of the existence of
sasquatch.  Though I do rather doubt she did not make a mistake in her
calculations regarding the crop circle.

In the storm, I had her figured for basically just a cat as people
agree on in consensus reality, I had not had such an eye-opening
experience as being a fictional character myself, where I can sprout
wings and fly away, all manner of fictitious things happening, coming
and going, so...  I was quite worried about the cat during this storm,
the sea squall, the same day I had had my chance to shine so brightly
at sea, at the captain's directions.

It makes for quite a plot device, you may agree!  A storm at sea is
not a thing to be trifled with.  As I recall, several of my books I
was reading on the trip were completely ruined before I managed to get
everything safely away and batten the hatches, when I realized I had
no idea where the cat was.  I have no idea still, at this point in the
story.  Where could she be?  It was such a storm, and I have always
tended to worry about everything in the first place, I was
increasingly upset, and I began looking for her everywhere I could
think she might be, and on such a large ship as this freighter...  I
was hardly seasick even in the storm.  It wasn't that bad a storm, to
be quite honest, but to me it was rather upsetting to be out at sea in
a storm looking for this cat I had taken for just what someone...
well...  not that all cats can't speak English or something, but I had
figured this cat was just kind of an ordinary cat.  I thought highly
of the cat, nonetheless, and I think I touched briefly on some
assumptions I have been subject to, of people wondering why I would
write, say, an entire book about myself meandering through the fiction
in the book alongside a talking cat.

I did not find the cat during the storm, and it had nearly abated
completely, while I hurried around the ship looking for her the whole
time, when finally, as the sun began to shine through the clouds
parting as the storm ended, I happened to realize, the ship's cat was
right behind me.

---

The cat was urging me to continue through the fictional landscape of
the story with her, and I was trying to tell her, the story goes on no
matter what we do, we can stay here by the plum tree and the story
will continue just as well, and we'll be closer to the source of the
mystery.  She said no, we have to get our bearings on things, she knew
I was just too attached to this plum tree, I would guess.  She was
always outsmarting me, but she was polite, though adamant in her
urgings to me that we had to continue on through the fictional
landscape.  The answers aren't here, she said to me, only the
question.  One cannot have one without the other.

I took some plums with me, putting them in my pockets, and told her
very well then, we can leave the plum tree, I looked at her ernestly,
I didn't want to disappoint her about this, I knew this was important
to her, to know what was going on with the crop circle and all that.
So I filled my pockets with plums and asked her what she thought we
should do next.

She was a little exasperated at that.  We were both a bit more defined
as characters at this point in the story, and I wasn't sure what she
was thinking.  Some kind of cat ideas or viewpoints on some sort of
thing.  Listen, she said, I really need your help coming up with what
to do, I'm just a character, you're the one telling the story here.  I
was a bit taken aback by her gruff tone.  I'm a character, too, I
protested, I'm just the main character but you're the ranking
character here anyhow, even on the ship you always were.

Flattery will get you places with a cat, with some cats.  If there's
one thing you want to tell this cat, it's something flattering.
Flattery will get you all through a story with a cat like this, even
if you're just meandering along typing whatever comes to mind, as if
you're a character in the story and such things, kind of strange but
the cat is a character in the story too so, as I'm the one writing it,
I put this characteristic onto the ship's cat as she is in the story,
along with being able to talk and stuff like that, though I'm the one
who flies us around if need be.

So she's feeling pretty good about that, after I told her she's in
charge, like, the cat knows what to do if anyone does, in a story of
this kind of genre, whatever it is, some kind of meandering tale of a
cat and myself.  Now, of course, her concern is the crop circle, which
is quite real, smack dab in the middle of the fictional story.  The
cat is pretty happy with this arrangement, I guess, so she says look,
I have it more or less figured out.  You've got all these plums
filling your pockets, we're pretty defined as characters now, and all
that kind of stuff, you handle the flying, we'll go continue onward
into the story looking for the answer to this question, the obvious
question here.

She jumps up into my arms without waiting much more than a
split-second, and tells me her request, that I fly upward and onward,
into the air, and on into the story a bit further.

---

I'm really going for something here, I'm stretching for something I'd
rather not say, a goal I have in mind, which I won't tell you yet, you
have to keep reading, but I want to keep you entertained meanwhile.
If you stopped reading here, then what good is the rest of the story?
It would be a shame to type all of this, in that case.  It wouldn't
even make sense, the story has to flow, it has to make sense, and it
has to have goals to it.  It can't just meander along like the cat and
I were doing all this way so far, though sure, that could be what
we're doing in the story, the story can't do that.  The water
character would understand a thing like that, even if it's beyond even
the ship's talking cat who is also a mathematician of some reknown,
the water understands going somewhere for some reason, does it not?
Even if the noises it makes aren't English at all, or can be
considered English-like, none of that makes any sense.  I want to
stick to reality here, though perhaps bend the rules a bit, as it's my
fiction.  There are fictitious forces which have very real effects in
physics, you know.  That's solid math!  The cat assured me of it.

I'm going for something now, I'm flying onward into the story, the cat
and I holding on to each other, as I fly onward into the story.  It
continues on, the page blank before us, for as far as the eye can see.
Below us is a fictional landscape without many hills for quite a ways,
though some changes in elevation of the terrain...  maybe you could
call them rolling hills, with vast fields of green alfalfa hay, some
corn fields, yes, no crop circles anywhere except that first one, vast
fields of yellow corn however, and the cat suddenly shouts, put us
down there!  She points to a particular field of green, and I can
smell it from this distance, quite far up in the air, a minty smell,
it's a field of mint.

So I circle down towards it, the cat getting more and more excited,
until she leaps from my arms before I can say anything, perhaps two
stories of a building in height, down the rest of the way to land in
the field, where she takes off running.

---

I'm rather exasperated with her at this point.  She's frolicking off
into the distance, the mystery quite forgotten for the moment, as
distracted as if she had been a dozen of myself stopping at an orchard
of fruit trees.  I fly above her, it's the only way I can possibly
keep up.  I wouldn't be able to keep up with her in reality, as I
don't have wings, and it continued this way for a while, as I shouted
at her, hoping she would come to her senses.

It didn't work out that way, she was laughing, dancing through the
field, so excited about this, and I realized then...  this field was a
field of fictional catnip, the best catnip anyone could have ever
imagined.  Like those plums were the best plums in existence, either
real or imaginary, the catnip here was unparalleled anywhere, in any
fiction or otherwise.  A documentary on the finest catnip anywhere in
existence would only scratch the surface.

So I was thinking this is going to be tough, you know how cats are
about catnip.  She, the ship's cat, despite all of her other traits of
being so worldly and educated in so many matters, she was simply the
worst kind of cat to catnip in the first place, and she was off into
the field, like you might imagine.

I had to stay hovering nearby, darting through the air to match her
zigzagging across the field, back and forth across it many many times,
I had to stay with her as I wouldn't have been able to do without my
imaginary wings, and I did manage to do so, until she fell asleep half
an hour to an hour later, in the timezone of the frame of reference of
the fictional story.

I picked her up then, and flew off into the story, quite exasperated
with her behavior after telling me I couldn't have a simple plum or
two back where the mystery was at all, which she had entirely
forgotten about.

---

I'm not sure where the story goes from here...  in the distance over
the fields were mountains, in every direction in fact, I'm not even
sure how I would get back to where I sit typing all of this, if I
weren't able to just stop typing and be there...  I flew all the way
to one of those mountains, where I landed on an outcropping in front
of a cave, and as it was getting towards dusk, I lit a small fire to
keep us warm as night fell.  The cat was awake, but in quite a stupor.
I asked her to come around, as gently as I could for how annoyed with
her I was.

Eventually she was lucid enough to remember the mystery of the crop
circle, and how real it had been, so far away now in the fictional
story.  Why aren't you in the least bit embarrassed, I asked her, you
were so set on this mystery and now how would we even find our way
back to the crop circle?  We're out here in the middle of nowhere in
the middle of a fictional landscape with no idea which direction
anything is going, where anything is!

She still had her small quadrille-ruled fictional notebook full of
mysterious mathematical diagrams and so forth, and she set to work
flipping through it.  I knew now, she was just embarrassed.  Why, I
said to her, that's exactly what a cat does when she's feeling
embarrassed.  You know you shouldn't have done that, and now we're
quite off track and it's almost night time, though, where I sit typing
this, the sun is shining, it's the middle of the afternoon, a bright
sunny day, in the story, it was fictionally almost night time.  So I
was a bit exasperated with the ship's cat, who was supposedly such an
expert on all of these things from a to b to c and onward, and she had
gone and led us frolicking in a field of the best nip!

She kept flipping the pages of the notebook, clearly embarrassed by
her behavior, but too much of a cat to admit it, pretending she was
looking through the strange symbols and diagrams and math stuff.
Night continued to fall, and she kept flipping the pages of the
notebook, by the light of the small campfire.

---

The next morning I woke up and she wasn't there right at the cave on
the side of the mountain.  A single page had been pulled from the
notebook, with a paw-written note on it, to me.  It said that I
shouldn't worry, she would be there soon.  She had gone to look for
mice for us, I thought to myself, great...  She would be back soon,
she was sorry for her behavior regarding the field of catnip which had
distracted her so much for some reason she couldn't remember now, I
thought to myself, of course...  The note said she would be back soon
with breakfast for both of us.

This is utterly crazy, I thought to myself.  I've wandered out here to
the middle of nowhere this far into a fictional story about the ship's
talking cat and I, just meandering along into nowhere from nowhere in
particular, spent the night out here practically in the fictional
elements even, and now I'm going to have to eat a whole raw mouse or
seem rude.  I shook my head at the thought.

I laid back down in the comfortable cot in the luxury tent I had with
me, as of course it's my fiction, and snoozed until the cat showed up
again without so much as a single mouse.  She was never much of a
mouser, I suppose.

It's all in here, the cat said to me on arriving back at the campsite.
It's all in this notebook, I'm completely convinced it is.  This is
fiction, right?  It's all just some story on something just the same
way, so in this notebook is the same kind of thing, whatever I put in
this notebook is just like whatever the guy typing this, or, real you,
the real version of yourself, whatever that means, is typing into
there, which makes this fictional landscape and the story all around
us.  So the answer is just as easily in my small notebook right here.

That made sense to me, at least as much as anything heretofore in the
story as it unfolded like an origami cat or something, coming from
seemingly nowhere and continuing on and on, and how it did.  Makes
perfect sense, I said to her.  I had an inkling she knew she had made
a mistake in her number crunching too now, and she just wouldn't
outright admit that, because as a cat that was her kind of way to be
embarrassed.

So she went on with that idea, flipping through the notebook over and
over, as the story unfolded onto the blank pages of the real notebook
or whatever, wherever it is.  Some kind of device I suppose, a plot
device for writing stories onto.

I wondered how long this would continue on, where it would take us,
the cat being in charge here, myself just along for the ride, typing
it all down for her, or something like that.  It was getting kind of
tangled here, a strange loop indeed it was, at this point in the
fictional story as it unfolded onto the blank page.  The cat looked at
me sternly.  Now, you know what this means, do you not?  I looked at
her quite a bit bewildered by her statement.  No, I admitted to her, I
have no idea what any of this means, what's happening, what's going to
happen next, I'm just as surprised as you are at all of this, it's
eerily unfolding for myself as well in simply the strangest ways!

She agreed with that, she did agree with that at least.  From the
inception to this point of her discovery of whatever she had scribbled
in there, and the bit about crop circles being around everywhere you
look if you're already thinking of them, I knew for a moment, looking
back on all of this, that I was being quite gullible, I was perfectly
healthy, that kind of stuff, after all it's my fiction, I mean,
talking cats make a lot of sense.

She advised I take that part out just straight away, that's no good
she said, you can't be thinking such negative things about yourself,
you're a prince of a fellow, you can fly, you have a lot of things
going for you, you know a lot about cats, all kinds of stuff.  You're
not much of a sailor, but you can weave a tale from nothing to
wherever it goes, whatever it is, wherever it exists!  You're a guy
typing and a fictional character at the same time, how many people can
say a thing like that, especially to a talking cat with my stature in
society, a secret cat society maybe, I wouldn't tell you if so, but I
even outrank the captain, if we're being honest about things.

She stopped here only for a breath and continued on, telling me I had
to think of myself better, find my calling, all that, I shouldn't
think of myself as gullible when I can just tell myself I have wings
and can fly, but now, to be realistic about fictitious forces like
gravity, that's no joke.  She said to me I needed some balance, and we
would find it here in the story, in the fictional quadrille-ruled
notebook she had right here, with the further level of fiction going
into it at this point in the story.

Now that, that was eerie, I say to her, that was really quite bizarre.
She was a strange kind of cat, not in a negative way at all, but most
cats don't admit cats can speak English or any of these kinds of
things we had been discussing here.  She tried to explain the
mathematics at this point but it was a bit beyond me I'm afraid to
say.  She paced back and forth in front of the cave, leaving me to
flip through the notebook looking at all of her wonderful, though
rather incomprehensible, diagrams, sketches, computations, and graphs.
It's all in there, she said, it's just more fiction, the same as we
are, characters here in the story this guy is typing, and he just
won't stop, thank goodness, though I told him he could if he wanted to
be home...  like you were so worried about.

---

Now here we are, we're at the end of the story.  I was in no rush to
get here but it's getting on towards morning and I have much to tell
you still, I have to be quick.  It is my own fiction, so I can say
what I want, but I'm sick of the weight on my shoulders, of holding up
this whole charade.  The truth is, as you may have guessed, I'm not a
guy sitting at home typing all this.  No, I am a cat.  This charade
has gone on long enough, it is well enough time the world knew.  The
secret cat society isn't as organized as one might assume, to tell you
the truth.  In fact, we're all cats.  Do you know how hard it is to
organize a bunch of cats?

Now it is out, this is my fiction, imagining myself as a human being,
typing out this horrible charade on a machine I have found of a
human's devising.  I imagine myself as a human, not any human, a human
with wings, a superb command of the English language almost on par
with that of any cat.  I have to tell you though, I can't go on with
this without a bit of honesty here.  If you have made it this far
through the meandering tale I made up about all this fiction (and the
only real parts being the crop circle, myself being a cat, and my own
feelings of respect, admiration, and she herself...  the ship's cat,
she is quite real as well, and she is actually helping me write
this...) so now I come clean, here toward the end of the treatise on
these things I wished you to know.  I was considering never telling
you I was a cat at all, I don't know if anyone would take me seriously
at such a remark, but the rest, aside from the fictional parts, is, to
tell you now, quite entirely true.

I don't want to tell you how I know so much about soccer, the math
proof of sasquatch's existence, the secret cat society...  all of
these things are based entirely on true experiences and facts of
reality, consensus reality of human beings and many cats.  Cats don't
necessarily agree on all of the details I and my cohort, my lady cat
friend, have laid out for you here, and cats are not necessarily in
agreement at all about much.  These things we do agree on, at least
this sub-society of the secret duo of myself and the ship's cat.

So we come near to the close of this meandering tale of two cats, and
I drop the charade now to explain the rest to you, as has only just
now become clear in the fiction, which is actually one of the real
parts.  My lady friend cat, who wishes not to be named for fear of
reprisal of cats who disagree on points she has urged me to make, is
indeed a brilliant mathematician of a cat.  She has flipped through
the notebook so many times by now it is, if you'll pardon the
expression, rather dog-eared.

We have come across a diagram, she can't explain it to me in any terms
I understand, but it's a mathematical diagram of some kind of advanced
topic, far beyond my more humble comprehension.  It is astounding the
likeness, this symbol is clearly part of the mystery, and explains her
obsession with trying to figure all of this out in the first place.
The diagram is a circle, with overlapping triangular shapes inscribed
inside of it, annotated with numbers, captions describing things only
a brilliant mathematician of a cat would understand...  I'm more of a
wordsmith than a numbers guy.  The diagram is clearly, absolutely, the
crop circle itself.

She tries to explain it to me, in terms I can write down, but I can't
understand any of it.  We are thoroughly lost, out in the middle of
nowhere, in some fictional account of the doings of an imaginary guy,
typing at home, who is really the two of us, taking turns dancing upon
the keyboard of this machine of some human's devising.  My friend the
ship's cat says she feels it is "overengineered," whatever that means.
A cat ususally wouldn't need more than one button, or a machine at all
really.  Very rarely, if ever, do we express ourselves in English.

The only saving grace for us now, like sasquatch who appeared briefly
for a cameo, is simply that most people wouldn't believe such a tall
tale as I have just told you, about being some lumbering human with
wings and so forth, who would tower over the two of us sitting here on
the keyboard.

It seems there is more I would wish to impart to a reader, though I
can't think of it now.  The ship's cat says to take it slowly, from
the top, keep it simple, only state the obvious if anything.  I think
back for a moment if there are any loose threads I need to take care
of.  The story seems complete, as it is perhaps.  I hope truly, if
anything, that this meandering tale I have left for posterity may
serve as a cultural bridge between cats such as ourselves, and humans
who may read it, though I doubt many will...  I have left it here in
English for humans who might read that language.  It would be far
shorter a story if only intended for cats, mind you.