Marmalade’s Journal Pages

A welcome air of peace has fallen over the domicile. I have been enjoying the blissful sensation. The bare-skins are in a good mood. They are preparing hospitality, which means that others of their kind will arrive shortly. Their pleasure spreads through the ether. I can tap into it and add it to my own pleasure. The sensation is not different enough to upset my Catmic balance. It is a fact of the universe that Change is the Enemy. But, in all eternal senses, things change all of the time. Therefore, existence is a contradiction. I meditate on this often.

One of the tasks the bare-skins perform on these days is the futile attempt to remove all traces of feline repose. I find it amusing when they use the cat-eating device (Athena assures me that this loud machine is capable of picking up an entire cat and trapping it in the unbreakable canister. Although I have never seen it happen, the machine’s noise is so distressing to be near that I will never get close enough to it to find out. And why would my cat-i master lie to me, her faithful pawdawan?) to pick up the traces of our hair that has fallen since the last time they removed the machine from its place of concealment. I always have more fur to share, so immediately after the monster is removed, I start scattering fresh hairs. Such is the generous nature of the universe. I never want the bare-skins to forget about us, and love to leave them tactile reminders of our presence. I’ll be honest: Minx is much better at that than I am. She can send tumbling clusters of fur across the floor like dancing shadows. I’ve tried making my fur grow in thicker, like hers, but it just won’t respond. I have to learn to accept things that I can’t change. What I can’t achieve in length, though, I can still produce in volume.

When the loud rapping announces the arrival of more bare-skins, I flee from the area in case danger lurks. To my relief and pleasure, the newcomers are familiar to me. Over the years they have visited the domicile, I have become rather fond of them. They’re no more intelligent than our bare-skins, but have the same kindly character. In fact, the male, who has the same color fur that I do, makes a particular effort to offer friendly caresses to me.

I am very curious about the esoteric interaction between the bare-skins. Athena tells me that what they are doing has no application for felines, but I disagree! The visiting male brings out boxes (which I have heretofore been unsuccessful in sitting in) that are filled with colorful pieces of cardboard in all shapes and sizes. A variety of them are distributed on the dining surface to the assembled bare-skins. They spend many hours redistributing the small pieces into useful order. Is it a primitive form of… coding? Kittens in the Pegasus sector are given many small items when they are young to teach them how to construct a program, and move on to more complex mechanisms over time that take over functions, leaving felines more time for leisure pursuits. I feel sorry for the bare-skins. I didn’t realize that they were so backwards in their approach to technology!

Having an audience also gives me an opportunity to reach for further balance in the universe. I offer my arched back to the bare-skins, but am careful to remain out of actual contact. Touching is not touching, as my previous meditation masters instructed me, and not touching is touching. I see that the bare-skins are still unable to understand that subtlety, for all the times I have demonstrated it to them. Perhaps they will pick it up around the same time that they learn to code properly. In the meanwhile, I am very fond of them, and hope that in time they will rise to the same level of intelligence and enlightenment as us felines.

Peace out,

Marmalade

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