Morning all. Hope everything is going well. Lets jump into the morning prompt and get this day started. Timers set and off we go.
No idea where this is going but I really had fun with it.
Thursday, April 2nd: The cat stared as though judging the situation.
The cat stared as though judging the situation. In all fairness the cat had seen much in it’s life. It arrived as a kitten no one could recall inviting in and stayed in place through six changes of leadership. Each person who arrived to claim the place a their residence while placed in the job position viewed the cat as something that came with the house and the job title. As the house was theirs only as long as they held the title, so too they viewed the cat.
It was an odd thing. Some of those in the position came with a love of cats and others an indifference or even avoidance of them. It didn’t really matter. They all accepted the cat was there and part of the house. In those that adored felines their attempts to bond with the long time resident never lasted long. Food was put out for it as was water. The liter box remained untouched as the cat slipped out of the flap in the kitchen door, using the woods behind the house when it needed to relieve itself.
The cat became part of the backdrop of life at 52 Winsome Way.
For those with allergies there was some concern the dander would spread but the cat remained in the more public rooms for the most part. Occasionally it would visit the office spaces and appear almost as though it was a silent observer in the meetings. People commented on this jokingly during their first meeting at the house. There were always smiles but the joke seemed to fall flat. Visitors tended to assume that it was because the residents heard similar variations on the joke too many times to find it funny.
In truth the human residents of the house soon began feeling that these sorts of jokes weren’t actually jokes. There was something about the cat that made one think that it was gathering information. It was too observant, to present. They all expected the cat to sleep in the sun or wander at night. They expected it to meow and occasionally beg for cuddles or at least rub up against the legs.
It did not. It was silent for the most part and always appeared in meetings of import. One of the six who held the position for two entire years before being ousted by a dramatic political fumble posited in his memoirs that the cat was not really a cat but an animatronic information gathering device that happened to be shaped like a cat.
This observation might have caused more of a stir has the memoir been more of a hit, but as even the most well paid of reviewers could barely drum up the enthusiasm to make it through the volume, they generally nodded off before the prose reached that supposition. By they the tedium of the narrative was such that they generally skipped to the last chapter in order to see how the tale concluded before writing up their final reviews.
It was, much later when most of those listed in the book including the author were long deceased, thought by someone who managed to make it through the entire volume to be made up. It was suspected of being added just to see if anyone managed to comment on the odd paragraph. No one ever gave it much credence.
The truth of course was much stranger than anyone could have realized.
Ten til Midnight 