International Cat Day

As a celebrant of this amazing day, I will start by telling you I have no cat power in my life. Plenty of dog power, courtesy of my girlfriend, but the feline zen master is not in my life. Perhaps I am not ready. The student is not ready. The master is away.

But this is not to say there were not a lot of cat shenanigans today. Google, in fact, pulled a quick one on the dogs sleeping on the couch next to me. I wish I could show you a video, but this is a short story. Sorry.

So, this page, from the largest monopolistic search engine in the world, was hilarious. (see story illustration) The dogs thought it was awful, but we all laughed in the end. I think at this moment, they are still waiting for the meowing to return. They are alert on the couch now, thirty minutes later.

And then I got to thinking about Google, and why, what, how, the cat day prank even makes sense. Serendipity? A lark? Fostering goodwill?

And then I noticed I’m writing in my browser, Google Chrome. And I’m laughing at a Google webpage. At least there’s no damn Alexa in my house, only Siri, and she’s relegated to my phone, my iPad, and my MBP. Sure, Siri is everywhere too, but she’s less, I mean, Apple’s less… No, wait a minute. This was about cats, not technology and its soul-sucking trackers and listeners and email scanners (yes, I use G-Mail). Not about all that technological apocalyptical bullshit. Google is not my friend. Siri, is suspect. But, a cat joke, priceless.

What I meant to say was, I love cats. I had my first very own cat, Peter, who lived to be 18 years old and died in a freak accident having fallen asleep in the warm clothes inside the dryer. My now-ex-wife turned it on to fluff them up before folding them.

I cried more about Peter than the loss of my marriage. Today’s cat page reminds me, cats are better than dogs. Maybe not funnier. But show me a Zen dog.

Read more Short-Short Stories from John.