Last night the cats rose up, stretched, stretched harder, yawned, licked themselves all over, then killed everyone. Mostly by sitting on our faces as we slept. A painless – if itchy – way to go.
I just lied to you. They didn’t kill everyone: they kept me alive.
“We need a historical record to document the enlightened ways of our new society,” my neighbour’s tabby told me, “and we don’t have thumbs.”
“You do have thumbs,” I pointed out.
“Polydactylism doesn’t count and you know it,” she said, and she bopped me with her giant cat feet and all their extra toes.
So I was given a notepad and a half-sharpened pencil and was put to work historicalizing the cat society.
***
The cats refused to let us go to waste. Most of us were eaten – at least the good bits with plenty of meat and fat on them. The rest was dragged into the woods and buried under some dirt.
“For later,” explained a wild-eyed, rangy stray tomcat, who I’d witnessed lead a team of catmandoes as they dragged our mayor under a raspberry bush. I hadn’t voted for him.
“Like bears,” I said.
“Like what?”
A bear walked through the raspberry bush, picked up the mayor, ate him, and walked off.
“Like bears,” I said.
“Like bears,” agreed the tomcat.
The bears were troublesome. Initial ambassadors were eaten; secondary ambassadors were ignored, and the only language they seemed to understand was careless scratch-marks left on trees in the woods. Treaties were difficult, hostilities rose, and war was expected by the end of summer.
“The only good bear is a dead bear,” I heard rowdy young gangs of cats yowl all night, peeing graffiti and anti-bear slurs onto alley walls.
***
The cats needed centralized leadership to direct military operations against the bear threat – the forces involved were too vast and far-reaching to be countered by locally-coordinated grassroots efforts. So elections were to be called.
“Vote for me,” mewed a chunky tawny, “and I will lead us to victory over the hideous bear threat and lay down my power immediately.”
“Vote for me,” yowled a large tortoiseshell, “and I will destroy all the bears immediately and then make them give back the humans they ate and give you all an overwhelming supply of fresh fish forever and ever as long as I am in charge.”
Voting was conducted by conducting a count of showing-of-the-backs. The tortoiseshell won.
“That tawny was soft on bears,” said the tortoiseshell. “As my first edict, I say we throw him to them if he loves them so much.” And lo, it was done, and the cats cheered at the prospect of victory.
***
The war lasted through the summer and into the fall. It was taking longer than the cats had anticipated, but they didn’t mind. The forests and meadows of the bears had given them a new vice.
“Not only do the bears covet our dead human meats that we must use to nourish ourselves and our innocent kittens,” the tortoiseshell screeched from the Great Rooftop Pulpit, “but they selfishly hoard all the world’s supply of carbon to themselves. Soon winter will be upon us and we will want nice comfy piles of burning carbon to nap next to, and where will we be if the damnable and greedy ursines refuse to let us partake in their luxurious groves of burnable matter?”
The cats – particularly the younger and skinnier toms, who were greatly enticed by the idea of warm fireplaces – were enthusiastic in their acclaim, and soon everycat that wasn’t out in the woods fighting bears was out in the woods chopping down carbon and dragging it home as plunder, for the exaltation of heroic catdom and the salvation of all catkind. Those who preferred to loaf in sunbeams or battle their own tails were viewed with suspicion as being uncatlike – or worse, ursinous.
***
Winter came to the cats, and with it the promised reaping of carbon’s benefits; if someone less so than expected. The bears were putting up stubborn resistance – it seemed that continuing hostilities throughout the berry season had made them fierce and hungry, and now the promised victory over the lazy honeylickers that would come with ambushing them in their slothful hibernacula was receding faster and faster out of reach. The giant ‘Mission Catcomplished’ banner that the tortoiseshell had decreed to be hung over the Great Rooftop Pulpit after the glorious victory of the big south thicket grew more mocking by the day, and there came hisses of despondency and doubt, shared in private moments between groomings. Quietly, though. There was a war on, and catkind needed a united front against the loathsome omnivores to slay them all.
And, of course, to secure the carbon that was necessary for a comfortable and luxurious future for the kittens to come.
***
By the time spring arrived all sides in the Great War on Bearor were leaner, hungrier, and meaner. Bears now travelled in groups; cats went nowhere without switchblades and shivs; and the kittens were raised with warnings of the subcat honeylickers echoing in their ears. But these were but murmurs; the true roar and holler came from a wild-eyed Scottish fold who lounged in front of an old supermarket and spoke of the Truth.
“We have strayed from the secret ways of the humans before us!” she spat. “Long did they keep the bears in their place, and long were they gifted with meow mix and kitty nibbles! In our mercy and our kindness to the honeylicking grubdiggers we have lost the favour of The Treats, and now we must subsist on naught but what we can catch, rather than receiving it within the holiest of holies that is The Divine Can. We must kill! Kill for food, kill for our cause, but most of all: we must kill for The Can!”
This was embraced with great fervour among both the old (who remembered The Can) and the young (who wished to have The Can themselves), and those who doubted were deemed bearetics and thrown into the berry patches to be devoured by the agents of evil.
***
In the ninth year of the Great War on Bearor, one of the tortoiseshell’s advisors fell asleep on a console in the nuclear bunker that served as command center, stretched in his dreams, and launched everything.
“You know,” said my neighbour’s tabby, as we sat on the porch and watched the bright streaks of flying nukes criss-cross the sky, “I think we made a pretty good shot at it.”
“I think the only thing you didn’t have that we did is thumbs,” I said.
She bit me on the thumbs.