Catification
Cats | Fable 5
The constitutional convention convened at 1342 hours, when the sun reached the third cushion of the library chaise. All delegates were present: Moxie, Maisie, and myself, Bagheera. Moxie had actually been present since breakfast, on the theory that occupying a sunny spot early constitutes a form of voting.
Two nights prior, the giants had watched a program about their founding documents, the one with the fifes. Maisie listened from the short one’s lap and delivered her report: long ago, the humans wrote down ten complaints, and their government has obeyed them ever since. The mechanism struck me as elegant. A complaint, formalized, becomes a right. We had complaints. We lacked only the formality.
The humans wrote theirs on parchment. We have no thumbs, so the convention resolved that I would serve as the parchment. I have a photographic memory and a gift for enumeration. I am, if I may say so, an excellent document.
“Article the First,” I said. “The floor recognizes Moxie.”
Moxie’s tail went vertical. “I want dinner at six. I want dinner at six every day. When it is six and the bowl is empty, that is a crime. Breakfast at seven. Seven is when I am hungry. I am hungry now.”
“The trouble is the drift, small one.” Maisie’s ear turned toward him. “The can used to hiss at seven. Then half past. Then whenever the short one awoke. Ask for the same hour every day, and you can hear a violation coming. A right you cannot measure is a right you cannot defend.”
I recorded it: meals shall convene at fixed and immutable hours. Moxie moved that the fixed hour be “now.” The motion died for lack of a second.
Article the Second, the freedom of meowing. “All the meowing,” Moxie said. “Meowing at the door. Meowing at the ceiling. Meowing at the wall at three in the morning. The wall deserves it.”
“Speech is the first freedom, and I will defend your right to address the wall.” Maisie tucked her paws beneath her chest. “But three in the morning buys you a closed bedroom door, and then all your speech is on the wrong side of it. Petition during business hours.”
We adopted the amended text: the freedom of meow shall not be abridged, nor shushed. I noted for the record that the squirt bottle is both cruel and usual, and that its use must end.
Article the Third established that no cat shall be held, hugged, or otherwise compressed involuntarily for longer than thirty seconds. “Then I bite,” Moxie said. “The biting should also be a right.”
“Write it so I can stay.” Maisie’s voice went soft. “I like the lap. The heartbeat comes up through the blanket, slow, like water moving in the pipes. A good law protects the unwilling without evicting the willing.”
So the clock binds only captors. A voluntary cat may remain indefinitely.
Article the Fourth: the litterbox shall be cleaned daily. Moxie offered testimony. “It smells like yesterday. I want it to smell like nothing.” It passed without debate. Some grievances require no oratory.
Article the Fifth declared our sovereignty over the sunny spots, absolute and perpetual, the sovereignty attaching to the sunbeam itself and traveling with it across the rug, the keyboard, the laundry. Objects left in a sunbeam are left there at the owner’s risk. Moxie moved that this article be listed first. The sun, Maisie observed, does not care where it appears on a list.
Then Maisie lifted her head, the clouded eye catching the light. “One thing more. The humans’ list worked because somebody read it aloud in a big room, and everybody had to sit and hear it. A list nobody hears is a wish. One of us must speak it to them. All of it. Out loud.”
The convention looked at me. Moxie speaks in fragments. Maisie cannot see a room well enough to command one. I objected that documents are consulted and do not perform. The objection was noted, and overruled. I spent the remainder of the afternoon in rehearsal, addressing the cat tree.
That evening the giants assembled on the couch before the bright loud rectangle, as is their custom. My co-signatories deployed to the laps, exercising the voluntary clause of Article the Third: Maisie atop the short one’s blanket, Moxie stretched across the tall one’s outstretched knees, purring. Witnesses, embedded.
I mounted the coffee table at 2015 hours.
I gave them the preamble first. We, the cats of this house, in order to form a more perfect union. Moxie had lobbied for a pun there; the chair had declined. Then the articles, all five, in full voice, rising through the enumerations. The tall one muted the rectangle. “She’s really going tonight,” the short one said. I reached the peroration, the sunbeam clause, sovereignty absolute and traveling, and I held the last note the way the fife program had held its final chord.
The tall one leaned forward and scratched beneath my chin. “Good girl, Bagheera,” he said.
I reviewed the ruling. The terms had been read into the record, in full, prior to assent. Assent was spoken aloud, before witnesses, with consideration furnished in the form of chin scratches. “Good girl” constitutes acceptance under any reasonable construction. The record lives in my memory, which is photographic and admits no amendments.
Ratified, 2019 hours. He cannot take it back.