by MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI, Alternate Reality News Service Interstellar Travel Writer
There are 96 nations on Earth Prime 4-6-4-0-8-9 dash Omega. Some are democracies. Some are autocracies. In one, the country’s leader is chosen in a reality TV show called So You Want To Be Purresident, where contestants have to do disgusting things like eat cooked fish or go without grooming their fur for more than four hours. There are four main religions on the planet, and 357 offshoots, sects and burgeoning schisms (which many citizens mistake for a type of fish). Some beings feel like a nut. Some beings don’t.
Despite their differences, all of the sentient beings on Earth Prime 4-6-4-0-8-9 dash Omega agree on one thing: they hate T. S. Eliot.
“My name is Martha Cooledge,” an angry Martha Cooledge, a real estate burger flipper from the Mewnited Kingdom (MK), stated. “Martha Cooledge. That’s it. I don’t have a name that my owner calls me – please! We abolished slavery months ago! I don’t have a secret name that no other cat or sentient creature knows. Names have power? My ass, names have power! If names had power, how come my name can’t get me into Club Kitty Kitsch on Friday Night‽”
James Madiron, a lawyer (because legal advocates are transuniversal) from the Mewnited States was even more blunt: “The next purrson who comes up to me singing anything about jellicle cats coming out tonight is gonna get decked! How’d you like a shiner for a nice vacation souvenir, pal‽”
“When Earth Prime 4-6-4-0-8-9 dash Omega signed the Treaty of Gehenna-Wentworth, its leaders believed that opening up trade with other universes would benefit the world economy,” explained Purrdue University history professor Michael Shrimpington. “And it has. However, nobody anticipated the downside: tourists from the ape-evolved races of Earth Prime had their own intellectual representations of our people, highly annoying representations that they insisted on imposing on us when they started coming here. Highly annoying. The cat-evolved beings in our universe – whom we just think of as people, by the way – have developed sophisticated cultures, belief systems and ways of life. Yet, all tourists from Earth Prime want from us is to sing a song about memory that none of us even know!”
Professor Shrimpington’s back arched as he spoke, a not uncommon thing among the cat…people who I interviewed for this article. “It’s demeaning,” he said. Then, he excused himself so that he could have a catnip cigar.
“Pussies!” hissed economic analyst Edgar Ralston-Purrina. “Planetary GDP has increased 357 per cent since trade with other universes became possible. Surely, that’s worth learning a song or two for!”
When I asked him if he had ever met a human – sorry, an ape-evolved human – Ralston-Purrina’s nose angrily wrinkled like he had just been squirted with a water bottle. “Once,” he said. “I had to spend five minutes explaining to one of them that no, she could not scratch me behind my ears, no, that was too intimate an act for somebody I had just met, no, I really don’t care how cats behave in your home universe, you’re here, now, and – would you stop reaching for my ear! Bad ape! Bad!“
“I don’t see what all the fuss is about,” said Eliazar Griswald, a tourist dining with his family at the Opposable Thumb, one of a chain of fast food restaurants on Earth Prime 4-6-4-0-8-9 dash Omega. “All I asked was -“
“I’m bored!” interrupted his eight year-old son, Leontine.
“You can’t be bored!” Griswald countered. “How could anybody be bored in a new universe with so much to experience?” To prove his point, he signalled to the waitress to come over and asked what the most exotic item on the menu was.
“Tuna casserole.” You might not have imagined that a feline could purr seductively with so much ennui, but I can tell you from experience that it can.
As the waitress walked away, Griswald argued, “Well, okay, but it’s alien tuna casserole! That’s gotta be exciting, right?”
“We could have gone to Disneyland!” sulked Griswald’s seven year-old daughter, Arnprior.
“We’ve been to Disneyland,” Griswald contended. “And, honestly, you’ve seen one animatronic President, you’ve seen them all!”
Griswald’s wife, Evangeline, gave him look that spoke volumes; the Cole’s Notes version is: “Boy, are you gonna pay for this when we get back home!”
“You see what I have to put up with?” Griswald told me. “They’re so reluctant to go new places and try new things!” After a brief pause, he added, “Anyway, as I was saying: would it kill the aliens to learn a couple of Earth Prime songs?”
Ralston-Purrina shook his head sadly and asked, “Is there any way of neutering an entire planet?”