That Damned Cat

I've noticed that, in today's world, many people have trouble separating art from its creator. Even going so far as to associate the opinions of a writer's characters with the writer himself. For example, once on the Dunesteef, Rish shared a story in which a character made a joke about a person being like a member of a certain political party. In the comments for that episode was a person calling us names for not believing in and being aligned with that certain political party. 

We were both a little shocked. How could someone be that unhinged? Don't people understand that characters in stories are not the author? Do they think that there's nothing in literature but blatant self-insertions? What the hell was going on here?

That was almost fifteen years ago now, and I've noticed that things have only gotten worse, so  it is with great trepidation that I release this story that I wrote many years ago but have never shared with more than a couple of people called "That Damned Cat."

Taking you back in time to the Dunesteef days again, let me remind you of a story we did called "Like Cat and Dog." When we did that story, we talked about cats and dogs afterward as Rish and I tended to do. We are both the kind of people who prefer dogs, and made many jokes about the worthlessness and unsuitability of cats as pets and the like. 

They were all tasteless jokes, but that was nothing new for our show. Well, it turns out there are just some subjects you can't joke about, and it seems that cats are one of those. There was a mini-uprising among our listeners. They wanted our heads for making tasteless jokes about cats. I believe one person even commented on the episode claiming that it was okay to make jokes about almost anything, even rape, but not about cats.

So, I suspect that this is a story that I shouldn't even be sharing at all. It is the story of a guy who hates his family's cat. He wants it dead, and puts a plan into practice to rid himself of it...except the cat comes back the very next day. Not only that, but the cat is changed. It's not right. The rest of the family doesn't seem to notice, but the guy is sure that it is actually a zombie cat, and he's afraid that it's come back to take its revenge.

Check it out if you like. If you suspect that you will be enraged and out of sorts for reading it, though, maybe skip this one. It's on Amazon if you like.