Scrapbooking

       The House is always buzzing and vibrating slightly. Sometimes I think it is a cat like me and that it purrs with pleasure. I agree with it. It’s warm here, there’s plenty of food, and humans play with me and stroke me. Well, not all humans know how to stroke a cat right. Say, the Mechanic has rough hands and stinks yucky. But today I’m here in the saloon with the Navigator. He strokes me fine but too little and is stuck in his “slate” (an absolutely boring thingie, hard and not tasty) or watches the Window. It’s actually a wall, but others call it a Window, or a Panel, or a Screen. It shows other humans doing stupid things (humans call it “movies”), or lines and letters (humans call it “maps” or “diagrams”), or just a vast blackness with sparkles (humans call it “space”; when Window shows it, it stops being warm, shiny, and humming). When the Navigator stays alone with it, it shows crawling lines. At first, I tried to catch one, but my paws met a smooth, hard, slippery surface, and the line creeped from under my claws. (Very good, catchy claws, by the way!) Humans laughed at me, and since then, I don’t even try to catch any objects in the Window, and just watch them with dignity. I won’t fall into the same trap twice, and won’t let humans have fun at my expense. They should entertain me, not the other way around! No, I did jump at the Window once, but when no one was around. No, at first there were Doctor and Researcher, but then the whole House shuddered, howled like someone giant stomped on its tail, and its rooms got dark with flaring small red lamps, and alarmed humans ran away to their “posts”. The window showed “space” again, but that time, something big and uneven flew by. I was alarmed too, and furious, so I bristled my tail and attacked that something. Of course, I crashed into the smooth, hard Window and didn’t reach the thing, but it was most probably scared of me because it flew away. Soon, the House buzzed normally again, without howl and growl. The Researcher came back and said to me, “What, were you scared, silly? Don’t be, the meteorite missed us, thou it shouldn’t, by all the calculations.” Silly human. Who scared? Me? I’m not scared of anything. He’d better bring me yummy crunchies for shooing that thing away!