Six feasts for fat cats
1. We serve up a menu of sleep. Zingy, fleeting catnaps to begin with; a second course of twitching and wriggling fishdreams; then, to cleanse the palate, we offer sleep on the tumble-prone edge of a sofa or chair. The main course is a full phase of deep sleep, dreamless as the void. And finally, a sweet and lazy lie-in, suffused with the smell of breakfast. Our menu is particularly popular with the cats, who often replicate it at home.
2. We pay tribute to the Venerable Bede by gathering our cat-clan in a great banqueting hall. At the appointed moment, we set specially-trained sparrows loose outside to swoop in through one open window of the hall and out by another. We are seized with awe at the brevity of life and the ineffability of the cosmos. The cats are unimpressed. They would like us to make the windows lower. They do not come back for a second staging.
3. We decorate our cat restaurant with large refrigerators, containing the full range of cartoon-fridge staples: a string of sausages, a roast chicken, a jelly and so forth. We serve our guests a perfectly adequate bowl of kibble and retire to the back room, accidentally leaving the refrigerators open. On our return we are shocked - shocked! at the mess. The guests have long since fled with their loot. We know we will see them again.
4. We stuff a large moth inside a mouse, and insert that mouse into a pigeon, garnishing with a sprig of catnip. The cats thoughtfully nibble the catnip off the top, lick the pigeon, then reject it for being no longer warm. We tell the mouse that it is safe to come out now. It is not amused. Later in our lives we are slaughtered by a mouse uprising.
5. We serve up an array of tins for expensive tastes. For a small extra fee, we get out our paw-operated can-opener. When the cats are done with one course, they exit the dining chamber via a catflap, wait a second or two and re-enter; meanwhile, we swiftly switch tins. Cats who visit our establishment forever after retain the impression that one may reboot the world by going out and coming back in.
6. We have not yet managed to hold this feast yet. All our attempts to herd the cats toward the venue have failed. We will be taking an elementary cat herding course at the local educatorium, and hope to report back upon successful completion. We are a little concerned that we have not met any cat herding alumni, but how hard can it be?
