A Tale from Pete the Cat

The box sat open on the rug, a garish explosion of primary colors. The large human and the small one were hunched over it, their brows furrowed in a display of intense, yet ultimately futile, concentration. They were attempting to build a "Two-Finger Touch Lamp," or some such nonsense. I watched from the arm of the leather chair, tail twitching in mild contempt. They fumbled, dropped a red wire, and consulted their picture book with the slow, ponderous movements of beings who have never had to stalk a dust bunny with lethal precision. After twenty minutes of their clumsy efforts resulting in a single, pathetic flicker of light, they abandoned the project for inferior pursuits, leaving the plastic grid and its assorted components unguarded. That night, a profound injustice stirred me from my slumber. A draft, a small but impertinent river of cold air, was flowing from beneath the study door, chilling the hallway and, most critically, the path to my water bowl. This was an unacceptable failure of household engineering. The humans, with their opposable thumbs and alleged intelligence, had failed to correct it. I padded silently to the living room, my paws making no sound on the hardwood. The Snap Circuits kit lay waiting, a silent testament to their incompetence. But where they saw failure, I saw opportunity. My plan was elegant in its simplicity. I did not need their clumsy diagrams. With careful nudges of my nose and the occasional precise hook of a claw, I went to work. I selected the fan motor, the yellow "flying saucer" blade, and a simple slide switch. Positioning the main grid was the hardest part; I had to brace it against a bookend. I snapped the battery housing in place, connected the switch, and ran the wires to the fan motor. The final piece of my apparatus was a long string I liberated from the small human's craft box. I tied one end to the slide switch and carefully ran the other end under the study door, anchoring it to the door itself. My masterpiece, the "Automated Draft Mitigation System," was complete. I retired to my favorite velvet cushion, a silent sentinel in the darkness. Hours later, the large human stumbled out of the bedroom, heading for the kitchen. As he pushed the study door further open to pass, the string tightened, pulling the slide switch on my contraption. With a soft whir, the yellow fan began to spin, its gentle breeze perfectly countering the offensive draft flowing from under the door. The human stopped, blinked, and stared at the bizarre, self-activated device on his floor. He looked at the door, at the string, at the fan, and then his eyes found me. I met his gaze with a look of cool, unimpeachable genius and gave a slow, deliberate blink. The machine was, of course, a work of art. Not a toy for children, but a sophisticated tool for a feline who demands, and will engineer, a higher standard of living. It is worthy.