Pete's Expert Summary
It appears my human is considering another one of their tedious rituals involving a large, flat square and small plastic trinkets. This one, a "Monopoly Ultimate Banking Edition," seems to have traded the delightfully crinkly paper—excellent for shredding and pouncing upon—for a plastic noisemaker they call an "electronic banking unit." This is a catastrophic downgrade from a tactile perspective. While the promise of "instant transactions" means the humans might finish their strange game faster and return to their primary duty of attending to me, the lack of paper money is a near-fatal flaw. The only potential for amusement lies in the small plastic tokens, which are almost certainly sized for perfect batting beneath the heaviest furniture, and the faint warmth that little electronic device might generate, possibly making it an adequate, if technologically pretentious, chin rest.
Key Features
- Introducing Event cards for an exciting game
- Tap technology makes the game fast and fun
- Instant transactions and cashless gameplay
- Property values rise and fall
A Tale from Pete the Cat
The box was opened with the usual fanfare, revealing the familiar, foldable territory map that so often steals my prime lounging space on the dining table. But this time, the scent was different. Not of paper and ink, but of sterile plastic and faint ozone. In the center of their new world, they placed a small, gray altar—the "banking unit." The humans huddled around it, their faces illuminated by its little screen. They didn't pass colorful slips of paper; instead, they performed a ritual of tapping little plastic cards against the altar, which responded with a series of beeps and boops, its digital eye flashing numbers that seemed to hold my staff in a trance. I observed from my perch on the credenza, tail twitching in mild irritation. This was not a game; it was a cult. They spoke of "event cards" and fluctuating "property values" as if these imaginary whims held any real power. I am the only fluctuating power in this house, and my mood directly affects lap availability and the treat distribution schedule. I leaped silently onto the table for a closer inspection. The gray altar was smooth, impassive. I sniffed it. It offered no secrets, only the cold scent of a machine. One of the humans tapped their little blue token's card to it. *Beep-boop-bip!* The human cheered. Pathetic. My moment of judgment came when the smallest human, who had been amassing a small empire of plastic houses, drew a dreaded "Event Card." Her face fell. She was instructed to tap her card against the altar. With a hesitant finger, she did so. The altar did not beep cheerfully. It emitted a low, sorrowful *bweeoop* and displayed a large, unequivocal zero. A gasp went through the cultists. She was "bankrupt." Her properties vanished from the screen. She was out. It was then I understood. This was no mere toy. This gray oracle was a machine of induced melancholy, a device designed to create a loser. The small human sniffled, pushed her chair back, and wandered into the living room, plopping onto the sofa in a state of quiet despair. I followed, a shadow of soft gray fur. I hopped up beside her, nudged her hand with my head, and unleashed a purr that rumbled from the very depths of my being. She began to stroke my back, her sadness melting away into rhythmic petting. I closed my eyes in contentment. The gray altar on the table was a resounding success. It did not provide me with toys to bat or paper to shred, but it did something far more important: it efficiently and electronically produced a sad, stationary human in desperate need of providing me with affection. It can stay.
