A Tale from Pete the Cat

The thing arrived on a Tuesday, an offense to my rigorously scheduled afternoon nap. The human called it a "family activity," a phrase that always precedes some form of loud, collaborative failure. They spilled the contents onto the coffee table—my coffee table—and a cascade of colorful, oddly shaped confetti rained down. It was a mess. A thousand little problems, none of them involving the tragically empty state of my food bowl. They called it a "World Landmarks Map," jabbering about the Eiffel Tower and the Pyramids. I saw only a chaotic landscape, an insult to the minimalist elegance of my home. For two days, I watched them from the back of the sofa, my tail twitching in silent judgment as they struggled to assemble the blue border, their sighs of frustration a sweet symphony to my ears. Their incompetence was a tangible thing in the room. They’d hold up a piece, squint, and place it in the wrong spot with a pathetic click. They’d consult the included poster, a flimsy guide for the intellectually destitute. "All the ocean pieces look the same!" my human wailed. Amateurs. They lacked perspective. They were too close to the problem, bogged down in the minutiae. They saw a thousand enemies; I saw a single, flawed battlefield. Their desperation was starting to affect the quality of my ear scratches, and that could not stand. On the third night, I decided to intervene. Not to help, you understand, but to demonstrate. I leaped onto the table, a silent gray-and-white god descending into their field of chaos. I ignored their cooing and their pleas not to "mess it up." I stalked deliberately across the half-finished continent of Asia, my paws soft on the cardboard terrain. I sniffed at a piece with a bit of red pagoda on it. Then, I sat down. Squarely. On the entire nation of Brazil. I began to groom a single, immaculate white paw, projecting an aura of utter boredom and superiority. My human sighed, "Well, I guess Pete's claimed that spot." But as she reached to shoo me away, her eyes caught something under the edge of my fur. It was a piece they’d been searching for, the one that connected the Amazon rainforest to the coast. A triumphant gasp. They fitted it in, which led to another, and another. They saw it as a happy accident. I knew better. I hadn't found the piece for them; I had simply forced them to change their focus, to look at their sad little world from a new angle. The puzzle itself remains a tedious, flat object. But as a tool for teaching my staff the importance of proper perspective—and for reminding them who truly commands the territory in this house—it is, I must concede, a product of exceptional quality. It is worthy.