A Tale from Pete the Cat

The incident began not with a crinkling bag or the click of a box lid, but with a shadow. I was conducting my mid-morning patrol of the Great Hall—the humans call it a 'living room'—when a silent, blue-and-orange shape drifted through my airspace. It was an apparition, an intruder that moved without the familiar whir of a fly or the frantic beat of a trapped bird's wings. It sailed on an impossibly straight course from the human's hand, a slow, lazy arc that ended with a soft *thump* against the far wall. It was one of the "gliders," assembled in what the packaging referred to as its primary flight mode. Pathetic. An insult to the very physics of my pounce. I regarded the fallen craft with disdain. My human retrieved it, babbling about "testing the aerodynamics." They then performed a minor adjustment, moving the small tail wing from the lower slot to the upper one. "Let's try reversal mode!" they chirped, a phrase that meant nothing to me then, but which I would come to know as a harbinger of chaos. They threw it again. This was no graceful glide. The foam creature shot forward, then abruptly clawed its way upward, flipping over in a clumsy, desperate loop before plummeting to the floor, skidding under the credenza. It wasn't flying; it was a performance of aerial incompetence. My initial scorn, however, began to curdle into something else. The first flight was predictable, boring. This second flight was an enigma. It was a failure, but a spectacular one. It introduced an element of the unknown into the controlled environment I work so hard to maintain. I crept from my observation post behind the sofa, my belly low to the ground. The human launched it a third time. It looped, banked hard to the left, and crashed directly into the leg of the coffee table. The EPP foam, as advertised, absorbed the impact without a scratch. I approached the wreckage. It lay there, vibrant and still. This was not a prey animal. It was not a toy. It was a message, a riddle written in the language of bad trajectories and silent crashes. I sniffed its smooth, synthetic skin. It had no scent of life, only the faint, sterile smell of the factory that birthed it. I extended a single, perfect claw and tapped its wing. It wobbled. In that moment, I understood. This thing's purpose was not to be caught. Its purpose was to fall, and in its falling, to test the boundaries of my world, to land in unexpected places, to demand investigation. It was not a plaything for the body, but a puzzle for the mind. A deeply flawed, brightly colored, utterly fascinating puzzle.