The Writer’s Cat
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PART ONE
The Writing Brigade / An Unlikely Alliance
Published: October 12, 2025
Last Updated: October 12, 2025
Chapter 2:
"Building out the team"
Another day was upon them, and not much had changed—aside from the color of PJ’s sweater. He had purchased multiple versions of the same feather-laden sweater to really embody his brand. This day it had a garish red background with accents of white. The cat was ignoring this as she was grappling with yet another negative performance review.
The cat blinked hopefully up at the man, but the man just stared back at her.
“Hmm,” PJ said, closing his eyes for a moment.
Dot wanted to help the young man complete his writing goals—whatever those were—she would help him do that. Unfortunately, she couldn’t help the fact that PJ had done very little writing so far, and that he was blaming her for his lack of progress.
“Okay, maybe it’s not completely your fault,” PJ said, changing his tune. Dot settled in more comfortably on top of his laptop, quite happy to hear that. “But you sit on my computer a lot and I need it to write. It really would be best if you vacate your current position.”
Dot blinked up at him and thought that didn’t sound hard to do. But then she tried to get herself to move and found it much more difficult than she thought. She was just so comfortable.
“Dot, please,” PJ said sternly. “If you don’t move yourself, then I’ll just have to move you myself.”
They were at an impasse. PJ seemed to think so anyway, as he started to take action.
Dot’s eyes dilated and her ears moved dramatically as she saw PJ move toward her with arms outstretched. Her next response was just pure instinct and really wasn’t up to her. PJ trying to tell her that he was just trying to provide some assistance wasn’t doing much to make the situation better.
“I’m helping!”
“Yeowl!”
“Ah! Are those your claws?!”
A moment later, PJ was nursing a light scratch on his forearm, but successfully standing between Dot and the computer. Dot had hopped up on the end of the bed that took up one of the open spaces opposite the desk in the studio apartment and was looking away from him, grooming with one paw.
“I’m sorry, but you didn’t have to do that,” PJ said, gingerly rolling up a sleeve to look at the scratch he had received. After making sure his injury was manageable, he took a deep breath, regained his composure, and continued. “I need to use the computer to do my job. You have to stop sitting on it all the time.”
Dot understood that. But as she licked a paw and cleaned off some fur, she also considered that it was a little confusing. She had thought that the laptop was pretty open for napping purposes since it was barely used. It was only now that she was hearing how important it was for the writing part of things.
“I might have been thinking about this wrong,” PJ said, straightening out his clothes following the scuffle. “I could have been mistaken about how helpful a cat was. Writers need cats, supposedly—that seems true. But maybe it’s that I need more than just a cat on my team.”
Dot thought that sounded inherently wrong to her. Cats solved all problems if you just gave them time to learn the job
“Yes, that’s it,” he said, putting a fist into one hand to drive the point to himself home. He walked slowly back and forth, and continued. “Dot, we have to start building out the team. Then we can start writing in earnest. Also, I can get back to Tyler. He’s been nagging me a lot.”
The cat leaned to one side and tried to communicate that the man might be being hasty. She didn’t want to deal with a new colleague. There was enough on both of their plates.
“I’ll expand the team, do some writing, and get back to Tyler,” PJ explained. Then seeing that the cat wasn’t following, he added, “You know, Tyler. He’s the editor at this somewhat credible magazine—we went to school together. I had to persuade him to accept me as a contributor, but we all know it’s a good deal for him. It’ll be a big break for both of us.”
Dot listened closely and tried to keep up. It appeared that this Tyler was a sort of extension of their writing team then. But with her and this Tyler person both being on PJ’s team, she didn’t see why they needed more helpers. She glanced over at the laptop as she thought she’d follow along better if she were just up on her usual perch.
“Anyway,” PJ said, waving at her to get her attention. “What kind of backup would make the biggest difference for our team? An assistant? I can’t pay them, though. I’ve been underappreciated as a writer and artist for too long.”
PJ paced a bit more before hearing the jangle and clang announcing the arrival of a familiar postal worker out in the hallway.
“Ah, maybe our friend can help me out officially,” PJ said, turning toward the door. “She could be an editorial intern or something. Be right back.”
PJ continued to murmur to himself as he walked over to the front door and confidently opened it.
“Lily Cooper, fancy meeting you here,” he said, greeting the woman outside.
“Just call me Cooper,” the post office worker’s voice drifted back from the hallway. “Actually, it’s good you’re here. You need to sign for this.”
“A signature? I’m not even famous yet,” PJ said. “But alright. I see you have an eye for talent.”
Dot tuned out the rest of what was happening at the doorway as she thought, she wouldn’t mind working with Cooper. She seemed alright. Admittedly, she was also feeling better because she had seen that the computer was now undefended and so she leapt up to her customary thinking spot, before whirling about and settling in for a short nap.
The cat dozed off for a moment and visited the rich imaginary world that helped her cope with the on-the-job jitters she had in her new career as a writing companion.
It helped that the world in question was much bigger than her own little studio apartment that she shared with PJ the writer…
The traveling wagon was once again rooted in place, not more than a couple hundred meters down the road and still on the outskirts of Urk. If one looked up, it would be easy to see that the clouds overhead were moving far faster than the inventor’s wheeled invention.
Evening was starting to come on at this point, and the Urk employees—Reed included—stood off to one side of the wagon. They were still unhappy since Dottie had last spoken to them, but the inventor, Jefferson, had fortunately been able to pay them off for the time being. They had agreed to give him a couple hours before confiscating and destroying the cart, but they hadn’t moved far away as they waited for him and the cart to leave.
Inventor Jefferson, as he insisted on being called, despite being stripped of any official rank, was sitting inside the wagon claiming he had some planning and thinking to do.
Dottie was standing outside the cart with her arms crossed, mulling over the responsibility of actually getting the wagon on the road—as Jefferson seemed to be no help. She turned with a sigh, picked up her rake where it had been leaning up against the side of the inventor’s current hidey hole, and was then mildly surprised to see a couple of new additions nearby, shuffling about at the front of the cart.
It was a woman and an aging, large-bellied horse.
Dottie watched as the weathered woman started to get the old horse situated at the front of the wagon without paying attention to her at all.
“Well, that’s surprising,” Dottie said, walking over to the newcomers, who turned at the sounding of her clomping steps. This woman with the horse was actually dressed in a well-off sort of way, in a fitted work jacket and a sturdy pair of trousers. She even had a little short-brim hat that made her look all fancy. “You don’t look like the sort of person who could be coerced into helping this Jefferson fellow.”
“Ah, the guard, I presume?” the woman in the practical jacket inquired, tipping the hat at Dottie. “You know, technically I’m a merchant, but I’m also retired. I’ll be the driver of this thing. You are the woman from Rot, right? Rottie! That’s your name.”
“Dottie,” the afore-mentioned guard said, rethinking her opinion of the woman. She planted her rake down into the dirt. “Rottie is something you all came up with.”
The townsfolk of Urk, like many other dwellers in the city-states of the world, generally didn’t think kindly of anyone who ventured far from home, and so didn’t feel bad at all about giving her a nickname. It didn’t help that the Town of Rot was Urk’s rival in many ways, with its well-known invention of the window.
“Dottie, then,” the driver and presumably the owner of the horse said, nodding. “I’m Lily, from the Cooper family, and this hooved creature here is—”
“Whoa, whoa. Cooper, as in the Cooper Farming Goods Emporium?” Dottie asked, intrigued. “Lily, Lily…You’re that Lily Cooper?”
She had heard of a Lily Cooper in Urk. Supposedly, the woman had been responsible for a rebel uprising at one point. Some story about how she was upset about the unfair compensation provided by the snooty townsfolk when they were buying food and goods from the families who farmed on the outskirts. Lily, as Dottie had heard, was then able to turn her following popularity into a very successful marketing scheme for her family’s business.
Taking a closer look at the driver-slash-merchant, Dottie thought that the story did seem to match up with this person. She whistled and reached out to shake Lily’s hand with a strong, firm grip.
“Well done!” she said, nodding with approval. “You’re one of the reasons I picked Urk to come to in the first place…Not that this place turned out to be any less boring than Rot, of course. But the stories about you are great.”
Lily smiled neutrally, and then extricated her hand from Dottie’s grip to give the horse next to them a good pat on the nose.
“Well, I’m just Lily now, not Emporium boss lady,” the living legend explained. “Same for the horse here, he’s been with me for the whole ride. This is Old Man Horse.”
Dottie looked at the horse and confirmed she heard that right.
“Old Man…Horse.”
“Yep, that’s right,” the driver replied.
Dottie gave them both a weird look.
“What? His name?” Lily said, looking at Dottie questioningly. “Don’t look at me. He’s always been an old man at heart—I mean, he picked the name himself after all.”
Dottie shook her head and decided not to ask the follow-up questions that she had in her head. Instead, she confirmed that Lily actually knew what she was doing here.
“So, you’re the driver that Inventor Jefferson hired?” Dottie asked, stating the obvious question. “I know why I agreed, I’m already an outcast. But do you really want to be an exile like us? How much is he giving you?”
Lily laughed at that, glancing at Old Man Horse. The horse just snorted and went back to munching on some grass on the road.
“Well, I made a deal,” the retired merchant said. “I find this whole wheeled-room idea pretty interesting, and I don’t really care what people think if I want to travel with it myself. I convinced him to give it to me as payment.”
Dottie peered at the woman, an eyebrow raised.
“No one else is willing to leave town, especially with the rainy season coming up,” Lily elaborated. “So, I get this contraption if I take him all the way to Lilypad.”
“You get his wagon?” Dottie asked. The guard whistled with raised eyebrows and took a moment to think about that. Then, she walked over to the cart and knocked on the wagon door since she had to hear what this was about.
“Hey you!” Dottie shouted at the heavy curtain covering the wagon door’s window. “Are you seriously paying her with your invention? I thought you couldn’t bear to part with it?”
All she got back was a garbled yell from the man sequestered away inside.
“It’s true,” Lily said, patting Old Man Horse when he turned to see what everyone was getting on about.
“He made a fuss, so I said I’d be open to negotiation once we get to the town of Lilypad, but the wagon is collateral,” the retired merchant said after a beat. “I offered to buy it outright, obviously, but he insisted he needed it to travel out of town. I don’t mind having something to do, though, so I signed on board.”
“Oh, Lilypad. Is that where he finally decided on going?” Dottie asked, tossing the handle of her rake back and forth. “Lilypad…up in the mountains, right?”
The older woman turned her gaze out away from town, making an mhmm sound.
“Yep, in the mountains way out there somewhere,” Lily answered. She shrugged and turned back to Dottie. “I was named after it, so I always wanted to visit Lilypad anyway. Grandparents came from there way back in the day.”
“That’s kind of random,” Dottie said, starting to twirl her rake around as her attention started to wander. “That makes me wonder if someone from my hometown actually is named after the place, and is really called Rottie.”
They were then rudely interrupted by a loud cough, and Dottie and Lily looked over to see Reed and the other surly town staff glaring at them.
“Ah, are we ready to head out then?” Dottie followed up, coughing awkwardly. “Lily? You’re probably the logistics expert, right?”
The newly hired driver tilted her head back and forth.
“Well, Old Man Horse here needs the proper amount of rations to keep him going. Obviously, we need rations too. We need to get that all sorted before we can leave,” Lily said. “I can get the food at discount, but I’ll need to know how long we’re traveling for before deciding on quantities.”
“Great, that sounds doable then,” Dottie said, starting to turn away and relieved that things were taken care of. “I’ll leave that to you then.”
She gave the guards a wave to show that she was moving things along when a light cough made her turn back. She found Lily and the rather rotund Old Man Horse still there, not having started on their tasks.
“Yes?”
“Well, how long will we be traveling for?” Lily asked. “I assume it’s at least a month, but it’s probably longer than that, right?”
“Uh, I don’t know,” Dottie answered, frowning. “Wouldn’t you be the one who knows how far Lilypad is?”
“Well, no,” Lily said, one eyebrow quirked in Dottie’s direction. “Why would I know that?”
Lily looked at Dottie, and Dottie looked back. During the silence that followed, they both seemed to realize they couldn’t answer these questions on their own.
Soon, Dottie and Lily were both banging on the door to the wagon, shouting for Inventor Jefferson to tell them how long they needed to plan for travel.
“How am I supposed to know?” Jefferson yelled out, finally. “Just get me to Lilypad! I’m going to come up with an invention that I’m sure they’ll like! I’m sure of it. Who cares how long it takes?”
This didn’t go over well since neither Dottie nor Lily wanted to starve, and so there was more shouting. Fortunately, further cajoling did convince him to respond with a whiny final answer of roughly three months. And while not requested, he provided a long-winded explanation-slash-complaint about how, if they truly wanted a correct estimate, then they were rushing his calculations.
Regardless, they all agreed the trip should take three months. Possibly. And that’s what they would have to work with as they tried to get out of town before the Urk representatives got any more impatient.
Back in the cramped apartment of a specific writing endeavor, one cat was awakening from her brief reverie featuring a guard, a horse and driver, and a struggling inventor.
She had been alerted to the sound of a door opening and closing nearby…
After PJ returned from his excursion into the hallway, Dot the cat was considering both him and a droopy potted plant that he had put on the desk. The plant, as far as Dot could tell, was dead. Or mostly dead. Definitely on its last legs, not that it had legs at all. It was the same plant she had spotted under the mailboxes the day before.
Dot sniffed at it while keeping a distance. It didn’t seem like something she’d chew on if she had another option.
“It’s a free plant, okay,” PJ said, seeming to understand Dot’s hesitation. “Zombie Plant, meet Dot. Dot, meet, Zombie Plant.’”
Indeed, the plant, a succulent of some kind in some very dry dirt and a cracked container looked mostly, if not completely, dead. Saying it was undead was almost being kind.
Here’s what had happened as far as the apartment’s feline denizen could piece together. PJ had been trying to get advice from the mail person, Cooper, and she was not being cooperative. Eventually, she had said that this dead plant would be a better help to the writer than her.
In an extensive set of mental gymnastics, PJ had interpreted this as being “gifted” the plant. He continued to think this even after Cooper informed him that the plant had been there forever and wasn’t hers to begin with. She also hadn’t seen anyone ever care for it, so she agreed that it was probably okay for him to take.
“This is my team,” PJ continued with conviction. “Every great writer needs a cat and a plant. I don’t know how I missed this before.”
The writer nodded, and opened his laptop now that there wasn’t a cat on it. He perused emails as he gathered his thoughts together. He completely missed that the plant and the cat were in a stand-off.
Dot was staring down her new team member, exuding as much superiority as possible. The plant just sat there.
Since Dot was PJ’s diligent writing colleague, however, her ears were perked back and listening to whatever the writer was up to at the same time. She wanted to hear if anything work-related was happening. It was also almost lunchtime and it seemed like work was done for the morning, so there was a lot to pay attention to.
“Hmmm,” PJ said finally. “I guess I need to answer this email from Tyler’s assistant. Plant, Tyler is my editor at the magazine. I think it’s a little rude that he’s having his assistant reach out instead of sending me something himself.”
Neither the cat nor the plant reacted much to this since they were still locked in a staring contest.
“Also, why does Tyler have an assistant and I don’t? We’re the same age. There’s something wrong with that,” PJ said, before shaking his head. He breathed out and gave the cat a pat on the head for good luck.
“Urgent: delivery date needed,” PJ read the subject of the email. “Hmm, a deadline. Well, we obviously don’t know how long it will take to write the article. I’m not even sure what it’s about yet. I think if Tyler understood how unique and talented I was, he wouldn’t even think of trying to rush me.”
The other two were still busy and didn’t react to the writer.
“But he’s not a true writer himself, so I will have to forgive him, I suppose,” PJ continued, unconcerned.
The cat, half-listening and starting to tire of staring at an unmoving potted plant, got more comfortable. She curled her tail around herself and sniffed the air in case any food had appeared nearby. Concerning PJ’s monologue, she wondered why a deadline would be a bad thing. She liked having goals herself, but maybe writing goals were different from cat goals.
“Technically, I could just tell them ‘TBD,’” the writer said. “It’s the most accurate date available. And it’s better to be clear than to just give everyone at the magazine some made-up date to make them feel better.”
The cat looked at him and blinked.
“TBD means ‘to be determined,’” PJ explained.
Dot slowly moved the end of her tail and thought about whether “to be determined” qualified as a valid deadline. Her colleague seemed confident, though, and his argument did make a certain amount of sense. After a short time, she just blinked at him again and then turned her head so she could keep an eye on Zombie Plant.
“What, you don’t think that’s a legitimate response?” the writer asked, misunderstanding the focus of her attention.
Dot didn’t realize that was directed at her and was wondering if she had seen movement from the pot.
“Well, okay, I’ll take that under advisement. Let’s read the whole email,” PJ said, walking everyone in the apartment through his thoughts. “Okay, yes, it says here, ‘If you are still deciding on your topic, Tyler still needs to plan the layout in the meantime.’ And here it says, ‘If you don’t give us a delivery date, we will plan for the issue going out in two months.’”
PJ stopped at that last line.
“What!” he exclaimed. “Two months? That’s preposterous.”
The cat peered up at the distress in the writer’s voice. She could tell that something important had happened while she was distracted.
“Did you hear that?” PJ asked, voice raised. “If I don’t get back to them, they are going to give me just two months? Two months! What if I need more time? It’s the Humble Writers and Artists of the Northwestern Region, for goodness’ sake. It’s an honor for me to be gracing their pages, and now they are treating me like this.”
PJ looked at his support team for advice. No one knew what Zombie Plant was thinking, which left everything to the more senior member sitting on the table. Dot thought over what she had heard and had to think that two months didn’t seem like enough time. His outraged tone was very convincing.
Clearly, he would need more time to do…whatever would go into writing the article. She decided that, yes, it was probably best for him to send back some deadline that was much further off. She didn’t know how much time they needed, but obviously it should be a good amount to be able to do everything.
Maybe twice as long. No, three times as much. A full six months? A year would be nice.
“No, no,” PJ said, looking at the cat and the plant. “Not two months. If I need more time, I’ll say three! Three months. That sounds better.”
The difference between two months and three months was largely lost to the cat. They didn’t seem that different. Still, ever the supportive partner, she groomed her paw in a show of casual support and purred a little, although it was quite subtle.
The plant wilted, if it did anything at all.
“Okay, I don’t like how unsupportive you are, Dot,” PJ said, as though he didn’t understand that Dot was actually demonstrating her support quite clearly. He added insult to injury by explaining how their new teammate was so much better.
“Be more like Zombie Plant here. I’m sure it thinks that the three-month deadline is very doable. No negative response. Just quiet support. That deadline will get me through the fall, which is a great time of year. Real sweater weather, which should help my writing wardrobe align with my work.”
Dot mewled at this whole explanation, along with the unprompted praise of the plant. She suddenly felt very tired. It was possible she was just hungry, so she thought it was as good a time as ever to check out the food situation. She hopped off the table to go stand by her bowl in the kitchen, leaving PJ to talk more to Zombie Plant.
“Yes, that sounds right,” PJ said, nodding. “I’ll give them three months as my delivery date, which should get them off my back. Thank you, Plant. I knew it was a good choice to bring you on board. You really spruce up the place, too, in a way.”
The cat looked back doubtfully over at the wilted, cagey, and moldy-looking plant and then back to the human. She meowed at him to show her disagreement concerning the team contributions, but the man just waved her off as he swept a hand up through his signature poof of hair and then typed up a response to the email.
“Yes, three months, you nagging publishing team,” PJ muttered to himself under his breath as he clicked away at his laptop’s keyboard. “Sent.”
PJ steepled his fingers together after that. He stared hard at his computer screen before tapping a finger against his desk. Then he pulled out a little notecard, on which he wrote the words “three months.”
He leaned it up against the plant’s little pot, so it stood up on the desk, and looked satisfied at the tangible progress it represented. Then he glanced around the apartment, the place that would be the site of genius in action—the birth of a phenomenal piece of life’s work. It would prove to everyone in his life that he, PJ, was meant for great things. He just had to figure out what his magnum opus would be about, and write it.
“Anyway, that’s enough work for one day,” PJ said, getting up from his desk. “Who wants some food? Oh, and water. Are you even alive anymore? Plant?”