The Writer’s Cat
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PART ONE
The Writing Brigade / An Unlikely Alliance
Published: November 9, 2025
Last Updated: November 9, 2025
Chapter 5:
"A lot to work with"
Days passed, and the interior of the studio apartment—with its cat, human, barely living plant, and other various odds and ends—didn’t seem to be changing much. At least, that’s how it would look to an outside observer.
What was actually happening was that PJ the writer was finally writing. Technically, he had only written a very small number of words overall. But to the cat, his coworker on the project, the growth she was seeing was impressive. For example, in terms of quantity, the relative increase in the number of words on the page over the last couple of days was amazing. Every time he added a few more words to his notes, he was easily increasing his total word count by a large percentage. She thought that was quite good.
Dot was curious and a little confused when PJ’s first word related to the article was simply the word “cat”—but was ultimately encouraged by his initial progress. She also learned a lot about PJ’s unique creative process, which helped her understand what was happening. For one thing, he would often try to convince himself that he wasn’t working…as a way to get himself to work. It was hard to follow at first, but it made sense eventually. A good example of this had happened just the other day.
“I’ll just stand over here, and organize the bookshelf,” PJ had said out loud the previous afternoon. And so, with Dot observing him, that’s exactly what he did. He went over to the tall, sparsely filled bookcase he had in the corner by his bed, peering through his glasses intently, and started to organize the books based not alphabetically, but by which of their characters or topics would win in a spirited debate.
Notably, during this process, he would occasionally mutter words to himself and then rush over to his computer to record an idea. Or he would jot an idea down on some loose mail that had come in. He would write words like “adventure,” followed by “of course,” or “science,” and a comment of “yes, that’s the one.”
These words of inspiration, like the prior ones of “space” and “boats” before them, demonstrated far more work than he had done in his first week. Their writing team had done so much, and Dot couldn’t be prouder. Though, to be fair, she hadn’t been a part of other writing teams before and had nothing to compare against.
Regardless, there seemed to be lots of words that PJ thought could be the inspiration for his soon-to-be-published groundbreaking article. The words were numerous and scattered all around the apartment on notepads, envelopes, scraps of mail, and printer paper—as well as in many different files on PJ’s computer. He also explained that he wished Dot, as his assistant, could help with something as simple as organizing these notes, as he was having trouble remembering where his best ideas were.
Thinking about how much organizing this would take—if she could somehow do this as a cat—caused her some concern. There were simply a lot of ideas written down at this point. In fact, she was worried it would be hard to narrow things down and pick just one. None of them seemed more like a final topic than any other.
As more of a bystander to all this, though, she could only look on at the many terms and keywords as they accumulated. She had to trust that PJ knew what he was doing, would be able to organize everything, and decide on a topic quickly. But she could still celebrate their victories so far and provide the support that a cat could.
For now, that mostly meant looking up curiously at the peanut butter sandwich held up by the writer, as he stared off into the distance and let out an intellectual-sounding “hmmmm.”
“Mewl,” Dot said, wondering what was so interesting about the sandwich the man was holding.
“Shhh, don’t interrupt,” PJ said, distractedly as he waved his free hand at the cat staring up at him from her place on the kitchen tile. “This is it—everything is coming together.”
Pushing up the bridge of his glasses, his eyes stayed on the sandwich and its peanut butter filling as he finalized his thoughts.
“Bread,” he said. “Yes, bread! It’s so simple. How did I not see it before…”
There was silence in the apartment. None of the inhabitants, other than PJ, knew what he was talking about.
“Ah,” he said, realizing he had forgotten something. “I need to write that down. A pen! I need a pen.”
Dot watched with a slow blink or two thrown in while PJ, the well-intentioned “writer,” scrounged up a writing utensil from the pocket of his jeans. He waved it triumphantly at the air, over his slick poof of hair, before he frantically looked around for something to write on.
The cat tilted her head as he tore off a piece from the paper towels next to the sink and scrawled “BREAD” in all capital letters on it. He went on to dramatically hold up the simple meal, containing a lone bite mark, in one hand and the paper towel scrap in the other. He breathed out in relief after finally getting the concept of “bread” down on paper before it could escape him.
Dot had no idea what PJ had to say about bread that was groundbreaking, but she was getting tuckered out just observing everything. She flopped over, her arms and legs outstretched. She also yawned as she tried to mentally reset.
“Hey, this is important,” PJ said, observing Dot’s antics. “We’re talking about bread. This could really be the topic that…what’s the phrase? Knocks Tyler’s socks off. Bread is so simple and ubiquitous. It really is everywhere. Some people hate the stuff, some people love it. How is it even made? That’s an interesting follow-up question.”
Dot rolled over as the writer continued riffing on this latest concept, and just looked at the opposite wall, trying to think about bread herself. It didn’t seem that promising of a topic, but she figured she’d have to think on it more if it could really destroy…socks? Well, something along those lines, based on what PJ just claimed.
“Wait, can cats eat bread?” PJ asked out loud, causing Dot’s ears to swivel back to him. It seemed like she may be needed to inform him on cat matters again. Though, she didn’t know how to explain that she would really rather have chicken-flavored treats.
The young cat—following some antics of the writer in which he chased the cat around while trying to feed her torn-off pieces of bread—ended up hiding under the bed.
She was relieved to be free for the moment from helping the writer decide on an article topic. She also fell asleep at some point and visited the world where a motley group of travelers only had one direction to go: forward.
The open plains went on for a while, making it hard to tell how far the inventor’s group had traveled. So far, the only indication of progress was how a different type of vegetation, a taller dry brush, started to appear in larger and larger clumps along the road stretching between the town of Urk and the dense line of trees in front of them. But despite being able to see where they needed to go and having a simple path to travel, they still had a ways to go until the next stage of their journey.
The days went on, and the inventor continued to try to micromanage from his safe space within the wagon interiors. The driver, Lily, would alternatively be incensed or left unimpressed by the various antics of the inventor. The large-bellied horse continued to pull the wooden vehicle with a sort of apathetic industriousness. And the wagon was holding up well, despite it being its first test drive out in the world.
For the guard’s part, the journey was becoming an exercise in patience and fighting off nerves. Dottie took as many chances as possible to nap aboard the roof of the wagon or wander down the road as a part of her self-prescribed scouting duties. She would stroll ahead, trusty garden rake in hand, as she occasionally practiced fighting imaginary enemies that she could be out there. Really, though, the only movement on the horizon that the woman could see was the swaying of the long, yellowish-brown grass. It was much more natural compared to the brittle and eerily still brush that they were seeing more of on the side of the road now.
It was odd. Nearly a month had passed, and while the forest was growing marginally closer each day, Dottie wasn’t feeling very reassured by the fact that they were making some headway. In fact, she was getting a progressively worse feeling about what lay ahead. Hence the scouting and pretend fighting practice to keep her busy.
Maybe it was the fact that her eyes couldn’t seem to pierce the gloom hovering over the forested way ahead. Or that she was fairly sure that Inventor Jefferson wasn’t working at all on the invention he was supposed to present to the town of Lilypad. His reliability had always been in question, so it wouldn’t be a surprise.
Deep down, though, Dottie suspected that the reason she felt so uneasy was something else. That she was falling for the dark rumors about Rider’s Block that she had always heard about. She always thought it sounded like the stories were blown out of proportion—tales of an anti-human force that was said to rise from the land itself? But out here, those stories didn’t seem so preposterous anymore.
She had to wonder at times—for instance, as she swung her rake and yelled ferociously for extra effect every now and then—that there was a chance that she and the rest of the group could be defeated by some ferocious being or swallowed up by the forest and never seen again. She would shudder at that thought, as that would mean that the last people she would have interacted with would be a spoiled inventor and an eccentric older woman who didn’t seem to care much for her travel companions except for the horse.
If Dottie the guard knew what was ahead of her, one had to wonder how she would feel. If she could see, as though a spirit floating high above, that a foe did indeed await them, shadowy and indistinct…would she want to turn back? How would she feel if she could see that the foe appeared to be a series of slow-moving, slightly undulating dots of organic mass?
Of course, Dottie couldn’t see ahead of them as she was just a human, an outcast from the Diligent Town of Rot. So, she would just have to make do with living with the mystery of the challenges ahead. Not to mention that she was also dealing with the stress of traveling with Inventor Jefferson, the driver Lily, the smells that would occasionally come out of Old Man Horse, and the discomfort of sleeping out on the road night after night for weeks.
However, whether Dottie or her group were ready for what was waiting for them, the wagon they were accompanying rolled ever onward. They were reaching the end of their time on the plains, and beyond that was the forest that they knew so little about—for the time being at least.
The cat’s imaginary human alter-ego and her group continued their long trek through a world very different from her own. But time raced onward in the real world as well, with days passing after the writer’s latest addition to his list of possible topics. And in the apartment, a little furball named Dot blinked her eyes and tried to focus…
The cat put a paw on the man’s hand, after clearing her head from her latest nap and having seen his current state. She pawed at it several times, actually, as she tried her best to draw him out of the rabbit hole of thought he had just fallen into. She did try to keep her claws in check while doing so, as she had learned over time that the man did not appreciate even the lightest scratch.
But she had learned these daydreams could go on for a while, and had sometimes heard him blame her for letting him lose track of time. So here she was trying to wake him from his latest reverie.
“Mmm, yes, I see,” PJ said, unconcerned, as he scrolled through a page on his laptop. “Yes, this could be the story topic as well.”
Dot pawed a bit more insistently, to no avail.
“There really is a decent amount of content out there about tidying,” the man said, giving Dot a pat on the head to calm her down. “Really, it’s astounding. There are videos out there about the difference between cleaning and tidying, how to tidy better, things of that nature. This topic would give me a lot to work with—I have to mark this down as a real contender. Do you understand what I’m saying, cat?”
Dot opened her mouth in her best approximation of an answer to indicate that yes, she did actually understand. But he seemed to take that as a question and concluded that he needed to clarify things further.
“Well, let’s see. How should I put it? If we go with tidying as a topic…it will be, uh…easy-peasy? Is that what people say? Yes, easy-peasy,” PJ said, nodding encouragingly. “Very straightforward. In essence, this article should just write itself. Do you understand now, Dot?”
Dot pawed helplessly at the air. She didn’t have a problem with the topic, but rather thought he should note it and move on. Having watched PJ peruse internet trends for the better part of the day, she had seen him get no closer to picking a concrete direction in which to take his article.
The scruffy cat glanced up at the calendars and all the X marks that PJ had so diligently scratched out on the calendar. She saw without a doubt that they were at the end of the first month. And after all that time, PJ had a lot of ideas ready to go. Just tons. He just hadn’t picked one yet.
So, as a dedicated writer’s cat, Dot obviously needed to help manage their time. She used her head to push PJ’s arm out of the way and went to sit directly in front of him. She ended up partially on the laptop and stared him down as he realized that she wasn’t just on a walk-by on her way to the other side of the table.
“Hey, you’re getting in the way, you can’t sit here,” he said, trying to push the cat to the side.
The cat sat on her haunches and pushed back.
“Oh, what’s this?” PJ said, seeing something on the screen behind Dot’s fluffy bulk. “That’s an interesting take on the topic. It looks like a tidying-themed meditation video of some sort. I should see what that is about…”
He clicked a link on the page of search results. And then, with no warning, soothing sounds came through the computer speakers, causing Dot to leap off the laptop in surprise. She looked at the device suspiciously. The music however was, well…very nice. It was melodic and tinkly, with maybe a bit of jazzy flair.
Both cat and man looked at the screen, entranced by the flowy music and shots of sun cascading through a very soft curtain while disembodied hands put things away on a desk. This was followed by some organizing of what appeared to be very fancy soaps.
“Wow,” PJ said, stunned and mesmerized. “How is it so compelling? Maybe this is what I could write about? There’s definitely something here.”
“Meow,” the cat responded, shaking her head to try to think more clearly. She thought maybe it would be best to lean into something specific already, and just move on.
“Yes, we should probably keep watching to learn more,” PJ said, nodding and misinterpreting what Dot the cat was trying to say. “I don’t want to commit too much time to any one idea yet. That would be tragic if we overcommitted our time resources. It’s the smart thing to do.”
Dot, unsure how to respond to this, decided to hunker down in front of the laptop and let the pleasing ambient sounds play for a bit. It was nice, she didn’t mind it at all. But when PJ, humming to himself, went to start the next video in what apparently was a series about cleaning the same house, she grew alarmed. She would stop herself from being lulled into the trance she knew they could both fall into.
Instead, familiar with taking the initiative by now, Dot sat up and flicked an ear, before lashing her tail out at one of PJ’s arms. Then, unceremoniously, she flopped backward onto the keyboard, hitting a button by accident.
There was silence as the music cut off and the webpage closed, leaving just a sprawling young cat looking like she was happily lounging on top of the keyboard. The writer was quiet in the aftermath, before he came to himself and started to deal with the situation in front of him.
“Now look here,” PJ said, sternly, looking down at Dot, who stared back at him with big eyes. “This is a serious matter. I was in the middle of researching and now I don’t even remember what I was almost onto. And you are blocking the keyboard. So, move now, please.”
PJ narrowed his eyes when he saw a defiant return look, and tried to push the cat off to the side. “Try” being the key word. Dot curled up and seemed to shift her center of mass just so, mostly out of instinct, and remaining solidly planted in a big, lumpy loaf-shaped form on his laptop.
“Okay, off you go,” PJ said, standing up and trying to pick her up by the middle.
Dot’s eyes dilated at that, and her paws quickly reached out and hugged the laptop, which she ended up carrying with her somehow into the air as she clung tightly to it. She was quite surprised by this, along with the human, as she didn’t even know she could do that.
“Oh, come on,” PJ said, speaking more gingerly all of a sudden, as he awkwardly held up the cat-slash-laptop clump that he had picked up from his desk. “Okay, okay, don’t drop it.”
Very slowly, he put the laptop that was currently clutched in a death grip by Dot back on the desk, and then stepped back. Frowning, he crossed his arms over the big feather on his sweater.
“What is it that you want exactly?” PJ asked, raising an eyebrow at the pesky furball in front of him. “I was in the middle of actual work. This isn’t team player behavior.”
Dot flicked her ears back, irritated and defensive at the accusation that she wasn’t thinking about the team as well. She twitched her tail, and internally reasserted to herself that she was really just trying to get the young man to focus on practical matters.
Dot, now feeling more confident, sat up and stared back at PJ, willing him to understand what she was thinking. He just needed to get to the decision-making phase instead of thinking up new ideas forever. She had to get him to realize that he wasn’t working as effectively as he could be at the moment.
“Ah hah! You dropped your guard!” PJ shouted, jumping forward to pick her up again in a repeat attempt at moving her away.
Not completely sure of how, Dot instantaneously flattened herself against the laptop again. A small part of her had a thought that perhaps this was now some sort of training exercise, and internally scoffed at PJ’s slow reactions and movements. She obviously discarded that whole idea, though, since…how would that be related to writing? But if it had been a training exercise, PJ would always be too slow.
And while Dot was thinking of all this, she and the laptop were both being simultaneously lifted into the air again, since cats were far faster than humans. Everyone knew that.
Still, Dot realized she was enjoying this odd new bonding activity that was happening. She told herself that she would relinquish her position atop the keyboard if PJ actually moved on from the videos about tidying and cleaning. But who knew when PJ would start picking his final topic? Only time would tell. And in the meantime, she would just stay on the laptop. It was usually quite a comfy spot anyway.