The Writer’s Cat
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PART ONE
The Writing Brigade / An Unlikely Alliance
Published: November 16, 2025
Last Updated: November 16, 2025
Chapter 6:
"A great amount of progress"
Dot was unclear how she ended up in the box. She remembered being on the laptop keyboard and claiming it as her own, and then she saw the box. And now, she was in it. Admittedly, it was a nice box.
Dot wasn’t like other cats that would just pop into any old rectangular container that appeared in front of her. No, she wouldn’t normally be distracted from doing her job or from helping to manage their writing schedule. But she was already here, she supposed. Curious, she sniffed at the edges of the box, noting that it was the perfect size, a little smaller than a shoebox.
She settled herself more firmly into her new home, and then considered that she could be getting sidetracked. In fact, she had only just seen that PJ was tentatively looking at her and gesturing toward her with an open hand.
“Okay? I hope you are satisfied with this,” PJ said, from where he was sitting at the desk. “I got you one of your favorite kinds of boxes so you would calm down. Can you just stay there now? So I can write?”
Dot blinked and tried to recall what had happened. Mostly, she remembered trying to work with PJ to help him move on from the tidying research—which, while interesting, had been investigated enough for the time being. And then there was all the excitement of a quality cardboard box that had must have overwhelmed her.
She looked around and saw she was just next to the half-dead potted plant again. Most days, it looked like it was dying, but every now and again it showed some life. So, it continued to stick around. Between the cat in the box and the plant in its pot, the writer’s desk was looking like an eclectic menagerie of sorts.
PJ gave Dot a light pat on the head, and then nodded, before brushing some hair out from in front of his forehead.
“Good,” PJ said, sounding satisfied. “Fifth time was the charm then.”
Dot didn’t know what the writer meant, although she gathered that maybe it was related to the other discarded, lesser boxes that littered the ground behind the writer. She did remember the writer showing them to her, but they hadn’t been very impressive.
“Now, where was I?” PJ asked himself, waking up the laptop with a couple taps. “I had been wrapping up that exploration on tidying. And the art of cleaning. Something like that.”
Dot started to try to scramble out of the box as she remembered what she was trying to do. She had been trying to stop the writer from diving down another random internet rabbit hole again. She was sure they needed to move on. The only problem was that it was proving quite difficult to remove herself from this box. Every time that she shifted and tried to get into a position where she could leverage her way out, she found another corner or side of the box that her fluffy, black-and-white body seemed to fit perfectly into.
“Wait, stop. What are you doing?” PJ inquired, looking quickly at the cat. Dot, being in a new comfortable spot in the box, could only stare back at him. Now, her head was up and her whole body was curled around in a way that made it look as though she was firmly belted into the sidecar of a motorcycle. “Oh, well, good. Yes, you must understand, we’re out of time. No time to waste.”
Dot glanced up at the calendar that PJ was pointing to, although she already knew that they needed to focus on next steps. It was exactly the reason she hadn’t thought it was a good idea for PJ to look up any other topics. Still, at least they were on the same page.
Dot returned her attention to the writer and settled a little deeper into the box she was internally starting to refer to as her office. This wasn’t a bad piece of furniture—and it was much more comfortable than the laptop she had been lying on before.
“As much as I’d like to do more research, I need to pick an idea from all those options I came up with,” PJ said. He put a hand on his chin as he continued to share his thoughts. “Where did I put them all? Well, I wrote them down. They’re all…somewhere. I just need to pick the best one, and we’re pretty much done.”
Dot’s ears perked up from within her cardboard headquarters. She could tell that PJ was ready to take the next big step and had a feeling that things would happen quickly with the article after that. She was one hundred percent sure. Call it feline instincts.
“Although, wait, I feel like I’m forgetting something,” the writer said, tugging at the collar of his sweater that was still a little out of place in the late summer. He polished his glasses quickly before putting them back on and continuing with his line of thought.
“Yes, I’ve had so many ideas,” he said. “Maybe too many. What if I can’t remember what they all were?”
He got up from his desk, and paced back and forth before looking at the plant and the cat. “Hmm. Well, Dot, if it’s a genuinely excellent idea, then it will naturally come to mind. I should trust myself. And my fate as a great writer.”
Dot groomed a bit in her box as she thought that sounded like a good attitude. She tried to trust herself too. And she also had a good feeling about their team’s future, even if she wasn’t sure about the whole fate thing.
“Okay, I’ll collect the ideas I have around here just to help things all,” PJ said, deciding what to do next. “But it’s nothing to worry about if I miss a couple of the less important ones. It’s a sure thing that the right topic will come to me.”
PJ reached into his pockets absentmindedly as he was talking, and then raised a considering eyebrow as he pulled out two torn-off pieces of paper with his handwriting on them. PJ read the words on them aloud, one set from each scrap. One said, “flying ice cream.” The other just said, “clocks.”
Dot tilted her head and blinked.
“Just the start of the idea collection, and already off to an intriguing start. For now, these are going to go…here,” PJ said, tossing the two notes onto the foot of the bed next to him.
“And now the collection of my ideas has officially begun,” PJ said, nodding to himself. Then he started off to the kitchen as he explained to the apartment that he knew he had left a couple of good thoughts in there on some napkins and junk mail, maybe a take-out menu as well.
Dot watched satisfied from her position in the box as she thought things seemed to be looking up. Really, they could probably start writing any day now at the pace they were going.
The cat closed her eyes, for just a moment, as she nestled down into her box and only faintly paid attention to the rustling of a human moving about, trying to gather his notes. She couldn’t help but notice questions of “Where was it?” and “Oh, there’s stuff on the computer, too!” but these eventually faded into the background.
Soon she found herself dreaming of a courageous human tasked with guarding a wagon on its way to some far-off village.
The wagon rattled under Dottie as she tried to find a more comfortable position atop the wagon’s grooved wooden roof. The guard had found it to be a sturdy place from which to keep watch and just laze about on their way along the road when she wasn’t scouting. However, there wasn’t any cushioning to lessen the impact of every rut and divot that the wheels hit as the vehicle rolled on its merry way. And there were a lot of those ruts and divots.
Dottie pulled her big, heavy coat around her and tried to bunch its hood up under her head, but it didn’t do much to ease the rickety feeling of the ride. Still, she curled up in a big ball on top of the cart and tried to ignore everything as they continued on under the gloomy clouds. It wasn’t like anything was going to happen after all—she had resigned herself to that after actively trying to keep an eye out for several weeks with nothing exciting to show for it. She didn’t know what she had gotten so worked up about before. She would just have to weather the trip and scout every once in a while to get some exercise and time away from the others.
“Guard!” Inventor Jefferson yelled from below. “Stop that! I know you’re there. You just jostled the roof when I was working on coming up with my next great invention.”
Dottie tried to keep quiet but saw Lily glancing back at her from the driver’s bench that she had lined with blankets and cushions. Dottie shot over a pleading look and silently mouthed the word “scouting” to the driver.
“And I know you’re not scouting!” Jefferson said, anticipating what he might hear back.
“Fine! I’m just resting so I can scout and keep watch at full attention later,” Dottie said, leaning over and banging on the side of the wagon with the handle of her rake. “What is it that you want?”
The inventor coughed and then continued as though he had expected an actual response.
“Is everything safe out there? I pay you to keep an eye on the road. I can’t both work on inventions and manage this trip if the people I employ are not doing their jobs properly.”
“Safe? Of course it’s safe!” Dottie shouted back as she glanced up at the road ahead and then froze.
“Well, good,” Jefferson shouted back, with a note of relief. “It just feels ominous. Keep a close eye out near the forest in case we aren’t alone.”
“Hold on, you might be right. We may not be completely alone out here,” Dottie said, with a hint of excitement in her voice. “Inventor, stay put. Something is out there…right, Lily? You’re seeing this?”
“What?!” Jefferson screeched. “What else is out there? Explain!”
“Lily?” Dottie asked, ignoring the clamoring below as she stood up on the roof and peered out over her hand. “Thoughts?”
“Hmm,” the driver said, peering out at the tree line that was still a couple hundred meters out ahead of them. “Those lumps moving around? Yeah, they’ve been there for a while. I wasn’t sure what they were, so I didn’t say anything. Figured it was fine.”
“Well…great,” Dottie said, shaking her head. “Thanks for that. Why don’t you give me a heads-up next time?”
“Hey, I’m just the driver,” Lily said, shrugging as she proceeded to lean back and start munching on some nuts she had taken out of the bag of snacks she kept nearby. “How many times do I need to tell you people that?”
“Well, driver, stop here, so I can take a look at what we’re dealing with, then.”
“Sure,” Lily said, nonchalantly, tugging on the reins to let Old Man Horse know he could take a break.
“What’s that? Tell me what’s going on!” Jefferson yelled, interrupting them both. “Why did we stop? What’s out there? We shouldn’t be stopping if I’m in danger, don’t you know that? Guard!”
“Just quiet, there are some lumps out on the road that seem to be moving around,” Dottie replied. “I’ll go take a look. If it’s actually dangerous, I’ll come back and we’ll strategize.”
A loud scoff came back from the wagon’s interior and the guard reluctantly got ready for whatever else the inventor had to share on the new development.
“You know what? If it’s dangerous, take care of it!” Jefferson said in a high-pitched voice. “You’re the guard—so, go clear the road and then let’s keep moving. We have a destination to get to and we can’t fall behind schedule.”
Dottie sighed as she hopped to the ground and jogged forward to investigate and see what they were dealing with at the end of their time on the plains. She didn’t have to jog far, all things considered, as they were nearing the forest they had been approaching for weeks. And with it, apparently, were the odd creatures that she had spotted from the wagon’s roof.
Dottie slowed to a walk, her garden rake in hand, as she got a good look at the four sluggish masses that were the cause of so much intrigue. As their driver Lily had said earlier, they looked like lumps. Specifically, they were greenish, dome-shaped lumps and were covered in loose moss, foliage, and stringy material. They weren’t very tall either, only coming up to about her knees. She came to a full stop, her rake at the ready, to watch these oddities.
The strange things seemed to inch or crawl, just going along like mindless…bumps on the road. She really had no idea what to call these things. They looked similar to that odd chair invention that had been pitched to the town of Urk a few years back by a rare traveling merchant—a chair that was essentially one big cloth bag filled with beans. These things were like that, but less floppy and more…fungus-y. A mold creature, perhaps?
Whatever they were, they were incrementally making their way forward, with one a little ahead of the others. They left a slightly flattened path behind them and their little furrowed trails told her that they came from somewhere off on the right, out of the forest’s edge.
“Uh, hello?” Dottie said to the moving fungus masses. She poked at the one that was in front of her to try to slow it down and was relieved to find a springy response from her rake. “Okay, are you like a big bug or something?”
The leader of this odd procession continued inching its way forward and closing in on Dottie, but she just took a couple steps back. She looked over at the wagon that was still stopped and then at these creatures on the road. Finally, glanced down at her rake and then back at the lumps that were in the way of where they needed to go.
“Huh, I guess, I don’t need to fight you or anything,” Dottie mused, scratching her head. “I’ll just rake you off the path a bit, and then you can go wherever you want.”
The fungus lumps didn’t respond as they just kept inching their way ever so slowly toward Dottie, who shrugged at the lack of response and then got to work.
It wasn’t long after she had gone off to deal with the mysterious obstacle in the road before Dottie came trotting back to the wagon and waved at Lily to signal that everything had been dealt with. The driver grunted, unconcerned, and got them moving again once the guard clambered her way back up to her regular perch.
“We’re moving? Good,” Inventor Jefferson announced to the group. “Is that lazy guard back?”
“Yes, the lazy guard—” Dottie said in a raised voice at the curtained window below here, “—is back!”
“Ahem. Well, then. Adequate, I suppose. But keep a better eye out next time,” he replied, not the least bit ashamed. “Your job is to ensure I have the room to think about my inventions and manage this trip!”
Dottie let out a groan, and when Jefferson didn’t say anything else, she yelled back, “Don’t you want to know what I went to deal with?”
“Well, if you could take care of it so quickly and with minimal fuss, then I assume it wasn’t anything major,” Inventor Jefferson grumbled. “Maybe it was your imagination.”
Now, Dottie knew that explaining herself probably wouldn’t change the inventor’s mind much—but she couldn’t help herself. Frustrated, she told him how it wasn’t her imagination, and that she had had to rake these strange organic creatures off the road so they could go on safely.
“Ah, so it was just some debris,” Jefferson said, trying to end the conversation. “You essentially gardened them out of the way.”
“No, they were alive and moving,” Dottie said, indignantly. “Technically, they could have been Rider’s Block for all we know. No one’s seen it before and lived, correct?”
“Well, that can’t be true, otherwise how would we know about it?” he shot back from the wagon. “But, fine, if this will end the discussion, then yes, you fought off a terrible wave of these bumps of the Rider’s Block forces. As though that could really be the Rider’s Block that we need to be aware of. Realistically, Rider’s Block is most likely a group of bandits. I hope you can fight them off if they make an appearance.”
“Well,” Dottie said, stymied by that response. “I guess it could be bandits. But if I could fight off these antagonistic bumps, then bandits shouldn’t be much more difficult to deal with. Regardless, I solved a problem for us.”
“Hmmph,” Inventor Jefferson grunted. He didn’t seem to have much more to say on the subject, but proceeded to yell back about how he needed quiet to do his inventing. Dottie was then about to give her own take on his inventing skills when Lily yelled at them both to be quiet instead, threatening to stop the wagon if they didn’t cut it out. So, Jefferson and Dottie jointly decided to continue on in silence as Old Man Horse kept them moving forward.
In all the excitement, it was a bit anticlimactic for the group to finally reach the forest soon after. But they had still finally made it to the first milestone on their journey. As they rolled past the first tree, there was a shared sense of relief, frustration, and maybe a hint of paranoia after coming across those odd bumps—potentially the first sign of Rider’s Block. Even Inventor Jefferson had pulled back his curtain to take a look when Dottie sullenly pointed them out to everyone as they went by earlier.
But the road itself felt very much the same as it did before, and they all lapsed back into their normal patterns now that they were on the forested section of their lonely trek to the mountains and the town of Lilypad. Dottie even tried to get back to sleep on top of the wagon when, after several hours, there was nothing new except for the change from prairie grass to gnarled and twisted trees.
It still felt like they were pretty much alone out in the wilderness after all. Mostly anyway. And if the little creatures showed up again, Dottie would just shoo them off the road once more. It would be as easy as that.
As the group on the medieval road trip moved past the first point of interest on their journey into the mountains, a cat in an apartment started to stir and pull herself back to reality.
The cat in question turned her head over so it was upside down, chin pointed up at the ceiling and one paw reaching out in luxurious stretch, when she was fully jostled to awareness…
PJ lifted Dot the cat unceremoniously out of her snuggled position in the cardboard box that was on his desk. Then he started to dance and do a little jig. He held up the cat, who was still fairly relaxed and floppy in his outstretched arms, as he tilted his head back and forth. Then he surprised everyone in the apartment by breaking out into a little jingle. It seemed to be a completely original tune, and was frankly off-putting, probably even to the plant.
“And we have success. Success! Question did we not. Fail we did…not,” PJ belted, dragging out the last couple words dramatically. He stepped back and forth, swinging Dot around with an additional two words: “Did not!”
A protesting “mmmeueryargh” came out of Dot’s jaws as she reacted in the negative as the man slowly dragged her body through the air from side to side. She had no idea what was happening. She had never heard the man sing before in her whole cat life.
“Ah, is this not right? Should it be up and down instead?” PJ replied, trying to be more considerate. He tried a slight up-and-down motion then, dancing up and down himself and bending his knees a little. “We’re celebrating the fact that I’ve collected all of my key ideas. There’s a bunch of files open on the computer. And then there’s a pile of all my notes on the bed! This is a great achievement.”
He gestured with his head over to the pile of notes on the bed that looked quite like a pile of trash, and then to the computer screen that had about forty different windows and tabs open on it.
“See?” he inquired. “I’ve achieved a great amount of progress. Also, do you want to see the outside? To the window, cat. Immediately. We can celebrate there.”
Dot glumly stared forward as they repositioned to be near one of their front-facing windows so they could see the street. PJ also went back to singing something. She didn’t enjoy this new development in their working relationship and was having trouble mustering up her usual enthusiasm for the job.
“PJ and…Dot,” he proclaimed seriously, while holding her and slowly bobbing up and down. His rhythm was unpredictable, and he was also leaning side to side as a nod to his former sideways-stepping dance. “PJ and…Dot. We…write…a lot.”
Dot’s mouth pulled back in confusion since the lyrics to this song sounded misleading. As a pair, they wrote very little. And to be frank, Dot wasn’t technically writing anything. Still, PJ was a human who didn’t understand cat communication and thus, unperturbed, continued his up-and-down dance with his little jingle.
“PJ and Dot. PJ and Dot! We write a lot. Yes.”
This song continued with the same few lines of “Success! Question we did not. Fail…we did not!” thrown in. This all kept going for a minute, before, out front of the window, none other than Lily Cooper walked by and happened to look directly at them. PJ was caught mid-song, frozen in unison with the cat as they made eye contact with the mail person.
Cooper had been walking to their door for a late delivery of a package, apparently, and she looked between the box in her hand and then toward the front door of the building as she obviously considered whether it was worth delivering the package. Her sigh after that moment showed her dedication to her job, however, and she ended up giving a tepid nod to PJ. The man, meanwhile, fought through the embarrassment to nod back and then put the cat down. He also immediately dashed out to the front lobby to both share the good news about his writing to Cooper and explain exactly what she had witnessed.
Dot slinked off to crouch next to the sofa as she let PJ go bother the mail person, whom she now felt a little awkward around after the embarrassing display of dancing that she was involved in.
She groomed herself so that she could be presentable again, with a very calm routine of cleaning her ears and face so that everything was in order, with her white-and-black-fur all shiny again. She could never quite get the tuft of unruly hair that was always a little ragged between her ears, but she was looking professional enough to do her job at least—and she had to admit it wasn’t technically the most professional of environments to begin with.
And, since she had the time, she glanced up at the bed where all the notes were supposed to be collected. The cat was disappointed by what amounted to a recycling bin’s worth of paper contents up there. She had to question how worthy of celebration this progress was—but shied away from truly judging her human coworker. He had been able to compile lots of sticky notes, paper scraps, and even some loose confetti in the pile that could all potentially have the winning idea on them.
So, they had the pile of ideas all in one place. That was definitely an achievement. But how was PJ going to sort through everything? Would it be fast or slow? Dot settled down into place as she thought about how this was all going to work.
“Dot? Where are you?” PJ said, re-entering the apartment. “The plant is over here looking ready to go…well, a little brown. It’s a little needy as far as a plant is concerned, isn’t it?”
PJ went around the apartment for a few moments after watering the zombie plant and eventually found Dot hunched in the corner next to the couch, partially hidden in shadow. She may have been trying to hide from any other dance numbers that might occur.
“Dot. There you are,” PJ said cheerily as he petted her. “So, I just talked to Cooper and shared the good news. Unfortunately, she didn’t really understand the importance of my achievement—she’s not a writer after all. She said she even thought I was behind schedule, of all things, ‘if it’s really supposed to be done soon.’ Although, it’s nice to know she’s trying to be considerate I suppose.”
Dot felt a twinge of worry at that and considered the mailperson’s concern. She went over their progress with the article and glanced once more at the bed strewn with paper.
“We have two entire months left, and countless good ideas. If anything, we’re ahead of schedule,” PJ said, waving back to the trash on the bed. “I mean, just look at all this research and ideation.”
Dot blinked, trying to understand how they could be ahead of schedule with only two months left.
“What’s really smart about how I set this up is that I don’t have to do much thinking from here,” PJ said. “I simply have to pick an idea and go with it. Either from my idea pile on the bed or the windows on the computer. They’re all serious contenders. Then I just have to start researching and writing once the topic is established. The article is pretty much done if you think about it.”
Dot curled up into a ball to help her ponder PJ’s proposal for what would come next. None of them knew what PJ was going to write about yet, but she believed in their group effort and the writer’s skills. He had so much confidence after all. Like he said, he just had to sort through his topics and pick one that he could write about.
She pulled her tail around so it firmly wrapped up as she tried to think about ways to help PJ pull a good idea out of his “idea pile.” They were a team, and she couldn’t rely on PJ to do all the work—especially after he had done so much running around in the apartment to collect his notes. If they worked together, then without a doubt, they would be able to finalize their topic and have an article written up in no time.