A Cat Would Know About That

There was more than one way to skin a cat, the man said loudly, pleased with himself.

The other man laughed.

“A country boy would know that!”

There were assumptions.

They were country boys.

The other man, out of earshot, was not.

He was from New Jersey.

They stood beside an unfinished garage, surrounded by POWER tools, scrap LUMBER, extension cords, half-used boxes of SCREWS, and the remains of several previous solutions.

Somewhere nearby, an actual cat moved quietly beneath the shrubs.

She shrank back.

She hid.

She did not want to be identified as the CAT they were referring to.

She was afraid of men.

The men thought fear was useful.

She understood it differently.

Life.

Death.

The men did not notice any of this.

It wasn’t just men.

People rarely noticed the living thing inside their metaphors.

They preferred the lesson.

Or maybe the bravado.

There was more than one way.

Common sense.

More than one blade.

Common sense.

Country.

More than one method.

Very common sense.

Very country.

More than one CLEVER man willing to demonstrate that the problem could be conquered if only someone approached it CORRECTLY.

Although...

for every clever, correct way...

there were...

other...

cats to be skinned.

Nobody asked why the cat needed skinning.

Nobody knew the cat had once been a dog.

Nobody cared where the phrase came from.

That question—or that realization—would have ruined everything.

Humans were very good at beginning somewhere past the middle, closer to the end.

There was a problem.

Therefore there must be a solution.

The solution created another problem.

So they created another solution.

Then another.

Eventually the solutions became systems, and the systems became permanent, and entire professions emerged to manage problems that had not existed before the solutions were invented.

Soon, someone was given a title.

Then he cozied up to another someone with a title.

Can we do this?

YES!

I suggested this before!

SEE?

I AM VALUABLE!

YES!

So valuable.

Slap on the back.

Slap on the back.

Slap.

Slap.

Slap.

Somewhere a monkey cries out.

OOOOOO.

OOO.

OOOOOO!

This was called progress.

They built roads so they could travel farther and faster, then spent years sitting motionless inside machines on those roads.

BEEP!

BEEP!!

BEEP!!!!

OOOOOO!

OOO!

OOOOOO!

They industrialized food so nobody would go hungry or become malnourished, then engineered new foods and medications to repair bodies damaged by industrialized foods.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat!

A country boy would know that!

They connected every human being on Earth, then discovered they could no longer tolerate hearing from one another.

They invented email to make communication efficient.

Then folders.

Then filters.

Then forwarding.

Then groups.

Then aliases.

Then personal accounts.

Then role accounts.

Then shared accounts.

Then passwords.

Then stronger passwords.

Then password managers.

Then authentication systems because passwords were no longer enough.

Then recovery procedures for the authentication systems.

Then training videos explaining the recovery procedures.

Then administrators whose job was to help people gain access to the tools that had supposedly made work easier.

Eventually someone stood in a meeting and proposed a new system to simplify everything.

Everyone was impressed.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat!

A country boy would know that!

Nothing was removed.

The new system was placed on top of the old system.

This was also called progress.

At the garage, one man measured a board incorrectly.

The other suggested a different saw.

The board was cut again.

It was still wrong.

A third board was brought over.

Someone changed the angle.

Someone blamed the tool.

Someone blamed the measurement.

Someone explained that there was more than one way to skin a cat.

The men laughed again.

The phrase reassured them.

It meant they were resourceful.

It meant they possessed some ancestral knowledge inaccessible to people who did not know which end of a hammer to hold.

It meant that if the first method failed, there was always another method.

And another.

And another.

No one considered that perhaps the thing being done did not need doing.

That possibility frightened humans more than failure.

Because failure could be fixed.

Pointlessness could not.

So they kept cutting.

They kept building.

They kept creating accounts and committees and departments and policies and procedures.

They duplicated everything until duplication itself became evidence of necessity.

Eventually nobody remembered why anything existed.

The forwarding rules remained because someone might still need them.

The groups remained because they were newer.

The personal accounts remained because everyone deserved an identity.

The role accounts remained because the roles persisted.

The aliases remained because changing them might break something.

Everyone received copies.

Nobody knew who was responsible.

Years later, a new employee asked why the company had seven ways to send one message.

The room went quiet.

No one knew.

Someone finally said that the system had evolved organically.

This meant no one had designed it.

Another person suggested reviewing best practices.

A meeting was scheduled.

A committee was formed.

A consultant was copied.

The consultant recommended a new platform.

Slap.

Slap.

Slap.

OOOOOO.

OOO.

OOOOOO.

The garage was eventually finished.

Within two years it was full of things nobody used.

A second addition was proposed.

One afternoon, standing in the shadow of the structure they had enlarged because the previous enlargement had not been enough, one of the men looked at the other and smiled.

“There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

The cat beneath the shrubs listened.

Then she disappeared into the woods.

Sometimes people sell the house.

They do not mention that the boards are substandard.

They do not mention that the structure may not hold when the storm comes.

They take the money.

They slap one another on the back.

Slap.

Slap.

Slap.

OOOOOO.

OOO.

OOOOOO.

And sometimes the person who knows where the weak boards are does not get the title.

Or the pay.

Or the respect.

She gets copied on the email.

She gets to watch someone else explain the system she already understands.

She gets to sit quietly in the audience while the men congratulate one another for discovering another way to do what was already being done.

Her name is there in the CC line.

Proof that she was included.

Proof that everyone could see her.

No.

Not see her.

Proof that she would see them.

Their performance.

The one she never asked to attend.

Which, apparently, was close enough to being valued.

God.

She knew she was screwed.

Short term.

Long term.

And in the between.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat.

A country boy would know that.

The cat hid in the underbrush, chest tight, ears pricked.

She knew.

They skinned cats.

And apparently they knew more than one way to do it.

A cat would know all about that, too.