The Universe Gets Its Chaos Honestly
In heaven, cat souls (yes, contrary to some self-appointed religious authorities, cat and all animals have souls, but it’s too difficult to explain all that here right now) are assigned to cat bodies with great care and celestial precision.
Usually.
On one otherwise ordinary Tuesday in the Department of Feline Deployment, an angel is preparing to place a fresh little cat soul into a kitten body. It’s sort of like making blueberry muffins.
Everything is going according to protocol until something shiny, loud, holy, and dramatic happens nearby.
A trumpet blast.
A glowing wing malfunction.
A cherub crashes into a harp.
Whatever it is, several of the angel’s eyes get distracted for one flawed second. One set even gets crossed!
The kitty soul is dropped.
It bounces.
Souls, it turns out, are rather like the things you get from gumball machines. Very elastic.
The higher the bounce, the closer to God.
The panicked angel scrambles, scoops up the bouncing soul, pops it into the serene little kitten body, and sends the kitten on her way.
Unfortunately, the angel fails to calibrate the soul to the body fully.
Failure should, of course, be impossible for an angel. Particularly a multi-eyed celestial being who exists as an extension of God’s will and consciousness.
But failure happens nonetheless.
This is, incidentally, what causes problems for many souls and bodies.
Even God can have a bad day.
And angels can have celestial accidents.
Thankfully, this was only a cat.
Not a human soul.
Certainly not a soul destined to become the leader of a world power.
Headaches or no headaches, God made sure those souls were properly calibrated.
Always.
Except on Tuesdays.
Tuesday was golf day.
On Tuesdays, God handed supervision over to the Angel Gabriel.
Gabriel was also flawless in all executions.
Except on this particular Tuesday, when he caught one of his wings on what could best be described as the celestial equivalent of a cactus.
What followed was a distraction of truly universal proportions.
It was loud.
It was spectacular.
It was glorious.
It caused a black hole and the accidental creation of a new star.
Hence our angel’s distraction.
And the dropped cat soul.
Not a failure.
Not even really a mistake.
Just normal universal chaos.
Universal chaos, incidentally, keeps an entire department of prayer receivers very busy.
But that is another shortie.
ANYWAY.
At first, everything seems normal enough.
She is soft.
Tiny.
Sweet.
Perfectly kitten-shaped.
She is called Lilly, and no one suspects a thing.
Bottle-fed.
Sleepy.
Curious.
Normal.
But after a few months, it becomes increasingly clear that Lilly is not, in fact, Lilly.
She growls at her own hindquarters as though they are an enemy cat.
She attacks her care giver’s ankles with blood lust.
She refuses to let any object stay hung on a nail or sitting on a counter. Push push. Swat swat.
CRASH!
This unfortunately for humans amuses both God and the angels. They find it endearing. Flaws to them are not flaws. They are beautiful places where the soul has facets. Faceted souls. Souls cut. So the flaws largely stay regardless of prayers.
CRASH!
Or collateral damages.
She wrestles tunnels like they insulted her bloodline.
She pauses mid-entanglement to eat and drink without ever freeing herself.
She climbs stairs sideways.
And backwards.
She identifies the dog as her large brother and all other actual cats as rivals.
Wet food is treated as a crime scene.
Dry kibble, spilled and scattered, is the only acceptable form of sustenance.
Except for the occasional slice of stolen pizza.
And so, with time, the truth emerges.
Lilly was never a Lilly.
She is a LOKI.
Not merely a cat, but a misfiled celestial being herself.
Chaos Goblin Majesty.
She is privately made God’s patron saint of sideways stair climbing, tunnel warfare, suspicious buttocks, and unexplained, random purring baked-potato states.
Somewhere in heaven, an angel quietly avoids eye contact with management. God however watches her latest antics with a bemused and endearing gaze on his Earth feed as he pauses between holes and greens during his Tuesday golf day.
CRASH!
All is as it is to be.
