A STORY by NATALIE WOLF
Deus Ex Feles
You have gotten to the end of the 2003 Mike Myers film The Cat in the Hat, and it turns out that the Cat is God.
He has just explained how everything in your infuriating, chaotic day—losing your dog, finding your dog, losing your entire sense of self—was intentional, planned out by him in advance, down to the smallest detail.
“Isn’t that the whole God thing?” he asks. “Everything that seemed random and disorganized is actually purposeful and for the best?”
You are not convinced. Just this morning, your brother ate bread from a bag that he’d shoved into the crotch of his pants. Surely no just, loving deity could condone that.
The Cat dismisses this as a lack of imagination on your part.
“You can make meaning out of anything,” he says.
“Anything?” squeal Thing 1 and Thing 2 behind him.
He gives a stupid, clownish grin.
“Anything!”
Yet when you press further, he admits that not everything was planned. Cutting off his own tail. Stealing that photo of your mother. And the incident with your goldfish, but that really couldn’t be helped. The only thing that anyone had offered him to eat or drink all day had been milk, and he’s lactose intolerant. It isn’t a personal flaw; no adult cats can drink milk; it’s borderline insulting that you didn’t know—
You interrupt him. The point is that he is in fact fallible. You think of the contract you signed this morning. His lawyers, with their identical glasses and graying mustaches. He tried to make it seem like you had a choice, like you were agreeing to the conditions of your own free will, but you weren’t. And to require a contract is more or less to admit to the possibility of error.
Well sure, he says. Everyone fucks up sometimes. Now that he has pulled back the curtain, like in The Wizard of Oz, he can say “fuck.” Up to this point, it was just “hoe” and poorly disguised acronyms.
He says that you really seem to be focusing on the negative and forgetting all of the fun you had today. He danced with Paris Hilton. There was a birthday party. He took you and your brother on a wacky ride through the wet, purple guts of the universe. Or maybe it was Universal Studios.
Also, of all of the Cat-God-Men that you could have gotten, Mike Myers really isn’t so bad. They were initially considering Tim Allen.
You say that the Cat would seem to have forgotten the urgency of your situation. They’re about to ship your brother off to military school. Your mother will be home any minute now with her boss to set up for their office meet and greet, and your house is literally falling apart, beams and sheetrock and insulation scattered everywhere. Half the ceiling is gone.
“I promise, it’ll all work out,” the Cat says. “You just have to trust me. This is the meaning of faith.” The front door is keyed open, and your mother and her boss are standing on the stoop. The boss, with his flat-gelled hair and eternal supply of hand sanitizer, sees the staircase collapsed onto the floor, the walls splattered with purple goo.
“FIRED!!” he screams. And your mother sobs into her delicate, gloved hands.
Then Alec-Baldwin-as-Her-Boyfriend grabs your brother’s arm through the open doorway and begins dragging him off to the Colonel Wilhelm Academy for Troubled Youth. Your mother runs after them, wailing, and her boss trails behind.
It is now just you and the Cat and the Things alone in your trainwreck of a house. You had a babysitter, but she’s probably still down in the guts of the universe. The dog would seem to be lost again.
The Cat opens a record player in his giant hat and starts to play “Getting Better” by The Beatles, but Thing 2 shakes his head. Not the time.
“Well?” you ask. “What now?”
“How about tennis?” says the Cat. He’s wearing a too-small polo shirt and shorts and holding a racket. He serves a ball from his hat, and it shatters the living room window.
You stare at him. You can feel a vein bulging in your forehead.
“Tennis?!” you shout. “No, I don’t want to play fucking tennis! I want you to fix this mess!”
The Cat sighs.
“Look,” he says. “You’re frustrated. I get that. But trust me on this one. You can research graduate schools as an eight-year-old. You can mow your lawn twice daily. You can hairspray your pigtails until you choke on the fumes, but the fact of the matter is, you can’t control what happens to you in life. Sometimes it’s good, and sometimes it’s bad, and that can change in an instant. On its own, it will just feel disorienting, and directionless. Wouldn’t you rather believe that there is some omniscient, benevolent deity watching over you and planning out everything with your best interests in mind? And I’m telling you, that deity is me. Now, let’s try this again. What can we make meaning out of?”
You sigh. And give a stupid, clownish grin.
“Anything!”
Natalie Wolf is a writer from the Kansas City area pursuing an MFA in fiction writing at the University of Kansas. She is an editor for One Sentence Poems and a reader for Cottonwood Literary Magazine. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in The Hooghly Review, I-70 Review, JAKE, and more. You can find her on her website and on Instagram @nwolfcats.