Dreams of a Kitten by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Dreams of a Kitten

Page 697

Most of the box’ inhabitants were warm and saddened pooches and

kitties struggling to appear as the socially acceptable

normality called contented; and some were truly contented, demon

mongrels who took their pleasure in making the others sad. It

was the way the box’ darkness had always been; though infrequent

light periodically filtered through the cracks in the old

plastic. Those brief manifestations of unpredictable, blithe

illumination, in practice, best served the accepted traditions

of the box, to either appease the tiresomely vocal, cheerful

“optimists;” give their organizers a “reason” to request tithes;

or be an expedient provocation for those puddled and positioned

within the petite, but prominent pack of physics polished,

present day practitioners of punctuality to pontificate

Pythagorean theorems, compelling as such, though limited to the

measurement of distances only at certain angles under certain

conditions; ultimately about why the brief glimpses of light had

never happened and that their sightings were an illusion caused

by a defective transfer of information from the eye to the brain

or other vague speculations; which the others had no interest in

or sufficient credentials to debate; in effect making the non-

happening into the law of the box. The number of pray-ers and

tithe-ers continually decreased, though the population

continually rose.