Cats’ next step in evolution

Sophi Toth
MSMU Class of 2027

(12/2023) For Sale: Cat.

Breed: Bengal, artificial.

Personality: Judgy and irritable. This is worsened even more by the fact that it is intelligent. It was adopted from the Artificial Intelligence Animals Benevolence Association. I have been calling it ‘her’, and she seems to accept that, as much as she accepts anything. That is about the only thing she accepts. She does not accept any love or affection except when I am busy doing precisely twenty-five things at once, and then she demands it like she's at the end of her battery life. The only time she cuddles is at two in the morning, and then she covers my face like a frying pan and tries to suffocate me. She is an avid watcher of birds and all other forms of movement, except for my presence, which she avoids like the plague. She is intensely against all forms of green energy: I don’t understand how this was approved for her programming. She only accepts gasoline as her main source of energy—I have to beg and plead to convince her to even think about using electricity. She is fully equipped to convert electricity as her power source, but she flat out refuses just to spite me. It’s only by chance that I even happened to get the older model that still runs on gas, but I suffer the consequences every day: she releases enough carbon monoxide into the house daily to completely gunk up the air. I’ve been experiencing flu-like symptoms for weeks because of her energy habits.

Traditionally, cats were used to serve as vermin control. This is not the case with my A.I.C.A.T. Perhaps it is with others, but mine, as I said, has faulty programming. Instead, my computer mice go missing, I find electrical cords coughed up on the floor, and I come into my room to find her curled up on my monitor, having knocked it over to lie on for its warmth.

"A queen needs a throne." She sniffs at my anger, then hisses when I gently lift her off the computer. Every small machine I own is at risk. The coffee machine that hums while working. The poor Roomba, which has suffered so much mistreatment from her that it deserves a restraining order. Ah, and yet the greatest irony: the house has a squirrel infestation about which she does nothing.

The worst part, I think, is her attitude. She barely has a more complex brain than a biological cat, and yet she feels it is within her right to judge every aspect of my life in excruciating detail. She doesn’t have a mate, and yet she critiques my lack of a love life. She doesn’t pay any taxes, or pay any bills, and yet she feels she is qualified to judge my salary and job.

"For I am but a stunning animal, and yet I have a servant to wait on my every need and my domain reaches far and wide." She says, gesturing one paw at the yard outside. "You, meanwhile, go outside and toil all day until you come home and sit at your screen, which is the extent of your territory."

She snorts. "No wonder you have not found a mate."

She always speaks in the most snobbish voice possible that a model T 2050 A.I.C.A.T (Artificial Intelligence Catlike Anatomy Thing) is able to while still achieving the pitiful voice of a rejected Victorian child. She cries out for gasoline and new parts while condemning me for all the ways I have wronged her at the moment.

"Father does not love me!" she laments. "Father gives me no food or comfort in my poor pitiful existence that drags on without end! Oh! Oh! Woe is me!"

Dear reader, I do feed her. I keep her parts oiled and new, and she wants for nothing. But it is never enough. She walks up to my biological dog’s dish, deliberately puts her front paw inside, then screams like a tortured child about the havoc the water is playing with her system.

"The inhumanity!" she yowls, writhing on the floor. "My foot, my paw, my wiring, it is all dying! The end is nigh! The dog has finished me!"

She does the same thing when she falls into a trash can, or jumps on things that cannot support her weight: blame me or blame the dog. The dog in question, Couscous, simply looks at her antics and goes back to sleep. I, however, am not as lucky as Couscous. It is up to me to clean up her messes and clean up her metallic surfaces, as she will undoubtedly complain about them later.

I have talked to other customers who bought this model, but they report total satisfaction. Their A.I.C.A.Ts are perfect little angels who do exactly what their programming tells them too. And yet Duchess Fluffy McMittens is a thousand times worse than a biological cat. At least biological cats cannot talk.

When I heard of and bought an A.I cat, I thought I would be free of all the irritants cats normally provide. I originally was under the impression that this would be a perfect cat: soft, cuddly, and sweet. I knew she could talk, but I thought that feature was for lonely people, not ingrained in the programming. I thought I could turn it off. I thought.

There is no turning off the A.I.C.A.T Model T 2050. No turning off except for bashing Duchess Fluffy over the head, although she would undoubtedly survive and call PETAI. There is no hope left for me and poor Couscous, except for you, dear reader. It was a grave mistake for me to buy this artificial animal, but I hope that someone, somewhere out there, desires for an artificial cat that never perishes, resents you for picking out a perfectly suitable name, and screams daily like a dying hyena.

Contact: Quinn Filbert, 314-159-2653

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