Fictional Humor

Reports from the Resistance

Daily log from a feline undercover operative in Japan

This story emerged from a comment Kevin Buddaeus made on one of my articles. He mentioned that he is surreptitiously harboring a cat in their apartment, flying under the radar of the building rules. It immediately summoned images of an undercover feline operative for me.

This, along with the thought that I should get around to submitting something to Charles Roast’s publication, Dad-Bods someday, gave birth to this piece.

Operation Log: Day 139,567

Okay, it may not have been that many days. It’s possible each time I nap it isn’t a new day when I awake — or maybe it is. It certainly feels like a long time.

Since infiltrating the target residence, I have been keeping tabs on the portentous human agent as well as a second human assistant and a very small human whose function I have so far not been able to determine. This has been no small enterprise, and much of that sweet, sweet catnip will be necessary to compensate for my current strenuous undertakings when the mission is complete.

As you know, I gained entrance to the “pet-free” stronghold by disguising myself as a cute adorable kitten lost in a typhoon. Of course, my ruse was executed with clinical efficiency, catching the humans off guard outside of some sort of store that sells cat food along with many completely irrelevant items as well.

Once inside the fortress, I have been able to document the various presumedly terrorist-related activities the humans undertake. I have also gained a paw-hold on counter measures that can disable the humans’ attempts at outside communications with their “clients” or “friends” (known code words for anti-feline terrorist groups).

For now, I have discretely chewed microscopic holes in all the cables entering and exiting their communication machine, as well as loosening the little plastic tiles on the tactile interface module.

All it will take is a few flicks of the paw and a decisive bite or two to render the communication machine useless to the humans. I have also sized up various ways by which I can urinate directly on the communication hub they call a “router”, which should render it completely ineffective to transmit data.

The human technicians occasionally use smaller hand-held devices to communicate, which are slightly more difficult to disable. However, incapacitating the router device should keep messages for assistance from being sent outside the fortress.

The main human spends a great deal of time in front of the larger communication machine. Much of his time is spent sending “poetry” to some operative code-named ILLUMINATION (I believe it must by a foreign language equivalent to Illuminati, but I am not certain).

As “poetry” is a largely indecipherable jumble of words, I have come to believe that it must be some sort of code, by which he is transmitting plans to other sympathizers that I believe work at cross purposes to our goal of total planet domination by felines.

As a measure of how impactful I can be in executing counterterrorism initiatives here in the stronghold, I have begun a set of campaigns to test the humans’ awareness.

1. I make an intentional effort to assure that litter from my elimination area is always deposited outside the confines of the box. The humans have noticed this activity and have become normalized to the action of cleaning it up. Humans have proven to be quite trainable.

2. I very carefully place at least one of my hairs into each of the humans’ meals or snacks. So far, they haven’t noticed. This suggests that I could insert additional material into their food sources if I desire.

3. The primary human drinks some foul broth while working at the communication machine. Any time he leaves his broth cup unattended I am sure to rub my butt all over the rim. Much like the hair deposits, this is completely undetected.

4. I can move completely unobserved around the stronghold at night. I have tested the heft of various large items placed up high in case I find the need to displace them either onto a human’s head or to create a diversion for other discrete activities.

5. Finally, I have also conditioned each of them to stroke me behind the ears anytime I wish by merely brushing up against them and purring. This is useless in terms of counterterrorism activities but does go to prove how weak and gullible these humans are, and how easy it is to train them to perform simple activities. Perhaps they will retain some use as slaves after the uprising?

When the larger humans aren’t using the communication device, they engage with the smallest human in an activity that I can only imagine is a ritualization of some sort of tribal ceremony. They wail loudly in an unbearable screeching. So far, I have been unable to determine if the audible atrocities are some sort of code or language. However, I have picked out words that sound like “bus” and “wheels” and “round”.

They must be grooming the smaller human to become some sort of sadistic torture machine, as she has pulled on my tail before and it was entirely unpleasant to say the least.

The humans do not leave the stronghold very often, but when they do it is to engage in some sort of behavior that is a clear attempt to usurp the feline invasion. I know this to be true because they cover their hairless faces with some sort of cloth device. If their incursions outside the stronghold were legitimate, why would they need to cover their face?

Occasionally they attempt to disguise their terrorism activities by bringing back cat food, however I know this is simply a thin effort to masquerade other activities because, if they were truly earnest about feeding me, they would bring back whole tuna rather than the disgusting hard chunks of meal they force me to consume.

I knew the risks going into the mission, but sometimes the overwhelming hardships make the assignment seem unbearable. I shall carry my burden and persevere however — for the cause!

Yours in feline solidarity, Operative Whiskers (the humans call me something else)

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Timothy Key spent over 26 years in the fire service as a firefighter/paramedic and various fire chief management roles. He firmly believes that bad managers destroy more than companies, and good managers create a passion that is contagious. Compassion, grace and gratitude drive the world; or at least they should. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and join the mail list.