Fiction | Weekly Features (September 2023)

When I told my cat he couldn’t go outside, he:

• said fuck you

• grew wings and flew out the chimney

• called in an army of feral cats to perform a showstopping Broadway number, which distracted me while he picked the lock

• killed me and used my flaccid corpse as a battering ram

• designed a stellar PowerPoint presentation, which convinced me to open the door for him

• believed strongly enough that he could walk through the door, and did

• hypnotized the door into opening for him

• designed a pair of prosthetic opposable thumbs and opened it himself

• dug up my MySpace posts from 2008 and convinced the internet to cancel me and my door

• found an old man to sell him LSD and hallucinated that he was outside

• found a wormhole under the loveseat, which conveniently transported him to just outside the door

• time traveled back to before the door existed, leaving me to deal with the Butterfly Effect

• ran for president, won, and issued an executive order declaring all doors illegal

• TNT. That is all.

• framed me for tax evasion, edited my will to make himself my next of kin, and took possession of the house when I was sent to prison (thus giving him full control over the door)

• started to dig a hole under the door, but then met a group of underground mole-cats, married one of them, and became fully integrated into their society

• realized that our own reality is merely a simulation, and he’d actually been outside this entire time

• stared at me for thirteen seconds, gave his crotch a nice long lick, and walked away.