WHY DOESN'T THE INTERNET MESS WITH CATS?
EPISODE #000088 (THE EPISODE SO SWIFT IT RUSHED EPISODES #0000082 THROUGH #000087 TO PUBLICATION!)
SCHRÖDINGER'S CAT LADY
The morning sun filtered through Sirius Schitt’s kitchen window, catching a swirling constellation of fur, cat toys, and half-empty bowls of kibble. Sirius, clad in a bathrobe adorned with embroidered paw prints, crouched over what could only be described as the most ridiculous science experiment ever conducted in a suburban living room. Cats—dozens of them—lounged on shelves, countertops, and an old bookshelf stuffed with quantum physics texts and herbal remedy guides.
Sirius carefully adjusted a glowing, humming contraption cobbled together with wires, a fish tank pump, and something that looked suspiciously like a salad spinner. The cats watched intently, their eyes reflecting eerie flashes of the device’s pulsating blue light. At the centre of it all was the pièce de résistance: the LUX CAPACITOR—a crystalline device shaped like a cat’s paw that Sirius had “rescued” (read: stolen) from an unassuming particle accelerator lab three counties over.
“Now listen, my darlings,” Sirius said, addressing her furry audience with the gravitas of a sage. “This is no ordinary experiment. If my calculations are correct, when this pretty kitty hits eighty-eight smiles purr hour, you’re going to see some serious stuff!”
Mr. Pickles, a hefty ginger tabby sprawled on a nearby counter, gave a bored yawn. His nonchalance did nothing to deter Sirius. She stood up, her silver-streaked curls catching the light as she adjusted her glasses.
“Mark my words,” Sirius said, waving a screwdriver like a magic wand, “the mysteries of the universe will finally be revealed! And you, my feline philosophers, are about to become the first interdimensional time travelers in history.”
Behind her, a calico named Pancake pawed at the contraption’s wires, sparking a brief crackle of electricity. Sirius barely noticed.
The first test run of the LUX CAPACITOR didn’t go exactly as planned. Instead of propelling Sirius into the timestream to rescue Schrödinger’s infamous cat from its ambiguous quantum fate, the device opened a swirling, glowing portal in the middle of her living room. And from this portal stumbled… herself.
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Well, sort of. The other Sirius Schitt was dressed in a shimmering space-age jumpsuit, and her eyes were a little too wide, like someone who’d just seen a litter box spontaneously combust.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Original Sirius muttered, squinting at her doppelgänger. “Did someone forget to pay the timeline electric bill?”
Future Sirius ignored the jab. “You’ve got to stop! The LUX CAPACITOR—it’s too dangerous!”
“What are you talking about? It’s purr-fectly safe!”
Future Sirius pointed an accusatory finger at Mr. Pickles, who was now batting lazily at the glowing crystal paw. “That thing is playing with forces beyond your comprehension. It’s not just a time machine, it’s a… a feline flux destabilizer!”
Original Sirius snorted. “Feline flux? Sounds like something a vet prescribes after Mr. Pickles eats too many tuna can tabs.”
“You don’t understand,” Future Sirius groaned. “One wrong move and you’ll create a paradox so catastrophic it’ll be like trying to flush a cat down the toilet while making a bed with a dog on it!”
Original Sirius gasped. “The ultimate chaos…”
Future Sirius leaned in. “And if you break the timestream, guess what? No more cats. Ever.”
“WHAT?!” Original Sirius clutched her chest in horror, as if someone had just told her there’d be a global catnip shortage.
“Yes,” Future Sirius hissed. “No cats. No purring. No paws. Just empty sofas and overrun dog parks. Forever.”
Despite the dire warnings, Original Sirius couldn’t resist tinkering with the LUX CAPACITOR again. She waited until Future Sirius stormed back into the portal, muttering something about “fixing this mess herself.” Sirius took one look at her assembled feline crew—Mr. Pickles, Pancake, Whiskerface, Lady Meowington, D’Wizard and the rest—and smirked.
“This timeline can handle a little extra chaos,” she said.
She flipped the switch. The living room began to glow. The LUX CAPACITOR whirred louder and louder until it emitted a sound like a million cats meowing in unison. Suddenly, Sirius and her entire squad of cats were hurtling through a neon kaleidoscope of space and time, past planets that looked suspiciously like yarn balls, and wormholes shaped like scratching posts.
“Is this… the quantum litter box?” she mused, staring out at the glowing expanse.
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But before she could get too philosophical, the timestream spat her out onto an alien world. The sky was green, the ground was orange, and the trees looked like giant catnip stalks. A group of alien beings—bipedal creatures that resembled hairless Sphynx cats with antennae—stared at her with wide, glowing eyes.
“What a CAT-astrophe! Who let the cat out of the bag of sci-fi tropes?” Sirius muttered, brushing herself off.
The alien leader stepped forward, twitching its whisker-like antennae. “You are the one who brought the LUX CAPACITOR here?”
“Yes, and let me tell you, I’ve got some serious thoughts about your cosmic feng shui—”
The alien cut her off. “The LUX CAPACITOR is not just a device. It is the sacred relic of our people. It determines the flow of feline-based axions in the universe. Without it, all catkind collapses.”
Sirius froze. “Wait… are you telling me I stole the Holy Meowtrix?”
“Yes,” the alien leader spoke gravely. “And now you must repair the damage before the universal Cat-tastrophe destroys us all.”
Sirius stared at the kind alien leader, then at her cats, who were already sprawling across the extraterrestrial grass, pawing lazily at the glowing stalks of catnip trees. She sighed, hands on her hips, the weight of multiple timelines pressing on her shoulders.
“So let me get this straight,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “If I don’t fix this mess, the entire multiverse collapses into chaos and… what? No more cats?”
The alien nodded solemnly. “Correct. The balance of feline axions will shatter. Catkind itself will unravel.”
Sirius ran a hand through her wild curls. “Well, that’s just unacceptable. You’ve clearly never seen a cat on a hot tin roof—they don’t sit still, and neither do I. Let’s get to work.”
The alien blinked, confused. “Hot tin what?”
“Never mind. Point is,” Sirius said, rolling up her sleeves, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat—or, in this case, save one.” She squatted next to the LUX CAPACITOR, staring at its crystalline paw with a furrowed brow. Mr. Pickles waddled over and plopped down beside her, watching her every move with the silent judgment only a cat could muster. “Alright, let’s figure out how to reverse this thing without ripping a hole in spacetime.”
The alien leader tilted its head, observing her. “You seem oddly… confident.”
“Buddy,” Sirius said, cracking a smile, “I’ve cleaned litter boxes for 27 cats. This? This is nothing.”
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She began tinkering with the device, cats circling her like tiny, fuzzy orbitals. Sparks flew as she rerouted wires and recalibrated the glowing pawprint crystal. Pancake climbed onto her shoulder, and Lady Meowington swatted a small glowing dial, which, to everyone’s surprise, adjusted itself perfectly.
“See?” Sirius grinned. “Told you. Cats know exactly what they’re doing—most of the time.”
As the LUX CAPACITOR began to hum louder, the swirling sky above shifted. The alien leader gasped. “The axions! They’re stabilizing!”
“I told you,” Sirius muttered, tightening one last bolt. “You don’t mess with cat people. We may put out fires with gasoline, but we get results.”
The device roared to life, glowing brighter and brighter until a shockwave of shimmering light rippled outward. The cats froze, their tails puffing up in unison, before they relaxed, their fur settling down. The alien sky shifted back to its original green hue, and the catnip trees stopped trembling.
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The alien leader approached, bowing low. “You have saved us. The balance is restored. Catkind owes you a great debt.”
Sirius dusted off her hands and grinned. “Well, let’s call it even. After all, you’ve got my cats hooked on space-nip, and it’s not like they’re going to detox anytime soon.” She looked around at the cats, who were now rolling in the grass and batting at alien butterflies. “Besides, the universe without cats? That’s no universe I’d want to live in.”
The alien leader hesitated, then nodded. “You are truly one of us. A servant of the Great Purr.”
Sirius tilted her head. “The Great Purr? Now that’s something I can get behind.”
With that, she adjusted her glasses, scooped up Pancake, and prepared to head back to her timeline. Somewhere, in the vast multiverse, chaos still reigned, but Sirius Schitt knew one thing: there’d always be more than one way to skin a cat—or save it. And she’d try every last one.
NEVER THE END…
BEYOND THE PAYWALL TRÜE MECHAHEADS WILL ENCOUNTER AN EXCEPT FROM THE PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES OF SERIUS SCHITT.
NOTE: THIS PAYWALL HAS BEEN PURPOSEFULLY LEFT ACCESSIBLE FOR ALL, THANK YOU 2026 RESCUE PET CALENDAR FOR SPONSORING THIS CONTENT!
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Excerpt from:
“Nine Lives and Counting: The Past, Present & Future Autobiographies of Sirius Schitt, Quantum Cat Whisperer” Chapter 13: “The Purr-fect Paradox”
Looking back now, it’s funny how much of my life has been defined by cats—literal and metaphorical. Some people measure time by moments or milestones, but for me, it’s all been about the meows, the messes, and the mischief. They say, “It’s the cat’s meow,” when something’s the best of the best. Well, let me tell you, saving the universe with a LUX CAPACITOR and 27 mildly disgruntled cats is as close to the cat’s meow as a person gets.
Of course, not every adventure was so glamorous. Take the time I nearly lost an entire timeline because of a copy cat. Not the cute, fuzzy kind either. No, this was a temporal anomaly that duplicated Pancake so perfectly that, for two straight weeks, I couldn’t tell which one was the original and which one was the imposter. Every morning, I’d wake up to both of them sitting on my chest, purring in unison, and giving me that patented feline look that says, “You’re the idiot here.” In the end, it turned out the copy was slightly allergic to the alien catnip growing in my garden, and the sneezing gave it away. But not before it ate half my lunch. Typical.
And let’s not forget the scaredy cat incident on Planet Zynx. To be fair, anyone would’ve been scared in that situation. It’s not every day you’re cornered by a ten-foot space-squid demanding to know why the universe smells like tuna.
Lady Meowington was no help, of course. She just hissed and puffed up like a terrified pom-pom while I tried to explain interdimensional feline axion mechanics to a mollusk. Talk about sweating under pressure. But somehow, we made it out alive—though I’m pretty sure the squid still sends me passive-aggressive messages on the galactic network.
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Then there was the time I arrived at the Citadel of the Eternal Purr covered in alien goo, dirt, and what I can only hope wasn’t sentient pudding. The head priest took one look at me, sighed, and said, “Look what the cat’s dragged in.” I wanted to be offended, but honestly? Fair. Between Pancake knocking over my antimatter stabilizer and Mr. Pickles escaping his harness, I’d been through three black holes and a plasma storm just to make it there. A mess? Absolutely. Worth it? Even more so. That trip is when I discovered the Cosmic Litterbox Theory—but that’s another chapter.
And who could forget the time the cat got my tongue? Literally. Sir Whiskerly, my most opinionated feline companion, managed to paw-slap my Universal Translator just as I was trying to negotiate peace between the Furlikans and the Bloop-blops. Without my translator, all I could do was meow desperately back and forth while Sir Whiskerly glared at me like I was the village idiot. Honestly, he probably saved the day—turns out the Furlikans took my meowing as a sign of great respect. Still, I couldn’t live down the embarrassment for weeks. Every time I tried to say something, Sir Whiskerly would smirk and flick his tail like, “This is why I’m in charge.”
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: life is always a little chaotic when you’re chasing the tail of adventure. But chaos is just the universe’s way of testing how well you land on your feet. And in the end, every mess, every misstep, and every meow brought me closer to understanding the delicate balance between time, space, and the eternally aloof nature of cats.
I don’t know if I’ll ever completely figure out the secrets of the cosmos—or my cats, for that matter. But hey, if the universe is listening: Let’s just hope the next timeline is a little less complicated. And that my cats stop knocking over the space-time continuum. For once…
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“As astute readers may have noticed, the lemniscate number eight is vital too MECHA MESSIAH operations, so it’s hard to believe we’ve reached our 88th regular episode out of 135 Substacks posted since our inception!” ~ D’Wizard!