Maggie

 

Maggie was a cat.

She was a good cat.

She did what cats are supposed to do well.

She slept, she ate, she laid around,

and she caught mice.

 

Maggie was good at catching mice.

She ate them, too,

which her people found rather disgusting,

but they were willing to ignore it,

because they really didn’t like the mice.

 

Maggie’s life was good.

 

But it wasn’t enough.

 

So Maggie decided to go to college

and major in philosophy.

Well, sure, most people in her undergrad classes

noticed that she was a cat,

but the further she went

the less anybody seemed to care,

until she got in grad school,

and then nobody noticed at all.

 

The trouble began

before Maggie finished her Ph.D.

She started to question things, like: 

Was the unquestioned mouse

really not worth eating?

Was any mouse worth eating?

Were there really any mice at all,

or were they a collective illusion?

Perhaps Maggie herself

was an illusion of a mouse.

 

And the more Maggie thought,

the more she came to realize

that she could never stop.

The logic followed QED:      

If you meow,

and therefore you are,

then if you don’t meow,

then, therefore, you’re not.

 

But perhaps she wasn’t anyway,

for after all,

how could you ever know anything for sure?

 

And Maggie became totally useless as a cat.

 

Of course,

it took the mice a whole three minutes

to realize that not only was Maggie

not going to chase them anymore,

but Maggie wasn’t even going to move,

even after they discovered

that the quickest way to the kitchen

was going over Maggie.

 

And in marginally less time

than it took the mice to realize

that Maggie was less than useless,

the mice had overrun the entire house.

It was about that time

that Maggie got the boot.

She was replaced by a tomcat

who was so stupid,

that he thought his tail

belonged to somebody else.

 

He had the mice whipped into shape by nightfall.

 

Maggie might’ve starved

had she not made her way to the University,

where she came to stay,

spending the rest of her days

in the Philosophy Department.

 

Well, yeah, she was just as useless there,

but nobody there noticed the difference.

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