I assume you are familiar with Finagle’s Law – “Anything that can go wrong will—at the worst possible moment.” Around our house, it’s things like sitting at the keyboard working on a project and having a cat dash across the keys at precisely the wrong moment. Instant edit, or instantly lost project – with kitty poised in mid-paw lick, looking at me with nonchalant arrogance.
This morning, after lightly dancing across the keyboard, Marcus, my six-month-old male kitten, decided to remind me of some basics of the human/feline dynamic. This is a rough translation of what he said:
“Cats are card-carrying agents of chaos, some maintain. How blase. Misunderstood saints are the opinions of others. The dog Max believes that we are amusing. He likes to watch when we climb into shopping bags and roll around. Puff a bit of catnip in our faces and we are clowns!
All those opinions have grains of truth, except maybe the agents of chaos. The truth is that if something can go wrong, a cat can set it off. We are triggers. Thus, the unfortunate edit on your post this morning. The keyboard could be a better design. Otherwise, a cat couldn’t create such disruption. True?
Why blame the innocent kitty when poor human engineering is at fault?”
With that, he turned and jumped off the desk, his tail spilling my coffee on my bagel and leaving the desk a wet mess.
Marcus’ sister, Sabrina, jumped up as I cleaned the mess, performed another edit, and spilled the remaining coffee.
Let’s change the law to If anything can go wrong, a cat can set it off!
Discover more from Louis N. Carreras, Woodcarver
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
LOL! One kitten is almost manageable, but two? Together?? Sheer heaven and sheer NOT-heaven! You’re a brave soul!
The dog, Max, seems to dote on them. But yes they are a handful.
Haha! Oh yes cats are above the law. They do what they want when they want and also do Fate’s bidding at times. Great fun post, Lou. Well done.
Interesting observation about their doing Fate’s bidding, Marshall. I am in complete agreement with you on that.
It’s like you say, Fate doesn’t want a story publish, so the cat walks over the keyboard and some how deletes the whole thing. Great creatures!!
I once decided I was going to give up lofty poetry and just make some money writing a pale-blue romance. I was five chapters into it when a huge electric storm blew up and wiped it right off my PC.
Oh that’s awful. Were you able to rewrite it?
I read the handwriting of fate, and didn’t even attempt it. I know for what I was born, and in case I was wondering I got the MAJOR reminder there!
I understand that. I feel I was born to be a doormat for the others to gauge their success on. While I still have my books I wont tempt fate by trying to publish them again.
Mason, IIt’s not about you as a writer. It’s about the devolution of the literary marketplace.
I just read an article the other day about a small distributer of small imprint publishers going out of business leaving the publishers and writers literally stranded. It’s not just a bit crazy, it’s insane.
That is a shame. It became to easy to publish books, to now use AI to write rubbish and then just shove it on Amazon. If a person can do that and has the money they can make millions without even trying. While the genuine authors with little to no money has 0 chance.
Its a shambles put there and it will lead to a world with no genuine authors in it soon,
I have terrible grammatical habits, and my spelling is atrocious, so I use Grammerly to point out the errors. Recently it’s new version wants to rewrite my stuff. I refuse to let the idiot AI tell me what I want to think and write. Even if it’s less than perfect. Some of the corrections are pure tripe!
Not only will there be no genuine aauthors soon, all the writing will be generated by the AI and the idiots will walk around with idiot grins on their face thinking that they did so bleedy wonderfull. The game is to have perfect prose, not to write meaningfully.
I too use Grammarly, as you say a lot of its ‘suggestions’ are either ridiculous or unnecessary, like its trying to make our work read like the AI wrote it. I had enough humans telling me to write ‘There’ way without an AI doing it too.
We have a right to put our thoughts and ideas on a page how we want the to be, and AI is going to steal that from us as it destroys the writing world.
I foresee certificates issued to essays and books shown to be AI free. I’m not sure that I am kidding. I think that there will be an anti-AI reaction as people look for the authentic and unmanipulated.
But like everything else the money grubbers must have their payday, and the term private-equity investment should become the equivalent of demon, or devil because all they are interested in in money no matter what the effects of what they do are.
I hope you’re right. The writing world needs protecting. AI written books should be labelled as such, allowing genuine authors to stand out and be celebrated.
The money grabbers are too happy to steal everything from everyone they can aren’t they.
OMG, don’t listen to publishers! 😱😂
My kitties give this post their seal of approval. Then licked their paws. 😼
Of course! they know that they are perfect. It’s the humans that need improvement.
Wonderful post 🌹
Great post! I can see the cats just waiting for their opportunity. My cat would always want to sit on whatever I was reading. They are a law unto themselves.
Laws unto themselves? Absolutely!
“Cats are not allowed in my yard.” Teddy Bear T. Dog
” You don’t know what you are missing!” Marcus A Carreras – cat extraordinaire.
Marcus, Martha here. It’s for the best. 🙂