As part of the college restructuring faculty from prior to the kitty-torture were contacted and offered positions of higher prestige and pay, with comprehensive benefits and European- structured holidays with optional travel to “anywhere but here”…with stipend, family included, for the duration of said vacation/holiday with guaranteed return ticket.
Anyway. There once was a man from Cuba in an all white house who became a UN Ambassador between Cuba and Miami, whether he wanted to be or not.
We call him Fernando. He was technically a prince, with his paternal line once featured prominently on the currency. When he was contacted about his shitty professor job at a totally racist uninstitution that literally had an institutional torture department that gave him horrific flashbacks until he extracted himself to write his reports and resume his real life with actual civilized human beings. [Sometimes from Tampa.]
So. He sent his least favorite son- Prince Kafka the Exclusive. He would have been first, but as Kafka was a professor of obscure, disturbing, & profound literature – he found simplistic words offensive when an artful synonym would fit more precisely.
Kafka also built drones, can see ghosts, and is literally the only guy in Texas who teaches as a splotchy black, white, and grey cat no one could decide was quite calico or not- however, he was half wild Eurasian wildcat, uncollared, and seen as a novelty in a college with humans of no particular shape-shifting ability. [Except maybe as sheep or lizards.]
However.
That did NOT entail that he wanted anything to do with kitty torture university- no matter how many pawprints embossed in gold leaf he received.
Until he was written into a stupid cat story. At which point, he was compelled to pack his white crimbo lights of sixteen pattern led settings, a suitcase full of drone parts, a pocket oscilloscope, the complete works of Lars Von Trier on a triple encrypted thumb drive, pre-shipped his entire collection of Peter Singer textbooks as well as every Kerouac & Pahliniuk novel ever produced.
He brought zero Franz Kafka. He memorized his entire bibliography, by rote, in three languages: Cubano, Castillion, and lastly, English.
…With absolutely zero connection to German or Yiddish. Not since he left the Valley. He sighed. When he read that Sufi were mind controlling bastards with middle eastern thousand year old psy-ops techniques through metaphor and writing to influence people at great distances.
Somewhere on his dresser or tied to a stuffed animal, was a black and white scarf that was *almost* pashmina, but fancier, and probably from Jaèn. Each time he wore it as a cat, the pattern clash with his natural fur colors made him not only invisible to surveillance, but scrambled it entirely like a computer virus delivered by QR code of random scarf folds and black & white kitty fur. His sister Hypatia was the same, but his other sister Sophia, looked like a purebred Ojos Azules. He has no idea how to handle being narrated as a cat, but he has literary interest in reading the rest of the story, anyway.
So, after he vacuum packed his 6ft tall stuffed bear he could literally sleep inside like Luke in a ton-ton on planet Hoth.
Anyway, he was instructed by a handwritten post-it mailed from a fake address in Ohio to arrive at the airport as cat-like as possible and wear his vest, little passport in pocket….and he would meet “The Other Prince.”
He really hoped it wasn’t someone from kitty torture college- he wanted to enjoy his last hours free of Muslim cat mayhem he thought he escaped by being liberated by PETA in 2013 and placed on-tour to prevent the lab-coated psychos from giving him too much Ritalin. Just like they did to his favorite teachers.
So. He noticed that there isn’t much stylistic change in the beginning of each paragraph- “one word introjevtions are clearly a stylistic choice” – said a gender-neutral voice in hid head, entirely deadpan.
He did not reach for anti-psychotic medication, because he was not psychotic. instead, he got his 5g blocking beanie on and gave a weak thumbs up through the window before he left Texas Anoles & Mutton and got into the Uber as a human being, temporarily.
You may ask how I know there are no shape-shifting cats in Texas, simply, because the skill must be taught and each kitty taught is registered in multiple countries. They cannot hide their kitty-ness. It pervades every aspect of their lives- so. Obviously, if a college professor can change into a cat to teach veterinary philosophy, clearly, he learned it somewhere.
Sadly, he learned it at Alaraf prior to the restructure. Because his dad was hiding in the farthest corner office when he wasn’t arguing with literal cats from Iran about the benefits of ethical faculty paternalism as per the golden age of Andalucia, where the very best students were adopted into families of intelligista [which he now regretted teaching with all his soul]- but Fernañdo was speaking Cuban at the time, and there could have been mistranslation in between them.
Speaking English to a multilingual scholar is like speaking cave-man, it doesn’t even have the emotional range of catlish and double plus ungood oversimplified complex escalogical concepts into flattened caveman speak more befitting Blue’s Clue’s over Brussels.
As he cleaned his pawpads with the mango-scented hand sanatizer at the back of the cab, he realized his driver was an orange and cream cat wearing a tiny police hat who only returned to human when he needed to turn off cruise control to be Mr. Butler.
Once they got to the airport, no one could prove, as cats, they were not entitled to reduced fares due to height, weight, diplomatic connections and apparent cat age.
It was clear who taught them both.
The Chronicals of Alaraf 