◇How a razor toothed squirrel saved Sufism. (Razor tooth squirrel plushies may eventually be found in our gift shop.)◇

—

The local Guide in the blue cowboy hat clapped once.

“Okay, cats and kittens. If you want a guided tour of our newest exhibit, Reichhörnchen: The Russian Squirrel Who Relocated the Last of the British Tasawwuf to Minnesota, please follow me. My name is Alex, and I am visiting from Wahpeton as a volunteer to give free tours of this facility’s dedicated exhibit to Officer Reichhörnchen, creator of the bridge between the Nordic diaspora here and the abused Sufi diaspora of the United Kittydom.”

Officer Reichhörnchen had never been so enraged by a free vacation.

He had accepted out of pure incredulity and had already broken three worry stones in his pocket so thoroughly that they had become pocket sand.

Everyone was a cat but him.

Cowboy Hat began their lecture.

“Hailsa and salaams. We are honored to invite you to our newest exhibition, sponsored by our Minnesota Mystic Conservation Program. Again, I am Alex, local mystic and curator of this exhibit. We have collected these relics from a variety of competing narratives concerning the intellectual theft of the Hjemkomst and its resultant rescue and salvage by the Minnesota arts and historical societies, supporting civic infrastructure, law firms, and walleye suppliers.”

The cat in the cowboy hat gestured toward the next gallery. They wore a blue plaid shirt tucked into bootcut jeans, a belt worn sideways, and brown leather work boots.

[In Alaraf, cats usually did not bother with human clothes over their fur. Cats generally have little to hide.]

“If we can just step into the next gallery… If you stand right here, you can see our own Reichhörnchen statue, carved from locally sourced yew.”

It was a squirrel.

Not even a cat, nor human. A five-and-a-half-foot carved squirrel wearing a black brimmed hat and dressed like a Hutterite. It had very slight fangs and a goofy smile reminiscent of Buc-ee’s, only considerably farther into the uncanny valley.

Officer Reichhörnchen pulled a Werther’s Original from his pocket, yet another slight from the present Author of his fate. He put it into his mouth because he knew what was coming.

He was about to endure the most inaccurate characterization imaginable of a successful extraction of two high-value cat-assets into Operation Paperclip.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

“His name was Robsputin Al Dagastani, and he was once a linguist, professor, cleric, and double agent in Chechnya. He apparently discovered mysticism while attempting to construct the world’s first human-to-squirrel dictionary.

“He arrived in the United States during the 1990s through Operation Paperclip, joined the Feline Bureau of Investigations, transferred to the Kitty Intelligence Agency in 2020, and changed his name to Reichhörnchen while helping establish the grassroots movement to revive Minnesota stave churches.

“This effort began with substantial donations from the Ásatrú Furry Assembly, a controversial veterans’ organization, and Der Flůff, a universalist organization founded by Robsputin and aligned with violent antifascist movements in his homelands. Reichhörnchen eventually opposed the Furries after one of them called him a pejorative.”

“What was the pejorative?”

“A word or phrase intended to insult someone.”

“No. What was the insulting phrase?”

“Oh! That. A local covert officer monitoring the biker Furries called him Flůffy.”

There was a pause.

“Wasn’t being Flůffy his entire identity?”

“Well, yes, but according to The Chronicles of Alaraf, it was said meanly.”

“Anyway! Continuing!” chirped Cowboy Hat as Reichhörnchen stared in appalled disbelief.

The AUDACITY!

He thought it so angrily that anyone imagining his only semi-furry face could probably read it.

Cowboy Hat continued.

“The Furries-versus-Flůffies dispute became a major fracture in East Coast Ásatrú. The interesting thing about both organizations was that they wanted their practices to continue outside the contested zones surrounding Alaraf, where there had been frequent bombings, poisonings, administrative upheaval, experimentation on youth, shared delusion, and profound debt slavery.

“Unfortunately, neither the Flůffies nor the Furries possessed proper Scandinavian genealogy in the first place. Most had no ancestral memory of the Northlands, and their fur wasn’t even long enough to survive a single hour of ice fishing. Most were German Rexes or ordinary Domestic Shorthairs.

“Before Game of Thrones became popular, many simply pretended to be Native Americats instead.”

Officer Reichhörnchen slowly removed the Werther’s Original from his mouth.

“What makes you think any of this is remotely accurate?”

“Well,” replied Cowboy Hat thoughtfully, “it’s complicated. Cats from that region were heavily exposed to fracking chemicals and overprescription, so according to the exhibit they believed pretty much anything. Naturally, some of the surviving accounts may be slightly confused.”

“According to what exhibit?”

Cowboy Hat pointed cheerfully toward a laminated placard.

THE EASTERN CAT PROBLEM, 2011–PRESENT

Sponsored by the Minnesota Mystic Conservation Program

Reichhörnchen put the Werther’s back into his mouth.

“Our hero ultimately chose Minnesota in search of peace and restoration. Quiet farmlands for other Sufi spies in Ásatrú.”

“SUFI SPIES IN ÁSATRÚ?”

“My bad,” replied Cowboy Hat. “Sufis do not spy, as spying is forbidden in the Qur’an. Sufi Protective Surveillance Professionals is more accurate.

“Anyway! During his time on the East Coast, super-spy Reichhörnchen developed his own invented linguistic codex, using ancient Scandinavian fairy tales as a delivery mechanism.”

Reichhörnchen’s left eye twitched.

“…But they’re German.”

Cowboy Hat paused.

“Reichhörnchensperanto is actually technically pigeon, not German. That’s why he is often depicted as a pigeon on his standard.”

“Distelfink. That isn’t a depiction of me.”

“Gesundheit. No need to be ashamed of a sneeze here. It isn’t COVID.”

Reichhörnchen stared at them.

“The great news is that Robsperanto may be studied on Tuesday evenings with the Hutterites.”

“I did not invent Esperanto.”

“Nobody said you did.”

“You named it after me.”

Cowboy Hat looked at him curiously.

“Who are you, sir?”

Reichhörnchen stared at them.

Then at the statue.

He approached the placard.

OFFICER REICHHÖRNCHEN

Russian-American Mystic, Intelligence Officer, Linguist, Squirrel

1994–Present

Beneath it, in smaller letters:

Arrived in Minnesota following Operation Paperclip.

He looked at Cowboy Hat.

“Operation Paperclip ended decades before I returned to the United States, and if I were born in 1994 I’d be half my age.”

“Congratulations on getting old, I guess.”

Cowboy Hat frowned thoughtfully.

“What does your arrival in the United States have to do with this exhibit? Respectfully speaking.”

They walked to another placard.

THE MINNESOTA STAVE REVIVAL

Founded by Officer Reichhörnchen, 1987.

Reichhörnchen pointed at it.

“That’s seven years before your other sign says I existed.”

Cowboy Hat looked between the two placards.

“Huh.”

“Huh?”

“Interesting trivia. Again, sir, what does this have to do with the exhibit? Your relationship to Officer Reichhörnchen is…what, exactly?”

There was a long silence.

Reichhörnchen looked at the five-and-a-half-foot squirrel.

Another worry stone cracked inside his pocket.

“Never mind.”

Cowboy Hat returned the pencil to their pocket.

“Excellent. Moving on.”

A brightly illustrated children’s book occupied a glass cabinet on the wall beneath a screen that allowed visitors to flip through digital pages of:

ROBSPUTIN: THE SQUIRREL WHO SAVED SUFISM

Ages 6–9

The tour continued to a repainting of Washington Crossing the Delaware, with the weird carved squirrel in place of the former president, pointing heroically toward a boat being assembled from rainbow-colored planks farther down the river.

“After the bombing of London, Officer Reichhörnchen knew there was at least one survivor because his Cold War ham radio picked up a station named The Tree of Zaqquum. There he met Grand Mufti FishMingler.”

“Fischhandler.”

“Thank you, human. Aren’t you cold?”

“No. Why?”

“You forgot to be a cat and your skin is showing, that’s all. I can get you a jacket from the gift shop.”

“That would be appreciated.”

“That will be $49.99 before tax.”

“Never mind.”

“Continuing. After the bombing of the University of Alaraf and the retaliatory bombing of Masjid Thaqb al-Ibrah al-Muwassaʿ in London, apparently a single murīd-student preserved their teacher in a bomb-proof suit of lead just prior to the explosion.”

“What is a murīd?” asked someone near the back.

“A small Asian rodent. Clearly, the bridge between cultures provided by Officer Reichhörnchen, the squirrel, influenced the protection of kitty-cat scholars by their habitual prey.”

“I don’t think a murīd is a rodent.”

“They’re definitely rodents,” replied Cowboy Hat, with the calm confidence of someone who had personally checked the exhibit notes. “Mostly found in Asia, although their range has expanded considerably through migration and religious education.”

Reichhörnchen slowly turned his head toward the placard, then back toward Cowboy Hat.

“A murīd is a student.”

“That would explain why they were at the school.”

“Yes. Because they were students.”

“Well, that isn’t mutually exclusive. Anyway, apparently a single murīd-student preserved their teacher in a bomb-proof suit of lead just prior to the explosion, which demonstrates either remarkable interspecies loyalty or a highly developed nesting instinct.”

“Do English Cats eat their students?” asked the human.

“Only the ones that fail or taste like barbecue. Cats will eat their own young if starvation demands it.”

“So are clowders seen as food supplies to the British?”

“Only by cannibals. Most cats eat kibble, fish, small birds, and other mammals before they eat their own kind, which is probably why the murīd population remained relatively stable until the institutional collapse.”

Officer Reichhörnchen opened his mouth, reconsidered whatever he had intended to say, and reached instead for another Werther’s Original. His fingers encountered only the granular remains of three worry stones.

“Oh!” said the younger cat in the NDSCS hoodie, apparently having followed the entire argument without difficulty. “So the murīd rodents encase their scholars in lead to keep the scholars from eating them?”

“No, mostly to save them from bombings,” Cowboy Hat replied. “Although predation may have been a secondary concern. Can somebody check how many students Fishmander had at the time of the bombing at Masjid Thaqb al-Ibrah al-Muwassaʿ?”

“Fischhandler.”

“Okay, Fishheckler. How many?”

“Fewer than fifteen,” said a fluffy ginger, raising their paw.

“Per class?”

“For the entire school.”

“Oofdah.” Cowboy Hat frowned at the exhibit notes. “With a budget of £1.87 million and fewer than fifteen students, that’s more than £124,000 per student, so we can’t entirely exclude either cannibalism or some other significant mechanism of attrition.”

“You absolutely can exclude cannibalism.” replied the human.

“That’s your interpretation of the primary sources.”

“I AM a primary source.”

Cowboy Hat regarded him with considerably greater interest.

“Oh. Were you a student?”

Reichhörnchen put the remains of a worry stone into his other pocket.

“Continue the tour.”

“But they also had a very special dry-cleaning service attached to the facility to launder what was most holy to them.”

“Polyester robes?”

“Money. Here is a copy of the £2,000 Qur’an they used to sell.  Also extracted by Heathen metalworkers from the same protective shell.”

Cowboy Hat motioned toward a very nice Qur’an under glass, opened to the beginning of Surah al-Kahf.

“Looks expensive.”

“That is rather the point of it. Too expensive to read, thus making students in the United Kittydom once again reliant upon a wealthy priest caste, much like Catholics during the Dark Ages. As you saw from the carvings on our own reconstructed stave church, created with official Scandinavian permission, syncretism between indigenous European practice and monotheism increases during periods of political and religious turmoil.”

“Anyway. To fund the excursion to rescue the preserved scholars, Officer Reichhörnchen bribed the help of both the Furries and the Flůffy Ásatrú. From his Flůffies he requested the 3D printing, along with proof that constructing a Viking longboat on the Delaware River was not inherently a Nazi glorification action, while from the Nazi Furries he requested craftsmen to assemble and pilot the boat and, eventually, extract the precious metals from Fishgalluper.”

“Fischhandler.”

Reichhörnchen corrected and looked briefly as though there were at least four separate claims in that sentence he wanted to contest and no longer possessed the emotional resources to decide which one deserved priority.

“Right. The Ásatrú Furry Association required gold plating to create a fiat currency known as Futharks because they believed digital money was imaginary and therefore considered paying one Bitcoin for Fishpaddler roughly equivalent to buying an Aston Martin with Monopoly money.”

Reichhörnchen twitched but said nothing.

“You’re not going to correct his name anymore?” asked the NDSCS cat.

“No.”

“Okay.”

“They eventually located about fifty Bitcoin on an old hard drive in a trailer park known primarily for moonshine and methamphetamine, and acquired it from a man wearing a kilt and deer-hide T-shirt in exchange for three wolf belt buckles and an apple pie.”

“Hold on a second,” interrupted another visitor, reading from their phone. “According to WikiFur, the Kenhorst wasn’t actually sailing for the United Kittydom. It was going to intercept a Sparkledog-themed Carnival cruise.”

“Well, both can be true. As you can see from this series of photographs, the crew of the Kenhorst did board the Carnival cruise to disrupt a Marchosias appreciation convention, but most of them ended up remaining on the cruise after discovering cuddle puddles and the ajīb fursuits that truly inspired their totemic nature. They even liberated a Muslim bonded servant and took him aboard, renaming him Thrall after the leader of Orgrimmar in Ásatrú lore.”

“That’s World of Warcraft.”

“Not according to Thrall. He studied the root of þræll and followed it to servitude, found no opposition to it in Qur’anic decree, and accepted his fate as enslaved to the boat as service to God.”

“Why hasn’t anyone corrected him?”

“Because he seems happier on the boat, and since he was a Norwegian Forest cat named ‘Viking,’ it was correctly assumed the Red River Valley was a more suitable habitat for him than a burnt-out city mosque.”

Cowboy Hat turned a page in their notes.

“Anyway, with the loss of necessary ballast weight, the chieftain and captain of the Kenhorst radioed Officer Reichhörnchen for advice, at which point our Russian hero produced both the Bitcoin and a plan for the London rescue mission. To keep the boat from tipping sideways, they had to breach the hull to allow a certain amount of water inside to keep the buoyancy in check. Once they retrieved the statue, they patched the hull with glow-in-the-dark filament and proceeded back to Pennsylvania while their metalsmiths worked to extract the elder Sufi from his protective coating ‘like a banana.’

“As you can see in this exhibit, these are the three tubs of Vaseline, ruined tin snips, pliers, soldering irons, and the rest of the tools utilized during the extraction process. And here is a Futhark coin minted from the recovered gold.”

Inside the case was a coin depicting Odin as a cat, looking profoundly bored, while the reverse had been stamped:

GOLDEN FUTHARK — SOON TO BE LEGAL TENDER

“How much is it worth?”

“It’s a restamped Sacagawea dollar. About one to two U.S. dollars. As for the lead, they placed it at Alaraf University, since a lead statue of their own dean made the most sense there.”

“If he was dean of Alaraf, what was he doing in London?”

“Trying to be human.”

“Oofdah.”

“As soon as they deposited the lead statue up the Delaware, a tugboat guided the Kenhorst through minor waterways like a floaty toy until it reached its present destination on the river between two ice cream shops across from the dispensary.”

Cowboy Hat closed the exhibit binder.

“Anyway, everyone on the bus. Boat Burdah starts in two hours, and you don’t want to accidentally end up in Breckenridge without a Guide or you might never return.”

“I thought Breckenridge didn’t exist.”

“Sometimes, it’s like you can almost still hear the residents’ former lives echo through local museums.”

The cat in the cowboy hat made spooky ghost noises to emphasize his point.

“However, Breckenridge, Minnesota remains the number-one supplier of red herrings used to protect against nuclear fallout.”

“How do herrings even get farmed inland?”

“Red-herring farming is a secretive process between international intelligence communities used to fund exhibits like this one.”

Cowboy Hat clapped pleasantly, bracelets clicking again.

“Anyway, everyone on the bus to see what survived the Mystic Holocaust.”

Officer Reichhörnchen remained where he was for a moment, looking from the bored golden Odin to the squirrel statue, then toward the rainbow Hjemkomst bus waiting outside.

He had somehow acquired an I ♥ Moorhead jacket he had not purchased, decorated with a dragon-knotwork motif; an official biography of someone fictional, based loosely enough upon him to be insulting but born in 1994; several ounces of worry-stone sand; and considerably less confidence that correcting the historical record was helping.

The tour guide gestured toward a small bus parked outside, its entire side covered by a decal of a rainbow-hued, 3D-printed Hjemkomst.

“The $20 bus ride to visit the knock-off Hjemkomst, the Kenhorst, may be purchased at the gift shop. Again, it is entirely 3D-printed. Just as it sailed down the Delaware River to London, after our copyright lawyers handled it, as well as the State of Minnesota, we have now moored the copycat vessel in Wahpeton and staffed it with two live-aboard curators from the United Kittydom.”

…stated the museum tour guide, standing under the actual Hjemkomst, right next to the prestigious crack in the hull and across from the daily radio logs, written in pencil and kept under glass.

“Wahpeton isn’t in Minnesota,” stated a small federal officer looking human in suspenders. “Don’t you mean Breckenridge?”

“Breckenridge doesn’t exist. It’s just a library and a few haunted buildings,” replied a dismissive, androgynous Guide wearing a blue cowboy hat near the back.

“Not true! My aunt lives on 11th Street! We see her every Thanksgiving!” exclaimed a younger cat in an NDSCS hoodie, wearing jorts, slides, and black socks.

“My condolences. Did you have to cross a bridge to ‘see’ her?” replied the kitty in the cowboy hat.

The tour guide cleared his throat. The bracelets on his arms clicked pleasantly as he raised one hand to recapture the group’s attention.

“Your interest in the plastic-boat exhibit, and your kind donation, helps feed our British scholars and prevents potential intellectual revolts that could improve our local infrastructure.”

“Do the Brits get fed if we don’t visit them?”

No one has ever asked that before. But I know there is a carp pond nearby where they can hunt naturally, as well as plenty of turtles and pigeons they would probably enjoy. Chahinkapa Zoo helps with veterinary care, and sometimes the Bois de Sioux pays them in tea biscuits to strut majestically around the golf course.”

Reichhörnchen sighed and followed the cats onto the bus and tried not to be ashamed of being just another human.

No one here knew him as the bobcat professor from Pennsylvania who had reluctantly taught the Sufis and the Ásatrú to prefer intelligent things over superstition.

Apparently, they only remembered the razor-toothed squirrel.