There are four cats in our house between my fiance and myself. This was not entirely on purpose. Any owner of multiple cats understands. There’s a sort of accumulation that sneaks up on you. Though our orange cat, a particularly orange cat in the annals of cat behavior, was one of the ones we accumulated on purpose. Today I type of him. His name is Hazel, and his intelligence is sinister.

About a year back I hear the commonplace sound of peeing in the toilet. My home office shares the wall with the bathroom, so it’s not an unheard of sound to catch. So it took a few moments to register that I was in fact home alone. My fiance was traveling for work and I was doodling on the first issue of Backwood Folk. So who was in my bathroom? When I peek around the door, there is our orange cat, age five, casually using the facilities as intended. This new skill appeared unprompted and with zero coercing.

And look, I don’t leave the toilet seat up as a matter of habit, so I’m partially convinced he’s just a few weeks shy of understanding the mechanics of flushing as well. Is the long settled wisdom of the stupidity of the orange cat actually a long running ruse?

Ages back in a different house in a different town, my fiance strung a line of fairy lights around her window. A nice gesture in a house held together by nice gestures. That was in Fayetteville, so it certainly wasn’t the landlord holding the house together. The other cats (only a merciful two others at this point) met these lights with indifference and apathy.

Hazel, however, saw the light.