JayMark
It's Not Easy Being Nobody, But Somebody Has To.
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old hag.Aye! Young'un these days expect us to juggle chainsaws and walk tight ropes! My legs aren't springy enough.
The Last to Comment Wins
- Thread starter mrsimple
- Start date
Conqueror_Quack
Has two hats, each bigger than the other one
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Shiriru_B
Book binge in progress.
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Huuuh~ can you repeat that, I think my ears are going because I can't hear your baby babbles.
Tempokai
The Overworked One
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I'm winning currently by "writing" a story:
The director’s name was Hal Berringer, Director of Campus Life Initiatives, which meant he was responsible for morale in the way a laminated poster is responsible for mental health. Hal was one of those wholesome, bumbling administrators who smiled like he’d never read a comment section. He wore sweaters that looked pre-approved by a committee. He said “folks” a lot. He believed sincerity could cauterize conflict. His job required him to believe this, or he’d have to start drinking at lunch.
Hal also had a cat.
The cat’s name was Maple, because Hal had the kind of life where a cat could simply be named Maple and nobody laughed. Maple lived in his office unofficially, the way a lot of things on campus existed: technically not allowed, universally known, and aggressively ignored because everyone preferred a gentle hypocrisy to a loud enforcement.
Maple liked sitting on the windowsill and staring down at the quad like a judgmental gargoyle. Hal loved this. Hal loved Maple like a person loves a creature that cannot speak but still conveys disapproval with precision. He told visitors Maple was “a calming presence.” Maple expressed calm by glaring at them as if they were an administrative error.
One late afternoon, Hal took a walk across the quad after a meeting about “community belonging.” He’d escaped a room full of people arguing about whether the word “belonging” should be replaced with “connection,” because nothing makes you feel connected like watching adults debate synonyms for an hour.
On the grass near a bench, he saw a tabby lounging in the sun, belly exposed, fearless, unbothered, radiating the kind of confidence Hal had been trying to cultivate through strategic planning documents. A student sat nearby, eating fries and offering the cat one like a tribute to a tiny tyrant. The cat sniffed it, rejected it, and continued basking, because the campus cat economy operated on contempt.
Hal watched for a minute, smiling. He watched another student walk past, pause, coo softly, and take a photo. He watched a third student cross the sidewalk and stiffen like they’d seen a threat, then detour around the cat by a full ten feet, as if proximity alone could trigger a medical event, an emotional event, or a lawsuit.
In the span of thirty seconds, Hal witnessed joy, fear, and avoidance, and because he was Hal, he mistook this for “engagement.”
Back in his office, Maple jumped onto the desk, strolled across a stack of paperwork, and planted her paws directly on a folder labeled COMPLAINTS – Q2. Hal scratched her head and said, out loud, to the cat: “Maybe we can do something, huh?”
Maple blinked slowly. Maple had no opinion, because Maple did not attend meetings.
Hal did what administrators always do when they sense a problem that might generate emails: he tried to get ahead of it without actually stepping into it. He needed something that looked like action, sounded like listening, and generated numbers he could paste into a slide deck.
He created a poll.
Not a survey. Not a proposal. Not a policy draft. A “pulse poll,” which conveyed urgency and non-commitment in one tidy phrase. A pulse poll suggested health. It suggested responsiveness. It suggested a body. It did not suggest accountability.
Hal’s categories made perfect sense in his head, which was the first warning sign.
Category A: Outdoors — because the cats already roamed campus grounds, and Hal wanted to measure how much the campus could tolerate reality existing in plain sight.
Category B: Academic buildings — because someone, somewhere, would eventually try to bring a cat into a lecture hall and call it “wellness,” and Hal wanted to preempt the email chain titled “Cat in Lab??? Urgent.”
Category C: Residence life spaces — because dorms turned every minor preference into a constitutional crisis, and cats in dorms would be treated as either salvation or betrayal.
Category D: Formal campus support — because Hal had heard the phrase “trap-neuter-return” once and thought it sounded like a sustainable initiative he could place under a “community ecology” banner with a nice logo.
Hal also had motives, the way everyone had motives. He wanted fewer complaints about cats. He wanted fewer angry messages from people with allergies and phobias. He wanted fewer midnight reports of “an aggressive cat near the dumpster.” He wanted the campus to feel charmed. He wanted to be the guy who brought order to the small furry chaos. He wanted Maple to be a symbol of community, which was an unhinged thing to do to an animal whose primary hobby was ignoring him.
He wrote the poll’s instructions with the kind of slippery language that could survive an audit:
Choose Y or N. Interpret “permitted” however you want. He didn’t define it. Definitions lead to enforcement, enforcement leads to consequences, consequences lead to emails.
Hal believed this vagueness was wise. Vagueness, to Hal, meant flexibility. It meant inclusivity. It meant nobody could accuse him of bias because nobody could prove what the question meant.
This belief would soon be punished.
The Poll Lands Like a Cat on a Piano
The email went out under Hal’s cheerful signature. It was titled:
CAMPUS CATS: THE OFFICIALLY UNOFFICIAL POLICY PULSE POLL
That subject line managed to be coy and ominous at the same time, like a wink from a person holding a clipboard. It hit inboxes across campus and immediately caused two distinct reactions: delight from cat people, dread from people who had ever tried to keep a building clean.
The poll did not ask what respondents believed “permitted” meant. It did not ask whether cats were currently present, because that would require acknowledging reality. It did not ask whether the respondent had allergies, phobias, trauma, or basic common sense. It simply asked for Y or N, four times, and promised the results would be shared as percentages.
This was supposed to prevent conflict. It created conflict the way gasoline prevents fire.
The poll traveled fastest through the campus’s favorite nervous system: the group chat.
Not a public forum. Not a policy board. A stakeholder group chat with a name like Campus Life Stakeholders, where people discussed serious issues in between memes and passive-aggressive “circling back” messages. It was the kind of chat where everyone had plausible deniability and screenshots lived forever.
Mara Cho, Student Government Vice Chair, saw the poll and answered within three minutes, because Mara treated responsiveness like a virtue and speed like wisdom. Mara’s entire identity was Professional Consensus Collector. She didn’t have opinions so much as she had positions that photographed well.
She clicked:
A: Y
B: N
C: N
D: Y
Outdoor cats seemed fun. Indoor cats seemed disruptive. Dorm cats seemed like a liability. A formal program sounded like control, branding, and the kind of initiative you could put on a resume without mentioning that it had caused three departmental feuds.
Mara took a screenshot of her answers and posted it in the stakeholder chat with a breezy caption: “Here’s what I put. Balanced approach.”
Balanced was the word people used when they wanted credit for restraint while still needing to feel morally superior.
Owen Grant saw Mara’s screenshot while standing near a trash enclosure behind the dining hall, surrounded by the kind of smells that reminded you humans were not a noble species. Owen was Facilities Coordinator, which meant he lived in a world of work orders, mysterious stains, and people requesting miracles with the confidence of royalty.
Owen stared at Mara’s answers and felt his spirit file a complaint.
Outdoor cats plus a formal program, but no indoor permission, meant the cats would remain outside, fed and encouraged, multiplying their presence around buildings, leaving Owen to deal with the consequences that never appeared in student government documents: sprayed corners, clogged vents, trash torn open like a small apocalypse, and the raccoons who treated feeding stations as an invitation.
Owen clicked:
A: N
B: N
C: N
D: N
He didn’t believe in “managed cat presence.” He believed in maintenance budgets and reality. He replied in the chat under Mara’s screenshot: “Cool. So we’re outsourcing pest control to vibes now?”
Mara read that and immediately decided Owen was the enemy of joy, because Mara came from the school of leadership where anything inconvenient was framed as negativity.
Professor Elena Voss read it next, and Elena had the specific confidence of someone who ran a lab and therefore believed she was one of the few adults left on campus. Elena liked cats. Elena also liked not having unaccounted-for animals wandering into spaces filled with sensitive equipment and graduate students who already looked haunted.
Elena’s answers matched Mara’s, which was the funniest possible outcome.
A: Y
B: N
C: N
D: Y
Mara wanted optics. Elena wanted managed population control, vaccination, and fewer random feeding patterns that turned outdoor cats into a messy, disease-prone cluster. Category D, to Elena, meant public health and environmental stability. It did not mean “Cat Club gets a logo.”
Elena replied to Owen: “A blanket N is not policy, it’s avoidance.”
Owen replied: “So is pretending feeding stations don’t attract raccoons.”
Elena disliked Owen’s tone. Owen disliked Elena’s sentence structure, because it sounded like committee minutes. Mara disliked both of them for arguing in her stakeholder chat, because she had a deep belief that conflict should occur privately so she could manage it with the word “valid.”
Priya Nand, Resident Advisor, saw the thread while reviewing an incident report submitted at 2:13 a.m. by a student who claimed “a cat-shaped shadow is judging me through the lounge window.” Priya had been an RA long enough to know two things: dorms were not ready for cats, and dorms were barely ready for students.
She answered:
A: Y
B: N
C: N
D: N
Outdoor cats existed, and fighting that felt pointless. Academic buildings were already full of human chaos. Dorms were a hard no, because dorm life turned every shared resource into a battlefield and cats would become emotional support weapons. A formal program sounded like an excuse for students to smuggle cats inside and claim “the university basically encourages this.”
Priya did not post her answers, because Priya had survival instincts.
Mara, powered by sincerity and a hunger for engagement, tagged Priya anyway: “Priya, what’d you put? Dorm perspective matters.”
Refusing in a stakeholder chat counted as guilt, so Priya posted her answers with the resigned tone of someone handing over their last shred of peace.
The chat absorbed them like blood in sand.
Mara disliked Priya’s D: N because Mara could feel her shiny “Campus Cat Program” slide deck losing oxygen. Elena disliked Priya’s D: N because Elena wanted formal management. Owen disliked Priya’s A: Y because Owen could hear the maintenance tickets multiplying.
Priya disliked all of them for dragging her into public dorm emotional labor.
Then Felix Hart arrived.
Felix was Cat Club President, which meant Felix treated campus cats like saints and treated anyone who disagreed like a villain in a children’s movie. Felix knew the cats by name, territory, temperament, and preferred sun patches. Felix had once referred to a gray tom as “Chancellor,” insisting the cat was “an administrator in spirit.” Felix said this with the straight-faced conviction of someone who had never had to clean up anything.
Felix answered:
A: Y
B: Y
C: Y
D: Y
Felix posted in the chat: “Wow. So some of you just hate living things.”
Owen replied: “I hate cleaning up after people who treat animals as decor.”
Felix replied: “Facilities would be less miserable if you had a soul.”
Mara tried to mediate by sprinkling “valid” across the chat like salt on a wound. “Valid concerns on both sides,” she typed, which made everyone hate her more because “valid” was the sound of someone refusing to choose a position while still wanting applause.
Dr. Sloane Mercer, Disability Services Liaison, watched the thread with the exhausted calm of someone who knew what liability smelled like. Sloane had explained “reasonable accommodations” to too many people who treated allergies like a personal failing and treated their own desires like civil rights.
Sloane didn’t hate cats. Sloane hated chaos and ambiguity and the way people used “community” as a weapon.
Sloane answered:
A: Y
B: N
C: N
D: Y
Outdoor cats could be managed with boundaries and designated zones. Academic buildings required predictable allergen control. Dorms were an allergy and asthma minefield. A formal program, properly designed, could set rules, create cat-free corridors, require vet partnerships, and prevent the campus from becoming a DIY animal sanctuary run by students with finals week amnesia.
Sloane posted one sentence that contained more responsibility than the entire poll:
“If this proceeds, it must include allergen mitigation and clear building restrictions.”
Felix read that and decided Sloane was trying to ban cats through bureaucracy. Owen read it and decided Sloane was volunteering Facilities for more work. Elena read it and felt a rare moment of relief because someone had finally acknowledged reality. Mara read it and started mentally rebranding her initiative as “inclusive campus ecology,” which triggered Sloane’s immediate suspicion, because Sloane recognized branding when it tried to wear a halo.
Jonah Pike, Campus Security Officer, took the poll after someone forwarded him the chat logs with the subject line: “Fyi this is becoming a thing.”
Jonah had seen every version of “small issue turns into big conflict,” usually starting with someone feeling unheard and ending with someone calling security because a situation had escalated into performance.
Jonah had dealt with students calling in noise complaints about laughter. Jonah had dealt with roommates accusing each other of “weaponized incense.” Jonah could already imagine the call: “There’s a cat near the stairwell and it looked aggressive.”
Jonah clicked:
A: N
B: N
C: N
D: N
He didn’t post. Jonah didn’t argue in stakeholder chats. Jonah forwarded his results to his supervisor with the note: “This becomes a conflict magnet.”
Felix still found out Jonah went all-N, because campus gossip traveled faster than any official email and with better punctuation. Felix started calling Jonah “Cat Police,” which made Jonah dislike Felix in a way that was calm, professional, and permanent.
Hal Berringer, meanwhile, watched the rising tension from his office, where Maple lay on the desk and occasionally stepped on the keyboard, adding stray letters into Hal’s draft email about “community feedback.” Hal interpreted the chatter as engagement. Hal felt proud. Hal felt connected. Hal felt like a leader.
Maple yawned.
***
A week later, Hal published the results exactly as promised: four categories, two percentages each, and no interpretation. Hal believed this was neutrality. Hal believed neutrality prevented fighting. Hal believed a lot of things that would not survive contact with humans.
The results were:
Category A (Outdoors): Y 58% / N 42%
Category B (Academic buildings): Y 34% / N 66%
Category C (Residence life): Y 29% / N 71%
Category D (Formal support): Y 49% / N 51%
The campus responded with the enthusiasm of a species addicted to certainty.
Felix declared victory on Category A and announced “the majority wants cats,” ignoring that “outdoors” and “cats” were not the same as “do whatever Felix wants.”
Owen declared victory on Categories B and C and told anyone who would listen that “people don’t want cats indoors,” which was true and also not a policy.
Mara declared victory on the mixed outcomes and called it “a mandate for a balanced program,” which was not a mandate, it was a shrug with numbers.
Priya interpreted it as “dorms are safe from being turned into a petting zoo,” and she guarded that interpretation like a border checkpoint.
Elena interpreted Category D as a split campus that needed a pilot program with measurable outcomes, because Elena believed data should be used for action rather than decoration.
Sloane interpreted the entire presentation as malpractice, because percentages without definitions were a recipe for weaponized misunderstanding.
Jonah interpreted it as predictable and went back to dealing with actual emergencies, like students attempting to grill inside a dorm room.
Hal interpreted it as success because it produced a slide-worthy graphic.
Then came the meeting, because meetings were how the campus processed conflict: gathering everyone in a room with bad chairs and worse acoustics, feeding them cookies like a peace offering, and hoping sugar would compensate for the lack of clarity.
***
They booked a conference room that smelled faintly of dry erase markers and despair. Hal arrived early, carrying a folder and a bright expression. Maple was not present, because Maple had the good sense to avoid committees.
Hal opened with: “We’re here to align on what the community is telling us.”
Owen replied immediately: “The community is telling us nothing because the poll doesn’t define anything.”
Felix leaned forward like a witness about to testify: “The poll is clear. People want cats.”
Sloane said, flatly: “The poll is unclear by design. That’s the issue.”
Mara smiled too hard. “I think we’re seeing a diversity of perspectives, which is valid.”
Priya stared at Mara the way RAs stared at students who claimed the fire alarm was “just a vibe.”
Priya said: “Dorms are not a petting zoo.”
Felix shot back: “Nobody said dorms have to be a petting zoo.”
Priya replied: “You clicked Y on Category C and called it community care. You said it in the chat.”
Felix did not apologize. Felix never apologized. Felix said: “Community care includes cats.”
Jonah, who had been quiet, said: “Community care includes not calling security because someone got scratched.”
Elena attempted to inject competence into the room, which was a bold move. “We can do a managed outdoor program. Designated cat zones, scheduled feeding, vet partnership, TNR coordination, clear signage, restricted building access, and tracking.”
Hal brightened. “Yes. Exactly the kind of collaborative thinking we—”
Owen cut in. “Who maintains those zones? Who cleans them? Who empties trash when the feeding station turns into a buffet for raccoons and the occasional bold squirrel?”
Silence landed. Everyone looked at Owen with the same expression people used when someone reminded them that reality had a labor component.
Mara tried: “We can allocate student volunteers.”
Owen said: “Volunteers vanish.”
Felix said: “Cat Club will do it.”
Owen replied: “Until finals.”
Felix’s jaw tightened because Owen had attacked the only god Felix believed in: the idea that passion could replace infrastructure.
Sloane said: “And allergen mitigation? Cat-free routes? Building signage? Enforcement when someone carries a cat into the library because they saw a TikTok?”
Mara said: “We can create an inclusive framework—”
Sloane looked at Mara like a person looks at a pamphlet that has never prevented anything.
Felix said: “We can’t center everything around allergies.”
Sloane replied: “We can’t center everything around cats.”
Mara said: “Both of those are valid.”
That was the moment the room stopped treating Mara as a leader and started treating her as a decorative object someone had placed on the table by mistake.
Hal tried to salvage the tone. Hal said words like “pilot” and “stakeholders” and “iterative.” Hal promised to “take this feedback back” as if feedback were a physical object he could carry to his office, set beside Maple, and hope it behaved.
The meeting ended the way it was always going to end: without consensus, without a plan, and with several people adding each other to their private lists titled DO NOT ENGAGE AGAIN.
***
Two days later, Hal sent an email.
“Thank you for participating in the Campus Cats Pulse Poll. After reviewing the feedback, the university has decided not to move forward with a formal campus cat program at this time.”
“At this time” meant “until everyone involved graduates, quits, transfers, or forgets.”
Felix blamed Owen and Jonah for institutional cruelty.
Owen blamed Felix for irresponsible activism.
Priya blamed Mara for dragging dorms into it and then pretending neutrality was leadership.
Mara blamed polarization and posted a thread about civil discourse, which caused an immediate spike in private rage across campus.
Elena blamed the poll design, because Elena understood that ambiguity created conflict and then gave institutions an excuse to do nothing.
Sloane blamed the entire process, because Sloane knew that a campus unable to define “permit” had no business making policies about animals, allergens, and shared space.
Jonah blamed nobody specifically, because Jonah had already moved on to the next preventable crisis.
Hal sat in his office afterward, rereading his sent email like it might comfort him. Maple jumped onto the desk, stepped on the keyboard, and stared at Hal as if to say: you did this.
Hal scratched Maple behind the ears and whispered, “Well, we tried.”
Maple blinked. Maple did not care. Maple had a warm office and a human who refilled her water dish.
Outside, the campus cats continued doing what cats did: showing up, slipping between buildings, ignoring signage, surviving human indecision, and strolling through the quad like they owned the place, which was the only honest interpretation anyone ever produced.
The poll had succeeded at its true purpose. The administration got numbers. The stakeholders got a controlled venue for resentment. The campus got a clean email that closed the loop without resolving anything. Everyone got to claim their interpretation was supported. Nobody had to enforce anything. Nobody had to take responsibility. Nothing changed except the bitterness.
Hal had wanted to build community around a shared fondness for cats. He built a perfect little monument to campus life instead: a sterile record of disagreement, preserved in percentages, surrounded by people who now disliked each other more efficiently.
Maple yawned and went back to sleep, because unlike humans, Maple understood the secret of governance: ignore it, and it will still exist tomorrow.
About Cats and Polls
The director’s name was Hal Berringer, Director of Campus Life Initiatives, which meant he was responsible for morale in the way a laminated poster is responsible for mental health. Hal was one of those wholesome, bumbling administrators who smiled like he’d never read a comment section. He wore sweaters that looked pre-approved by a committee. He said “folks” a lot. He believed sincerity could cauterize conflict. His job required him to believe this, or he’d have to start drinking at lunch.
Hal also had a cat.
The cat’s name was Maple, because Hal had the kind of life where a cat could simply be named Maple and nobody laughed. Maple lived in his office unofficially, the way a lot of things on campus existed: technically not allowed, universally known, and aggressively ignored because everyone preferred a gentle hypocrisy to a loud enforcement.
Maple liked sitting on the windowsill and staring down at the quad like a judgmental gargoyle. Hal loved this. Hal loved Maple like a person loves a creature that cannot speak but still conveys disapproval with precision. He told visitors Maple was “a calming presence.” Maple expressed calm by glaring at them as if they were an administrative error.
One late afternoon, Hal took a walk across the quad after a meeting about “community belonging.” He’d escaped a room full of people arguing about whether the word “belonging” should be replaced with “connection,” because nothing makes you feel connected like watching adults debate synonyms for an hour.
On the grass near a bench, he saw a tabby lounging in the sun, belly exposed, fearless, unbothered, radiating the kind of confidence Hal had been trying to cultivate through strategic planning documents. A student sat nearby, eating fries and offering the cat one like a tribute to a tiny tyrant. The cat sniffed it, rejected it, and continued basking, because the campus cat economy operated on contempt.
Hal watched for a minute, smiling. He watched another student walk past, pause, coo softly, and take a photo. He watched a third student cross the sidewalk and stiffen like they’d seen a threat, then detour around the cat by a full ten feet, as if proximity alone could trigger a medical event, an emotional event, or a lawsuit.
In the span of thirty seconds, Hal witnessed joy, fear, and avoidance, and because he was Hal, he mistook this for “engagement.”
Back in his office, Maple jumped onto the desk, strolled across a stack of paperwork, and planted her paws directly on a folder labeled COMPLAINTS – Q2. Hal scratched her head and said, out loud, to the cat: “Maybe we can do something, huh?”
Maple blinked slowly. Maple had no opinion, because Maple did not attend meetings.
Hal did what administrators always do when they sense a problem that might generate emails: he tried to get ahead of it without actually stepping into it. He needed something that looked like action, sounded like listening, and generated numbers he could paste into a slide deck.
He created a poll.
Not a survey. Not a proposal. Not a policy draft. A “pulse poll,” which conveyed urgency and non-commitment in one tidy phrase. A pulse poll suggested health. It suggested responsiveness. It suggested a body. It did not suggest accountability.
Hal’s categories made perfect sense in his head, which was the first warning sign.
Category A: Outdoors — because the cats already roamed campus grounds, and Hal wanted to measure how much the campus could tolerate reality existing in plain sight.
Category B: Academic buildings — because someone, somewhere, would eventually try to bring a cat into a lecture hall and call it “wellness,” and Hal wanted to preempt the email chain titled “Cat in Lab??? Urgent.”
Category C: Residence life spaces — because dorms turned every minor preference into a constitutional crisis, and cats in dorms would be treated as either salvation or betrayal.
Category D: Formal campus support — because Hal had heard the phrase “trap-neuter-return” once and thought it sounded like a sustainable initiative he could place under a “community ecology” banner with a nice logo.
Hal also had motives, the way everyone had motives. He wanted fewer complaints about cats. He wanted fewer angry messages from people with allergies and phobias. He wanted fewer midnight reports of “an aggressive cat near the dumpster.” He wanted the campus to feel charmed. He wanted to be the guy who brought order to the small furry chaos. He wanted Maple to be a symbol of community, which was an unhinged thing to do to an animal whose primary hobby was ignoring him.
He wrote the poll’s instructions with the kind of slippery language that could survive an audit:
Choose Y or N. Interpret “permitted” however you want. He didn’t define it. Definitions lead to enforcement, enforcement leads to consequences, consequences lead to emails.
Hal believed this vagueness was wise. Vagueness, to Hal, meant flexibility. It meant inclusivity. It meant nobody could accuse him of bias because nobody could prove what the question meant.
This belief would soon be punished.
The Poll Lands Like a Cat on a Piano
The email went out under Hal’s cheerful signature. It was titled:
CAMPUS CATS: THE OFFICIALLY UNOFFICIAL POLICY PULSE POLL
That subject line managed to be coy and ominous at the same time, like a wink from a person holding a clipboard. It hit inboxes across campus and immediately caused two distinct reactions: delight from cat people, dread from people who had ever tried to keep a building clean.
The poll did not ask what respondents believed “permitted” meant. It did not ask whether cats were currently present, because that would require acknowledging reality. It did not ask whether the respondent had allergies, phobias, trauma, or basic common sense. It simply asked for Y or N, four times, and promised the results would be shared as percentages.
This was supposed to prevent conflict. It created conflict the way gasoline prevents fire.
The poll traveled fastest through the campus’s favorite nervous system: the group chat.
Not a public forum. Not a policy board. A stakeholder group chat with a name like Campus Life Stakeholders, where people discussed serious issues in between memes and passive-aggressive “circling back” messages. It was the kind of chat where everyone had plausible deniability and screenshots lived forever.
Mara Cho, Student Government Vice Chair, saw the poll and answered within three minutes, because Mara treated responsiveness like a virtue and speed like wisdom. Mara’s entire identity was Professional Consensus Collector. She didn’t have opinions so much as she had positions that photographed well.
She clicked:
A: Y
B: N
C: N
D: Y
Outdoor cats seemed fun. Indoor cats seemed disruptive. Dorm cats seemed like a liability. A formal program sounded like control, branding, and the kind of initiative you could put on a resume without mentioning that it had caused three departmental feuds.
Mara took a screenshot of her answers and posted it in the stakeholder chat with a breezy caption: “Here’s what I put. Balanced approach.”
Balanced was the word people used when they wanted credit for restraint while still needing to feel morally superior.
Owen Grant saw Mara’s screenshot while standing near a trash enclosure behind the dining hall, surrounded by the kind of smells that reminded you humans were not a noble species. Owen was Facilities Coordinator, which meant he lived in a world of work orders, mysterious stains, and people requesting miracles with the confidence of royalty.
Owen stared at Mara’s answers and felt his spirit file a complaint.
Outdoor cats plus a formal program, but no indoor permission, meant the cats would remain outside, fed and encouraged, multiplying their presence around buildings, leaving Owen to deal with the consequences that never appeared in student government documents: sprayed corners, clogged vents, trash torn open like a small apocalypse, and the raccoons who treated feeding stations as an invitation.
Owen clicked:
A: N
B: N
C: N
D: N
He didn’t believe in “managed cat presence.” He believed in maintenance budgets and reality. He replied in the chat under Mara’s screenshot: “Cool. So we’re outsourcing pest control to vibes now?”
Mara read that and immediately decided Owen was the enemy of joy, because Mara came from the school of leadership where anything inconvenient was framed as negativity.
Professor Elena Voss read it next, and Elena had the specific confidence of someone who ran a lab and therefore believed she was one of the few adults left on campus. Elena liked cats. Elena also liked not having unaccounted-for animals wandering into spaces filled with sensitive equipment and graduate students who already looked haunted.
Elena’s answers matched Mara’s, which was the funniest possible outcome.
A: Y
B: N
C: N
D: Y
Mara wanted optics. Elena wanted managed population control, vaccination, and fewer random feeding patterns that turned outdoor cats into a messy, disease-prone cluster. Category D, to Elena, meant public health and environmental stability. It did not mean “Cat Club gets a logo.”
Elena replied to Owen: “A blanket N is not policy, it’s avoidance.”
Owen replied: “So is pretending feeding stations don’t attract raccoons.”
Elena disliked Owen’s tone. Owen disliked Elena’s sentence structure, because it sounded like committee minutes. Mara disliked both of them for arguing in her stakeholder chat, because she had a deep belief that conflict should occur privately so she could manage it with the word “valid.”
Priya Nand, Resident Advisor, saw the thread while reviewing an incident report submitted at 2:13 a.m. by a student who claimed “a cat-shaped shadow is judging me through the lounge window.” Priya had been an RA long enough to know two things: dorms were not ready for cats, and dorms were barely ready for students.
She answered:
A: Y
B: N
C: N
D: N
Outdoor cats existed, and fighting that felt pointless. Academic buildings were already full of human chaos. Dorms were a hard no, because dorm life turned every shared resource into a battlefield and cats would become emotional support weapons. A formal program sounded like an excuse for students to smuggle cats inside and claim “the university basically encourages this.”
Priya did not post her answers, because Priya had survival instincts.
Mara, powered by sincerity and a hunger for engagement, tagged Priya anyway: “Priya, what’d you put? Dorm perspective matters.”
Refusing in a stakeholder chat counted as guilt, so Priya posted her answers with the resigned tone of someone handing over their last shred of peace.
The chat absorbed them like blood in sand.
Mara disliked Priya’s D: N because Mara could feel her shiny “Campus Cat Program” slide deck losing oxygen. Elena disliked Priya’s D: N because Elena wanted formal management. Owen disliked Priya’s A: Y because Owen could hear the maintenance tickets multiplying.
Priya disliked all of them for dragging her into public dorm emotional labor.
Then Felix Hart arrived.
Felix was Cat Club President, which meant Felix treated campus cats like saints and treated anyone who disagreed like a villain in a children’s movie. Felix knew the cats by name, territory, temperament, and preferred sun patches. Felix had once referred to a gray tom as “Chancellor,” insisting the cat was “an administrator in spirit.” Felix said this with the straight-faced conviction of someone who had never had to clean up anything.
Felix answered:
A: Y
B: Y
C: Y
D: Y
Felix posted in the chat: “Wow. So some of you just hate living things.”
Owen replied: “I hate cleaning up after people who treat animals as decor.”
Felix replied: “Facilities would be less miserable if you had a soul.”
Mara tried to mediate by sprinkling “valid” across the chat like salt on a wound. “Valid concerns on both sides,” she typed, which made everyone hate her more because “valid” was the sound of someone refusing to choose a position while still wanting applause.
Dr. Sloane Mercer, Disability Services Liaison, watched the thread with the exhausted calm of someone who knew what liability smelled like. Sloane had explained “reasonable accommodations” to too many people who treated allergies like a personal failing and treated their own desires like civil rights.
Sloane didn’t hate cats. Sloane hated chaos and ambiguity and the way people used “community” as a weapon.
Sloane answered:
A: Y
B: N
C: N
D: Y
Outdoor cats could be managed with boundaries and designated zones. Academic buildings required predictable allergen control. Dorms were an allergy and asthma minefield. A formal program, properly designed, could set rules, create cat-free corridors, require vet partnerships, and prevent the campus from becoming a DIY animal sanctuary run by students with finals week amnesia.
Sloane posted one sentence that contained more responsibility than the entire poll:
“If this proceeds, it must include allergen mitigation and clear building restrictions.”
Felix read that and decided Sloane was trying to ban cats through bureaucracy. Owen read it and decided Sloane was volunteering Facilities for more work. Elena read it and felt a rare moment of relief because someone had finally acknowledged reality. Mara read it and started mentally rebranding her initiative as “inclusive campus ecology,” which triggered Sloane’s immediate suspicion, because Sloane recognized branding when it tried to wear a halo.
Jonah Pike, Campus Security Officer, took the poll after someone forwarded him the chat logs with the subject line: “Fyi this is becoming a thing.”
Jonah had seen every version of “small issue turns into big conflict,” usually starting with someone feeling unheard and ending with someone calling security because a situation had escalated into performance.
Jonah had dealt with students calling in noise complaints about laughter. Jonah had dealt with roommates accusing each other of “weaponized incense.” Jonah could already imagine the call: “There’s a cat near the stairwell and it looked aggressive.”
Jonah clicked:
A: N
B: N
C: N
D: N
He didn’t post. Jonah didn’t argue in stakeholder chats. Jonah forwarded his results to his supervisor with the note: “This becomes a conflict magnet.”
Felix still found out Jonah went all-N, because campus gossip traveled faster than any official email and with better punctuation. Felix started calling Jonah “Cat Police,” which made Jonah dislike Felix in a way that was calm, professional, and permanent.
Hal Berringer, meanwhile, watched the rising tension from his office, where Maple lay on the desk and occasionally stepped on the keyboard, adding stray letters into Hal’s draft email about “community feedback.” Hal interpreted the chatter as engagement. Hal felt proud. Hal felt connected. Hal felt like a leader.
Maple yawned.
***
A week later, Hal published the results exactly as promised: four categories, two percentages each, and no interpretation. Hal believed this was neutrality. Hal believed neutrality prevented fighting. Hal believed a lot of things that would not survive contact with humans.
The results were:
Category A (Outdoors): Y 58% / N 42%
Category B (Academic buildings): Y 34% / N 66%
Category C (Residence life): Y 29% / N 71%
Category D (Formal support): Y 49% / N 51%
The campus responded with the enthusiasm of a species addicted to certainty.
Felix declared victory on Category A and announced “the majority wants cats,” ignoring that “outdoors” and “cats” were not the same as “do whatever Felix wants.”
Owen declared victory on Categories B and C and told anyone who would listen that “people don’t want cats indoors,” which was true and also not a policy.
Mara declared victory on the mixed outcomes and called it “a mandate for a balanced program,” which was not a mandate, it was a shrug with numbers.
Priya interpreted it as “dorms are safe from being turned into a petting zoo,” and she guarded that interpretation like a border checkpoint.
Elena interpreted Category D as a split campus that needed a pilot program with measurable outcomes, because Elena believed data should be used for action rather than decoration.
Sloane interpreted the entire presentation as malpractice, because percentages without definitions were a recipe for weaponized misunderstanding.
Jonah interpreted it as predictable and went back to dealing with actual emergencies, like students attempting to grill inside a dorm room.
Hal interpreted it as success because it produced a slide-worthy graphic.
Then came the meeting, because meetings were how the campus processed conflict: gathering everyone in a room with bad chairs and worse acoustics, feeding them cookies like a peace offering, and hoping sugar would compensate for the lack of clarity.
***
They booked a conference room that smelled faintly of dry erase markers and despair. Hal arrived early, carrying a folder and a bright expression. Maple was not present, because Maple had the good sense to avoid committees.
Hal opened with: “We’re here to align on what the community is telling us.”
Owen replied immediately: “The community is telling us nothing because the poll doesn’t define anything.”
Felix leaned forward like a witness about to testify: “The poll is clear. People want cats.”
Sloane said, flatly: “The poll is unclear by design. That’s the issue.”
Mara smiled too hard. “I think we’re seeing a diversity of perspectives, which is valid.”
Priya stared at Mara the way RAs stared at students who claimed the fire alarm was “just a vibe.”
Priya said: “Dorms are not a petting zoo.”
Felix shot back: “Nobody said dorms have to be a petting zoo.”
Priya replied: “You clicked Y on Category C and called it community care. You said it in the chat.”
Felix did not apologize. Felix never apologized. Felix said: “Community care includes cats.”
Jonah, who had been quiet, said: “Community care includes not calling security because someone got scratched.”
Elena attempted to inject competence into the room, which was a bold move. “We can do a managed outdoor program. Designated cat zones, scheduled feeding, vet partnership, TNR coordination, clear signage, restricted building access, and tracking.”
Hal brightened. “Yes. Exactly the kind of collaborative thinking we—”
Owen cut in. “Who maintains those zones? Who cleans them? Who empties trash when the feeding station turns into a buffet for raccoons and the occasional bold squirrel?”
Silence landed. Everyone looked at Owen with the same expression people used when someone reminded them that reality had a labor component.
Mara tried: “We can allocate student volunteers.”
Owen said: “Volunteers vanish.”
Felix said: “Cat Club will do it.”
Owen replied: “Until finals.”
Felix’s jaw tightened because Owen had attacked the only god Felix believed in: the idea that passion could replace infrastructure.
Sloane said: “And allergen mitigation? Cat-free routes? Building signage? Enforcement when someone carries a cat into the library because they saw a TikTok?”
Mara said: “We can create an inclusive framework—”
Sloane looked at Mara like a person looks at a pamphlet that has never prevented anything.
Felix said: “We can’t center everything around allergies.”
Sloane replied: “We can’t center everything around cats.”
Mara said: “Both of those are valid.”
That was the moment the room stopped treating Mara as a leader and started treating her as a decorative object someone had placed on the table by mistake.
Hal tried to salvage the tone. Hal said words like “pilot” and “stakeholders” and “iterative.” Hal promised to “take this feedback back” as if feedback were a physical object he could carry to his office, set beside Maple, and hope it behaved.
The meeting ended the way it was always going to end: without consensus, without a plan, and with several people adding each other to their private lists titled DO NOT ENGAGE AGAIN.
***
Two days later, Hal sent an email.
“Thank you for participating in the Campus Cats Pulse Poll. After reviewing the feedback, the university has decided not to move forward with a formal campus cat program at this time.”
“At this time” meant “until everyone involved graduates, quits, transfers, or forgets.”
Felix blamed Owen and Jonah for institutional cruelty.
Owen blamed Felix for irresponsible activism.
Priya blamed Mara for dragging dorms into it and then pretending neutrality was leadership.
Mara blamed polarization and posted a thread about civil discourse, which caused an immediate spike in private rage across campus.
Elena blamed the poll design, because Elena understood that ambiguity created conflict and then gave institutions an excuse to do nothing.
Sloane blamed the entire process, because Sloane knew that a campus unable to define “permit” had no business making policies about animals, allergens, and shared space.
Jonah blamed nobody specifically, because Jonah had already moved on to the next preventable crisis.
Hal sat in his office afterward, rereading his sent email like it might comfort him. Maple jumped onto the desk, stepped on the keyboard, and stared at Hal as if to say: you did this.
Hal scratched Maple behind the ears and whispered, “Well, we tried.”
Maple blinked. Maple did not care. Maple had a warm office and a human who refilled her water dish.
Outside, the campus cats continued doing what cats did: showing up, slipping between buildings, ignoring signage, surviving human indecision, and strolling through the quad like they owned the place, which was the only honest interpretation anyone ever produced.
The poll had succeeded at its true purpose. The administration got numbers. The stakeholders got a controlled venue for resentment. The campus got a clean email that closed the loop without resolving anything. Everyone got to claim their interpretation was supported. Nobody had to enforce anything. Nobody had to take responsibility. Nothing changed except the bitterness.
Hal had wanted to build community around a shared fondness for cats. He built a perfect little monument to campus life instead: a sterile record of disagreement, preserved in percentages, surrounded by people who now disliked each other more efficiently.
Maple yawned and went back to sleep, because unlike humans, Maple understood the secret of governance: ignore it, and it will still exist tomorrow.
JayMark
It's Not Easy Being Nobody, But Somebody Has To.
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*cough HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAG!Huuuh~ can you repeat that, I think my ears are going because I can't hear your baby babbles.
Shiriru_B
Book binge in progress.
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JayMark
It's Not Easy Being Nobody, But Somebody Has To.
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STEAKKKKKKKIKKKK! Fake horns!
Shiriru_B
Book binge in progress.
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JayMark
It's Not Easy Being Nobody, But Somebody Has To.
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We need more cats if they are cute like Shiriru_B.
Shiriru_B
Book binge in progress.
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I'm thinking about winning, now that I'm currently winning.
Well sadly I'm cool and not cute so those cats even the eldritch ones will get to stay around as well, so there.
JayMark
It's Not Easy Being Nobody, But Somebody Has To.
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I'm thinking about winning, now that I'm currently winning.
Well sadly I'm cool and not cute so those cats even the eldritch ones will get to stay around as well, so there.
Worthy39
The protagonist's third cousin, twice removed
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- Aug 6, 2025
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Everyone hating on AI, yet here we are, making AI music.
JayMark
It's Not Easy Being Nobody, But Somebody Has To.
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I'm not a huge fan of suno, but it can turn shitposts and poems into crazy good songs. The styles I'm sure will be very generic though.
I like listening to my poems in music form. And I won't use it to monetize or for anything more than fun.
Plus I want to understand what this stuff can do along with its limitations and how to use.
Worthy39
The protagonist's third cousin, twice removed
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Fair, I once used it to make what was supposed to be an inspirational song about humanity ruining the planet.
Anonjohn20
Pen holding member
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Wah!
Navillus
The Humble Cat
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This humble cat couldn’t have possibly done anything-nya~Hmm something feels off...
Hey! What have you done to my charming face. My pfp has a mustache!
Tempokai
The Overworked One
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