The new kitten is working out well. Having brought the number of cats in my home up to the nice round figure of 846 (by my rough calculation at least), she is settling in well and integrating with all the others. The kitten has secured all the choice spots on the cat-tree-jungle-gym and established the order in which she is to be fed (first). Her development continues at a rapid pace and, as of today, she has safely suffered through a rite of passage that must befall every kitten – falling into a bathtub full of water for the first time. She did so with dignity, grace and surprisingly little panic or alarm.

The interloper in question.

Although her socialization with her brethren has gone smoothly, her arrival has thrown the established balance out of whack and thoroughly screwed up the feline sexual politics of the house. Our five-year-old male is particularly confused by the new girl in his life. He doesn’t quite know how to act around her, and this has extended to his sister. Everybody is fixed, so it shouldn’t be much of an issue. Or so I thought.

Last week, I came out of my office late at night to investigate strange noises. They were cat noises, but unlike anything I’d ever heard from my own brood – a vibrating staccato of nervous energy. I looked around for a moment before spotting the male, Finnegan, in what can only be described as a passionate embrace with his sister, Casey. They were in the cat bed that lies beneath an antique telephone table. She had her paws wrapped around him in a hug, he was on top, trying to hump her in the missionary position.

The missionary position. Two cats. Siblings. Fixed.

In the midst of this tryst, they both slowly turned their heads towards me, as though this crime against the natural order of things, this violation of God’s laws, was perfectly ordinary, utterly mundane.

“Yeah? What?” said their bland, indifferent expressions.

To better paint a picture of this precise moment in my life, I have prepared a short film presentation. In this eerily close re-enactment, the part of myself will be played by Shelley Duvall.

Although Mr. Kubrick has remained slavishly faithful to the event as it unfolded, he did take some small artistic licence by giving me a knife and a vagina. Had I a knife, I might have attempted to slay the abomination on sight. Had I a vagina, it’s unlikely I wouldn’t have emerged from my office at all. I’d still be in there obsessing about my brand new vagina. Other than that, it’s pretty much 100% accurate.

Having been discovered in their unnatural act, the cats disengaged. To further distract them from their animalistic urges, I fed them, though it took a while longer for the boy to lose his painfully stubborn erection that caused him to walk around like a hunchback for several minutes after his case of human-induced blue balls. Can a cat even get blue balls when he’s had his testicles surgically removed? Apparently this one can.

I’m still trying to recover from the post-traumatic stress of what I saw, but I feel like I’ve personally witnessed the universe askew – like this was some lesser seal of the apocalypse, a sign of the beast, or a harbinger of the Lord Cthulhu.

I remain shaken to my core and can write no more of the disturbing incident.