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The Church of Microwave

Like most cat owners we’re very impressed with our pets, but unlike all the others it’s because ours really do impressive things (though saying that brings us right back to "like most cat owners.") Neutrino and Striker have already replicated most of the better parts of human society including mutual co-operation, luxury, and licking each other for fun (a lot of fun.) They even beat each other up when they’re bored in a 1000% more huggable version of UFC.

What we didn’t expect was the creation of a religion.

Have you heard the Word of the Microwave? (The word is "DING!")

The Church of Microwave has great advantages over most religions.

1. Microwaves provably exist, a fantastic head start over 100% of all known religions.
2. Microwaves instantly and measurably benefit their followers. 2-0 to the electro-radiative deity, and that description alone makes it a hat-trick over “Imaginary skybeard.”
3. Even Thor and Zeus could only throw electricity in a destructive manner. They didn't so much "feed their flocks" as "detonate other flocks and leave their followers to pick through the charred flesh for themselves."
4. Microwaves don't char any flesh unless you want them to
5. Feed the hungry, heal the sick (if you count preventing food poisoning), etc etc other religious claims except this technology actually achieves them

Pope Neutrino on the world's first Electro-Pulpit. I dare you to tell me he's not better than the other one.

Just as island peoples recreated runways and control towers in the hope of attracting visitors from the sky, the cats cluster around the microwave and start to sing to bring the holy hot food. And not to make us shaved monkeys sound stupid, but it's only the cat-version that works. Double bonus: hot food has never once brought STDs to a nation!

Neutrino beholding his lord from a jungle of appliances

The hymns consist mainly of pressing yourself as close to the god as possible – this is an approach used by a lot of cults, especially those cults run by creepy men and composed mainly of younger ladies. Yowling hymns are entirely optional but nevertheless performed 100% of the time. This yowling leads to observable results as the microwave starts buzzing, before beeping to signal that the prayer has been answered. The fact that most gods acknowledge their followers less than the average alarm clock is a matter for the theologians.

Bishop Striker addresses a rapt congregation.

This is the best bit of Microwavism, the world's first pro-active faith. Most religions demand total, subservient and counter-productive patience as the adherents do absolutely nothing but wait for something that might never happen. You might recognize this as “Exactly how NOT to make something happen.” Microwavists reject this approach! During the “cooling” phase of the ceremony, they run and meow and rub against people and do everything they can to accelerate something they know for a guaranteed fact will happen anyway.

This is the exact opposite of religion, otherwise known as progress. The cats have discovered entirely new syllables during their hymns, nay, arias to the God of Radiation Bombardment (a far more impressive deity “The Angel of Praise” or “The God of Farming.”) I’d fully expect them to invent an entire language if I left the food cooling for an hour, except they’re smart enough to work out how to work out the Microwave first – and if they do that there’ll be a religious schism and I’ll find myself on the wrong end of a holy war, blasphemy, and very pointy cats’ teeth.

Awaiting the Word of Microwave

The 3 Cutest Cat Pranks In History

As a cat-owner I naturally believe there are two types of feline:

1. My cats
2. Less cute cats

This is entirely natural, and more importantly true, but I have found some spectacularly cute pranks played on other cats. Those other cats are less cute overall, you see, so their owners don't mind playing very slightly cruel tricks on them.

There's nothing like awwwing out over cats and getting paid for it, except spending that pay on cat food. I still can't tell if I'm winning life or a slave to the secret masters of the world, and honestly? Don't care.

Read The 3 Cutest Cat Pranks right now!

Catbeth!

We've discovered that our new cat has a secret psychopathic side, a case of Dr Striker and Mister Hyde except the lunatic rage-madman side is only unlocked when he's got a mouthful of flesh. Aka "The absolute worst time to discover that something has a lunatic rage-madman side."

Beware this crazed monster! (We accept you may find this warning difficult to process.)

I discovered this when I gave him a mostly-eaten chicken leg. He's already experienced the incomparable joys of meat meat, because thanks to the wonderful Lady X even our cats eat better than most humans, but this ...changed him. In the same way the Vietnam war or gamma radiation ...changes things. He's always growled for meat, dashing off the table with it clutched in his mouth (because if there's one group he doesn't trust with food it's the people who just gave it to him) - but this was the first thing he'd had with joints, tendons and various other "this came from an actual torn apart animal" indicators. Indicators which flipped his internal (and heretofore unknown) personality switch from "adorable" to "CHANNEL THE SPIRIT OF KING MURDER-LION!"

PS Even having a personality switch means you're definably mentally ill.

He started growled like jet-engine sucking in a bucket of gravel, a loud and very dangerous sound emphasising that if you're not made of something explosion-proof it would be a fantastic idea to run for your life. The exact noise was "GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPHTHTHTHTHTHTHTHT" as he his Howl Of The Wolf was drowned by an enormous fart, as every muscle in his body tensed so hard it shoved every atom of air out of both ends. Grenade pins have made less dangerous noises bouncing off petrol stations.

He was so angry he couldn't think - he locked in place, clutching his meat and refusing to move as he tried to sonically defend it from the entire universe. He focused on Neutrino (our other cat, who had up to then been "big brother" but was now very clearer "The First We Shall Kill, Meat, We Shall Rend Him And Make More Meat.") Striker kept roaring like a burning nuclear reactor while Neutrino didn't move because he knew he was outside the range any sane cat could consider threatening. But that wasn't the kind of cat Striker was anymore.

I had to take Neutrino into another room, if only for his own protection, and instead of relaxing Striker it merely completed his conversion into Catbeth - a tragic soul destroyed by paranoia after acquiring the one thing he most desired. He arched his way around flat one step at a time, emitting 360° hatred and tormented by invisible enemies. You've probably noticed how cats can see invisible specks of dust, but Striker could see invisible snipers and every single one of them was trying to kill him and take his flesh. Once every five minutes he'd dare to actually eat a bit of the chicken, before gravimetrically detecting that space-time itself was out to get him and dashing across the room more aggressively than fourteen Rambos headbutting a nuclear warhead.

It took him over an hour to eat five grams of meat. It's also why we'll never give him more than that, or need to invest in home security. An entire terrorist army could invade our home, foolishly (but flatteringly) mistaking me for Bruce Willis, and all we'd need to do is throw Striker a chicken and hide in the bathroom. For that much meat he'd beat up the Incredible Hulk, and I'm fairly sure we could tunnel through the floor and escape - possibly to China - before he finished enough of the meat to even consider where we'd gone.

Neutrino Fortress!

A man's home may be his castle, but that's because man considers himself vulnerable, mortal, not the center of the universe, and various other problems not shared by cats.


Note the luxuriously bubble-wrapped basement and the faithful (teddy) hound in the courtyard.

So when Neutrino took immediate possession of the new stronghold - a word I didn't even know could be applied to cardboard boxes until that moment - he started projecting an "I'M IN ABSOLUTE COMMAND" vibe so powerful three alien empires suddenly crossed Earth off their "To Conquer" list.


Neutrino is the opposite of impressed (and appears to think his castle is edible)


Lacking claws, medieval defenders had to make do with bows an arrows. Yet another shortcoming unknown to felines.


For anyone, nay, anything else, sticking your face out of the only hole in your defenses might have been a weakness.

Indeed, Castle Neutrino became such an important (and frankly adorable) local landmark he was forced to batten down the hatches and defend himself from giggling paparazzi.



But he weathered the storm - cats are extremely good at enduring adoration and disproportionate amounts of loving attention, those being the closest the brilliantly parasitic geniuses come to any sort of hardship - and went on to be King of All He Surveyed!


He surveys us. But we already know that.

The Neutrino Fly Trap

Here's Neutrino begging for attention:

And here's what I see:

He's the world's first fly trap with a fur coat, and by "fly" I of course mean "Me." Not because I'm egotistical (though I am), or because it's more exciting (though it is), but because I've been targeted for destruction by my own pet. He'll stretch and roll and emit logical impossibilities - yowls laden with the frequencies of crying babies but don't make you want to throw him out an open window (especially on airplanes) - flexing a big fluffy belly and demanding more immediate attention than a burning nuclear reactor.

And when he gets it...

THE BEARTRAP CLOSES!

NEUTRINO STRIKES!

Remember: this is me trying to stroke him in exactly the manner he's been begging for. Any attempt to pet, placate or otherwise pacify (and I don't mean "pacify" in the riot police sense, though if these keeps up I might) the cat results in attempted me-eatery.

Note how he backflips to intercept my fingers when I try to get behind him - I could be fighting Jet Li and not get attacked this much. I've actually evolved puncture-proof skin over the last few months - either that or I've worn his teeth down with my cunning strategy of "polish them with my own flesh."

Which is why I've started looking at these.

Ideal for knights, industrial saw operators, and people trying to stroke Neutrino .

Time To Strike!

Look around you: anyone not going awwwww is secretly A ROBOT AND YOU SHOULD DESTROY THEM!

I would have started this article with words if I could write anything cuter than that picture. Striker's leapt into our lives, onto this page, and very frequently at things he's not meant to touch in the kitchen, so it's time for the Strike Retrospective! Behold, as one cat generates more love in a year and a half than 40% of Americans manage with a marriage.

The first Neutrino detection

Fellow cats see eye-to-eye

The first meeting was extremely embarrassing, for Neutrino, who I want to remind you was five times the size and are-you-kidding times the weight of the Strikitten. Because after this early exchange, Neutrino fled from the least intimidating item since the marshmallow - hiding under tables, tearing across the room, and at one point leaping a three-meter-drop (to get away from a rival which fell over trying to walk to the edge.)

Neutrino hiding on the opposite side of the room, on a shelf, behind a spaceship. Which might be overkill.

The Anger Of The Innocent!

I was the only person who understood, because Striker hated me. He would hiss like an angry spider any time I was near, and when something that is literally The Picture of adorability hates you it leads to awkward questions.

The Picture

You wonder "Is there something horribly wrong with me, that such beautiful innoncence would take offense, or is there sometihng wrong with this bloody kitten?" Luckily I'm me, and when I asked myself my ego replied "Don't worry about it, hero, you're amazing! Excellent! Great! Hell, anything that doesn't like you is just proving that they have a problem!" (Some other parts of my brain said things too but I couldn't hear them.)

Yes, the picture would be cuter if you could see the frankly adorable (at that moment) B feeding Striker. But I haven't asked if I'm allowed to do that yet, so you'll just have to make do with the second cutest picture ever.

The Move

Unfortunately B's entire family became allergic to Striker (as opposed to just the poor father, whose allergy they simply ignored to get the cute kitty), and we took over. Since then they've become a real couple (the great thing about being neutered is you no longer car about two males living together - maybe we should try that on the Proposition 8 supporters!)

Rrarrr, why do you have to get up so early! Come back to bed!

Striker unpacks the new Neutrino he ordered after breaking the first one.

The even found their own place together...

You only wish human apartments had a bubble-wrap room.

...started signalling passing aircraft to drop any catfood supplies they might have...

...and even posed for the cover of their upcoming indie music album.