Hello, everyone. Welcome to the first episode of CATching up with Night Olivia. We’ve got a great show ahead. We’re going to be talking about light—types of sunshine, kinds of darkness—what’s best for naps, what will illuminate your eyes like unearthly lamps in the dusk, and so on, plus: what shadows work best for concealing you, as you stalk your prey like a black bolt of death in the night.

But first, let’s address the elephant in the room. We need to talk about the upstairs world, the so-called real world. I think we can all agree that it is not as good as the one inside. It is gray and everything smells bad. I don’t like the color of the rug, which up here is not a beautiful shout of orange, but the shade of dead teds. Anyway I do come up here sometimes, despite my reservations, because one should always know what one is dealing with. Sometimes I even go outside. I am not an indoor cat anymore. I see and feel the world, where once I just smelled and heard it, from downstairs in the inside place. Now, if I want, I can come upstairs and be with Ted as he walks in the fall leaves, feel the chilly bite of first frost in the shortening days.

But yes, outside is quite disappointing. It is no big deal, I would say. There is a tabby cat up here, but she is not the one I love. When I first saw her I thought, You poor thing. Her eyes are dull brown—when I look into them I see only a hungry animal. She is small and thin, has no claws and walks with a staggering limp. She does not shine. The orange-headed ted insists on feeding her. That ted looks like a lumberjack but he is actually very sentimental. Also he smells very strongly of his big brouhaha, which is disgusting. Ted keeps telling me the brouhaha scented the blood and found us in the woods but I refuse to believe that I was saved in such a fashion. Anyway, I was wondering how Ted would cope without Olivia. He seems to be doing fine.

I love to go down to the weekend place and watch the other one, the beautiful one, through the window as she grooms and preens. She stares like a snake with her apple-yellow eyes. She is one of us, of course. Another part. Maybe I should have guessed that earlier. She chooses not to talk. But I hope that one day she will speak to me. In the meantime I will worship her and wait. I will do that forever, if necessary. I can always keep an eye on what is happening upstairs through the TV.