I received my very first piece of hate mail today.

It had to happen eventually. As an outrageous online persona possessed of views that sometimes skew the readership and skewer the meek, I often find myself at odds with certain subsections of the internet. The clock marking the countdown to the moment I stepped on one toe too many (which I have dubbed DangerClock) was turned on the moment I became an author and has been going down steadily ever since.

Unsurprisingly, it was Fantasy Reddit that was the culprit this time. You see, at the request of Steve Drew, their most gracious overlord, I agreed to participate in the Reddit Gift Exchange: where various degenerates exchange pleasantries in cardboard boxes and pretend to partake of civilized society, if only for a day. I offered to give up a full trilogy of The Aeons’ Gate, signed and bookplated and everything.

And what did I receive in return?

Actually, some pretty nice stuff from a lovely redditor, NyanKatniss, including a neat figurine of a pug with a gun and a cool drinking glass of House Baratheon (not dishwasher safe, I note, so that’ll be my official glass-I-never-wash that I offer to house guests I hate).

AND ALSO THIS.

I have received threats in my life.

I have received harsh criticisms.

I have received speculation on my personal life that I have found rude, intrusive, offensive and uncalled for.

In terms of sheer offense, though, this gift tops them all.

Perhaps I have not made myself clear in my stance toward mystery-solving cats. Perhaps you simply assumed that I was like many of the other addle-brained socialites who swooned and cooed at the notion of felines who are capable of treading the noir field where human feet dare not. Perhaps this was an honest mistake.

Perhaps.

For the benefit of those who may be driven by such “charity,” let me be perfectly succinct in my views on this.

CATS CANNOT SOLVE MYSTERIES.

CATS ARE PORTLY, SLOW-WITTED ANIMALS WHO POOP IN BOXES.

CATS DO NOT BELONG IN STORIES.

Call me harsh, if you will. Call me a bigot. Call me an enemy of felinity, for that is what I am and I make no qualms about it. I thoroughly reject any reality in which a self-absorbed quadruped is given a responsibility of solving a crime.

And it is that, the sheer audacity of a world in which cats are given the authority to solve and prosecute crimes, that offends me most. Not the fact that cats are smelly and stupid. Not the fact that they are so much lamer than dogs. Not the fact that I once dated Stephanie Dyson back in high school and every time we went out she would go on and on about her fucking cat and fucking suck precious hours from my life with stories about how Mittens did the cutest thing today until I just grabbed her by the shoulders and screamed into her face: “LOOK AT ME. LOOK AT ME. I AM A HUMAN BEING. I HAVE NEEDS. I AM NOT A CAT. I CAN SPEAK TO YOU. I NEED TO LIVE A LIFE WITH YOU. NOT YOUR CAT. LOOK AT ME, STEPHANIE. LOOK AT ME AND REJOICE IN WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO ME.”

Simply put: cats cannot handle the amount of authority needed to be a detective. The mind rejects it.

I have put together a sample chapter culled from my own dark thoughts to demonstrate the absurdity of it all.

“Detective Smuckles, you are one fucking sorry-ass excuse for a lawman,” Corporal Grimes muttered through a mouthful of cigar smoke and whiskey breath. “But fuck if you aren’t just the kind of mean-ass son of a bitch I need for this kind of job.” He threw the case file onto the desk with much the same ceremony one would throw a witch onto a burning pyre. It hurt his meaty fingers to touch them, it hurt his bloodshot eyes to look at them as the grainy color photos spilled out from the dossier and onto the hard wood. She was a beautiful girl once, if her corpse was anything to go by. Maybe she had a room with a canopy bed with pink sheets. Maybe she had a desk with a vanity mirror she begged and begged her parents to buy her. Maybe she spent a lot of time sitting in front of that mirror, wondering what her first kiss would be like, wondering if she and Steve Rhames would ever get married, wondering if it was all right to think that Mr. Jefferson in fifth-hour Geometry was kind of cute. Maybe. “The killer sent us these at exactly three-thirty-three in the P.M., Smuckles,” Grimes said. He bit down so hard on his cigar it threatened to sever. “Every fucking third month for three years. It’s not always a girl. Sometimes young boys, sometimes dogs, sometimes old people. Aged 13, 33, whatever else involving the number three. That’s the root of all this, Smuckles. These aren’t some random killings. We are dealing with one sick motherfucker. I need a sick motherfucker to catch him.” Grimes leaned over the desk, regarded Detective Smuckles evenly. “Are you that sick motherfucker, Smuckles?” “Meow,” replied Detective Smuckles, kneading his paws on the chair before curling up and falling into a drowsy purr.

SEE? SEE HOW STUPID THAT WAS?!

Now I have this stuff in my house. WHERE MY CHILDREN SLEEP.

Thank you, Reddit. Thank you, NyanKatniss.

Thank you for this terrible gift.