The kittens played in the park. They liked the park, and the park liked them, or at least it would if parks could like things. It had been rumored that they could, and if the rumors were true, then this particular park liked these kittens. One of the kittens was grey and the other was one of those black and white jobs, all cute and adorable and basically everything you’d expect a kitten to be. They jumped and frolicked and played and did all sorts of things that kittens do, as these were very obviously professional kittens, having been in the position for some time now. In fact, they both felt they were due for a raise any time now, although neither wanted to ask their boss, since they felt that it might be a little forward and put themselves in a precarious position. Anyway, if they were fired, they didn’t know where exactly they’d go from there, and so they felt that it was best not to rock the boat and continue to be kittens that were perhaps slightly underpaid than unemployed, and that’s a very sensible attitude to take.

So, they’re in the park, and all of a sudden, a big dog comes up. And at first, the kittens are a little surprised, but then the dog asks if he can play too, and the kittens don’t see any harm in it. The dog seems friendly enough, and hey, it’s always good to have more people to play with. No one wants to be alone or anything, and the more the merrier and all those clichés, right? So, the dog plays with them, running in circles around them and jumping and barking happily while they jump and fall over each other and rub up against the dog and everyone’s having a really great time.

So, they’re having a really good time in the park, playing, and everyone’s having a good time watching the dog and the kittens play, and it’s really bright out and the sun’s shining and there’s no clouds, and the water in the park fountain is sparkling and the trees are swaying back and forth and it’s just a really nice day and everyone’s having a great time. The kittens are climbing on the dog’s haunches and rolling off, and the dog doesn’t mind because they’re not using claws. It is a great day for all, and they all wished it would never end.

Then, all of a sudden, in the middle of their playing, the kittens heard someone come up, and they froze. It was their supervisor! And boy, was she pissed! She had her clipboard out and said that they needed to talk. And the kittens got really nervous and started to cower and get all extra cute. The supervisor said that she appreciated the extra work on the cuteness, but they still needed to talk. “Your problem is your attitude,” she said. Part of the deal with being a kitten is that you’re supposed to be afraid of dogs that are bigger than you, and here they are actually playing with one of these big dogs. And this was a big dog, it was like, a golden retriever or maybe one of those wolf hound things, I don’t know, I don’t know dogs. All you need to know is that it was a big dog. That’s it, it was a big dog. Anyway, though, the supervisor is livid that they’re not being scared of this big dog and are playing with it, and that sort of thing will just not stand.

One of the kittens starts to cower away from the dog but the supervisor says that it’s too little too late and that something is going to have to be done. Because this will not stand. Because you just can’t have kittens going off and breaking the rules like that. People demand consistency, and if you start acting all strange, no one’s going to know what to expect and everything will go all sideways and economies will collapse and we’ll all be running around in the streets gunning people down for bread and oil like in Mad Max or something, and no one wants that because that movie kind of sucked. And one of the kittens says that no one seemed to mind when they were playing, that everyone was watching and basically seemed pretty cool with it, and the supervisor goes yeah, it’s the novelty of the thing, I mean, everyone likes a joke, but no one wants to hear the same joke over and over, and stuff, and the kitten goes but if it’s over and over, how can it be frightening and strange or anything? And the Supervisor goes “You don’t understand people.”

Anyway, though, by now, everyone in the park has basically dispersed because there’s nothing to watch anymore, and the sun’s gone behind some clouds and the fountain’s gotten all covered in algae and stuff in a remarkably short amount of time and if there were any scientists around they’d be really interested in that and running all sorts of tests and stuff, but there weren’t any so it just went around undocumented and the scientific world lost out on a really great discovery that would have lead to the discovery of a new medicine that not only cured cancer but also tasted like ice cream, but that’s just the way it goes sometimes. And the supervisor goes to the kittens and says, “Look, I’m sorry, but you broke the rules really, really badly, and we can’t really overlook this, and we’re going to have to let you go” and the kittens started mewling and crying and the supervisor said that they couldn’t have any of that, because mewling is a kitten thing to do and they were no longer kittens, as they had both just been fired.

The kittens both stopped crying at that point and the grey one turns to the little black and white job and says “Well, I guess it’s been a good run” and the black and white one agrees and then the grey one goes “Well, maybe I can get a job as something else, maybe a parrot” and takes off his kitten suit, revealing himself as a box turtle and starts off on his way to the unemployment agency after stopping off at home and getting all his paperwork in order, and tells the supervisor that he’ll stop off tomorrow at the office to deal with the business side of getting fired and everything. And then the black and white one says “Well, I hear they have openings for whales” and he removes his suit and is turns out to be a small child and tells the supervisor that he’ll also be back at the office tomorrow to deal with all the paperwork, and goes home to update his resume and take a nap and maybe get a bite to eat, and figures he’ll stop off at the unemployment office tomorrow, since there’s no rush, since he’s got some money saved up, and he’d be getting the vacation money and everything, too.

All through this the dog had been silent. The supervisor turned to the dog and said that she was very disappointed in him, since he’d been with the company for several years now, and should know how things work. And the dog said that he was just playing with them to lull them into a sense of complacency before scaring the kittens and making them climb up on trees and she glared and got even angrier because she knew that wasn’t how dogs operated. And the dog goes “Fine, you got me” and starts talking about how he was just really sick of having to be a jerk dog all the time and wanted to be a friendly dog for one day in his life and just have some fun with some kittens, since he loved kittens and it actually tore him up inside to have to chase them around and make them so scared and frightened and think that he might eat them or something. He just wanted to have some fun for once and was that so wrong? And the supervisor was touched, but not so touched that she didn’t fire him, and he got angry and took off the dog suit and showed himself to be a pocket-sized robot and stomped off, but only after having the idea of calling the two former-kittens and seeing about striking out on their own in some sort of business venture since it had been the best day of his life, and he wanted to work with them again.

So, the former-dog called up the former-kittens and they got together and they formed a company where they were three fish who would swim around and do tricks for whoever wanted to see them in an installation in the park, and they ended up doing very well for themselves, getting paid in the best fish flakes and also lots of money, which they used to put into the business and expand until they were the biggest fish-watching business on the Eastern Seaboard, and now they don’t actually do shows anymore, and they just sit in their office, counting their money and fish flakes, and they had a good life. And the supervisor didn’t do too badly for herself either, she got a raise and then quit her job to be a scuba diver, which is what she always wanted to be anyway. So, it all worked out in the end. Except for the park, because the park was made so sad at seeing the kittens and the dog getting fired, that it got despondent and never grew anymore grass or trees, and even the cancer-curing, ice-cream-tasting algae dried up and went away, because no one thought to write the park a letter to let it know that everyone was doing well. This is very sad.

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