For my final semester of college, I'm taking a creative writing class just for the sake of taking it, as well as to stretch out my Pell Grant. I wanted to take it in order to see if I couldn't improve my writing at all, or at least learn a bit more about what good writing is like.

This is one of the exercises I was supposed to do for homework. The exercise was called Common Objects, and I was essentially supposed to make a list of a few objects around me, then write a story around them treating them as people, stories about their inner life, or one being in love with the other, things like that. I ended up writing a brief story about the two cat trees we have in our house.

Two cat trees stand in the room, apart, separated by an aquarium and the dining room table. One is worn, aged, of deep green shaggy fabric torn apart by years of use. The other, young, white of fabric and new in all respects, has displaced the old. The cats now lounge in its top.

The old one is resentful, angry at the humans that replaced it and full of burning hatred for the younger. It was good enough, wasn't it? The Himalayan always rested in its top, cradled away, hiding from the humans that scared her. The tabby always too to resting in the tree's lower cave, while the grey one ate from a bowl on one of its platforms. It cared for them, loved them, appreciated each touch. With the cats, the old one fulfilled its purpose.

So who was this young upstart, coming in and taking away the cats? How dare it?! All the one wished is to be with its cats again. It cries out in loneliness and fury. If it could, it would rend the young one limb from limb. But all it can do is rest in its corner and glare.

The young one knows none of this. In fact, it barely knows itself. It sees the cats resting on its top or eating from bowl at the bottom, and it pauses in confusion...or even, sometimes, disgust. At times it doesn't like the cats. Their warmth is uncomfortable, the eating nauseating, or would be if it had a stomach. It sees the old one's glares, but it doesn't understand the anger. It sees the old one's interest as something of desire, or want. When the young one looks at the old one, it sees a respected figure of experience and grace, someone it can even...love.

Unlike the old one, the young one cares not for its purpose. The young one, instead, yearns to be with the old one, to touch it, hold it, lean against it and rub its shaggy green fibers. it adores everything about the old one, every last little particle of its being. Forget the cats, or the humans with their petty intentions. The young one is in love.

If the old one knew of the young one's amorous desires, it would be appalled. A cat tree, loving another cat tree, instead of the cats it was built to serve? How absurd! It goes against the grain of decency, of common sense! It is unnatural, abhorrent! To learn of such desires on the part of the young one would only infuriate the old one even more. It wouldn't just want to tear apart the young one, oh no. If it could, it would unleash great gouts of flame, burn the young one alive, hear its cries as it is consumed by the fire until it bursts into ashes. Such a fate would only be right for a violator of the natural order.

But the young one doesn't understand why this would have to be. To the young one there is no such thing as a natural order. A cat tree loving another cat tree is just as fine as a cat tree that loves its cats, or even no one at all. The young one flounders in its confusion, not even really understanding its own desires, but knowing they exist all the same.

So the two cat trees stand at an impasse, neither understanding the others wishes or interests. Both upset with the state of how things are, both wishing for change, both wishing for their loneliness to subside. Both trapped in their own minds, not seeing the other that is, but only the other that they imagine them to be. If they could talk, communicate, understand each other, they might be able to work out their differences, realize their failings, their mistakes, and come to terms with each other.

But they cannot, for they are merely cat trees, doomed to stand in but one place, forever silent, forever the servant of cats who pay them no mind at all.