“Mew are the chosen one.”

I balked at the rotund feline and continued staring. Did it really talk? Or did I suddenly develop a cool yet useless skill of understanding cat language? Last time I checked, this was something that could only happen in an anime (and an unhinged one at that).

“Hey, I’m talking to mew.” The cat sounded impatient—which, to be fair, you would expect from a cat. Its gray fur was scrunched around its bright, yellow eyes in its attempt to squint, but the action only made it look asleep.

“Chosen for…what?” In my bewilderment, I unconsciously replied, as if it was the most natural thing to do to chat with a talking cat that appeared in your room out of nowhere.

“Mew wasn’t paying attention, huh?” The plump furball attempted a human eye-roll that made it look like an uncanny AI slop animation, but I kept quiet at its unfair accusation. I mean, could it really blame me for being shocked out of my skin to open my door to a tsunami of cats crashing down on me in the morning? My poor door and I hadn’t even recovered from that, let alone having to deal with a judgmental talking cat.

“I told mew about how the CDS malfunctioned last night, and that mew are the only one unaffected. Mew need to help us fix the system.”

The system. Of course.

Apparently, there was a strange secret program created by The Powers That Be™ that distributed cats to all humans since time immemorial. It was called the CDS—Cat Distribution System. The system, which never broke down before, suddenly suffered a glitch that messed up its schedule and recipients, which ended up with yours truly hoarding ALL the cats in the world.

“I never asked for this,” I mumbled to myself as I tried to reclaim my numb arms from several cats sleeping on top of them. The talking cat, however, thought I complained, so it let out an angry hiss uncharacteristic of its cute shape.

“Mew think I want this?!” it threatened unsuccessfully. “I was in the middle of a nice dream of feasting in an all-you-can-eat fish buffet when the system alarm woke me up!”

With how it looked, one would think that it wasn’t a dream after all, but I digressed. 

“Well, what do you expect me to do?! I only knew this magical catmazon existed a mere ten minutes ago, and now you want me to fix it?!”

“There’s no other way, mew are the only functioning humans left after the whole catastrophe.”

Resisting myself to comment on the pun, I let out a loud groan and struggled to get up, several cats yowling in protest as they fell on top of their own kin. Debating with a talking cat while being drowned in living and breathing furs wasn’t in my bingo card this year, but here we are.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked as I stretched my aching body. Ugh, I even started smelling like a cat after being cocooned in them for hours.

“Don’t mew know what we do to humankind?” The round cat sneered. “Without us, humans are unable to cope with their lives and soon fall into severe melancholia—look!”

I obediently looked into the weird sci-fi screen that popped up out of nowhere like a bad, low-budget CGI. The screen showed humans from all over the world lying flat with a deadpanned expression or crouching at a corner, drawing circles on the ground. They looked completely miserable.

“If we don’t act now, there shall be no functioning humans left by the end of the week!” it exclaimed dramatically, its front paws planted on both sides of its head like an orange cartoon cat lamenting the lack of sustenance.

“And this concerns you…why?”

“Well, who would feed us if all humans disappeared?!”

“Ah.” I should have known that cats were more practical than we gave credit for. Then again, it had a point. I wouldn’t want to be the only human responsible for feeding every cat in the world and having no one else to talk to for the rest of my life.

With that, I made up my mind, “I guess I’ll save humanity after all.”