This story begins like most classics…with sleeping animals,
on the brink of a feud that would last centuries.
Panda, ruler of the bamboo forest, and cat,
ad-hoc leader of the “Meh, Whatever” tribe.
Locked in serious slumber. A nap-off the likes of which
had never been seen.
To the winner: the jungle. To the loser: exile.
The two had been napping for an
extraordinarily long time.
When, at the very same moment the sun
began to rise, so did two pairs of opposing eyelids.
It was impossibly, contestably closer than close…
but the sheep called the nap-off for the Pandas.
Which didn’t sit well with the cats, who accused
the pandas of going into hibernation mode,
not nap mode. The feud was on.
As time passed, they kept their distance.
Pandas stayed in their jungles, while cats spent
most of their time meandering in alleyways,
starring in Internet videos and sneaking into
places disguised as Ocelots.
As their disdain for each other grew,
so did their adoration among humans.
So much so, players of Minecraft requested
both cats and pandas in the game.
As one cat and panda expert prone to
overly dramatic puns put it, “That would not
only be a CAT-astrophe. That would be PANDA-monium.”
Over the centuries, many summits
were held in hopes of building a bridge
of peace between cat and panda
communities. There was the August
Accord that wasn’t and the Burly Brawl in
Belize that was best left behind.
Everything changed one fateful day in Winnipeg.
The Paws and Claws summit was the tipping point.
The tension in the room was…tense.
As the saying goes: one meow could be
the bamboo stalk that broke the panda’s back.
Then with hope once again lost, something
unbelievable happened. An angel of arbitration appeared…
with a stickered laptop! She was a game developer,
there to show them a world where cats and pandas
could co-purr and co-growl in harmony.
She showed them something long
lost to the annals of ancient cat and
panda folklore. A world where furballs
big and small rolled and cajoled.
And naps were napped for
pleasure, not for dominance.
This world was Minecraft.
All was silent. Except for my narration.
Then the rising sound of a meow and growl
that hadn’t been meowed and growled for hundreds of years.
Two blocky light bulbs went off at the same time.
If cats and pandas can coexist in Minecraft,
they can coexist anywhere.
It’s a little-known fact that sometimes facts get
in the way of fiction. And sometimes a little
fiction helps ensure the future’s bright when
cats and pandas are megabytes.
