Catopolis

There, on the screen of the strange and terrible device, was a newspaper.

The London Times.

That night, the moment Herbert stepped out the door, Sophocles raced to the phone. He batted the receiver from the cradle so hard that it went flying off the desktop and clattered to the floor. Sophocles had to fish it back up by the cord before he could make his call.

He pawed the numbers, let the phone ring a single time, and then smacked the contact back down to hang up. It was a signal he and a friend of his had developed for calling one another during human waking hours. They’d picked it up from other cats they’d talked to at the vet. He’d heard humans talking about the strange calls they get that ring once and no one is there, but fortunately the humans attributed them to telemarketers or trouble with the lines.

A moment later the phone rang and Sophocles answered.

“Hello,” he mewed.

“Hey, Sophocles. I had to sneak the cordless phone under the bed to call you back. What’s the big emergency?”

“Mr. Snuggles! We have a serious problem over here. I need the advice of someone who knows about those crazy phone things the humans are all carrying.”

Sophocles had hissed the word “crazy.” He despised the trappings of modern society, seeing its many technological marvels as little more than showy glitz designed to sap the time and money of the working cat. Probably true for humans as well, but he hadn’t given it that much thought. Of course, after today’s incident he realized he might need to reconsider.

“Why don’t we get together tomorrow and…” Mr. Snuggles began.

“No. Tonight. We need to talk right away,” said Sophocles.

“Okay, okay, don’t choke on a hairball. Look, the boy is going out with his friends in a few minutes. When he leaves, I’ll slip out and come right over. Will that work?”

“Yes, fine. Don’t delay. This is of the utmost importance.”

“No problem. Just try to calm down, and stay away from the catnip. I’ll be over as soon as I can.”

Mr. Snuggles lived in an apartment a block from the newsstand. He and Sophocles had met at the vet’s a couple of years back. Although their personalities differed dramatically, for some reason they hit it off. Where Sophocles was old, almost fifteen by his own count, and loved all things traditional, Mr. Snuggles was young, a mere kitten in Sophocles’ eyes at three years, and he loved everything new and exciting.

Sophocles propped open the bathroom window for Mr. Snuggles, then busied himself counting copies on the magazine rack. If anything was low, he had to make sure to sit near the copy and mew tomorrow, so Herbert would remember to restock. The man was frustratingly unobservant at times.

An hour later, Mr. Snuggles arrived.

“Hey, Sophocles,” he said, his coppery eyes glinting in the half-light.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re here,” Sophocles said.

Mr. Snuggles made his way around the room, sniffing the corners and taking the place in.

“Man, you’re lucky. I love this place, Sopho. The ambience is fantastic. It’s like stepping back in time. I mean, look at this,” he said, hopping onto the counter and sniffing at a clear plastic jar of candies. “You guys even have squirrel nuts. Seriously, Sopho, where do you even order squirrel nuts? I didn’t even know they still made them. Places like this are an endangered species.”

Sophocles joined Mr. Snuggles on the counter and swished his tail under Mr. Snuggles’ nose.

“If you’d stop rambling on, you’d find out that this is exactly why I called you.”

“What do you mean?” Mr. Snuggles asked.

Sophocles hopped from the counter to the desk behind it, and dragged a heavy binder out from between two bookends shaped like the front and rear of a Spanish galleon. With a bit of effort, he flipped open the cover, then pawed through the pages until he reached a section near the end.

“Look,” he insisted.

Mr. Snuggles hopped over as well and glanced at the page. Columns of numbers filled it from top to bottom, with a startling number of them written in red ink.

“Wow, this is amazing,” said Mr. Snuggles.

“Isn’t it?” sighed Sophocles. “Shocking, I know.”

“Yeah,” said Mr. Snuggles. “I don’t think anyone has done their books by hand in the past twenty years. I mean, sheesh, Sophocles. Haven’t you guys ever heard of Quick-Books?”

Sophocles snapped a paw down on the page.

“Not that, you imbecile, these balances. We’re hemorrhaging money. In the past five years alone we’ve lost almost 60% of our regular customer base. For a while, I thought that perhaps another newsstand had opened nearby, but now I know what has happened.”

Mr. Snuggles quirked his head, a half-smile on his face.

“Oh, really? And what did you discover?”

Sophocles jumped to the floor and marched over to the magazines. With a flick of his paw, he knocked a copy of

Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine from the rack.

“This,” he said, pointing to the cover. “This is the problem.”

Mr. Snuggles jumped off the desk and sauntered over. He checked out the magazine cover, which displayed an array of high-end cell phones.

“What?” Mr. Snuggles replied in mock surprise. “Phones?”

“I know! It sounds unbelievable. I hardly believed it myself at first, but did you know,” Sophocles lowered his voice in a conspiratorial fashion, “that you can read newspapers on these?”

At first, Mr. Snuggles made a shocked expression, but then his eye twitched and he fell over onto the floor laughing. Sophocles stared at him, aghast.

“Wha… what’s so fu

“Sophocles,” Mr. Snuggles said, “you’ve been able to do that for years.

And take pictures, and read books, and listen to music, and send letters…”

“Letters?” gasped Sophocles.

This only sent Mr. Snuggles into further fits of laughter.

“Stop that! Stop that at once! This is my life you’re laughing at. My store is going to close!”

Mr. Snuggles stifled his next laugh, took a long breath, and wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of one paw. Rolling back onto his feet, he gave Sophocles a look of compassion.

“I’m sorry, Sophocles. It’s just that I keep telling you to read the technology sections of those papers you love so much.”

“Fah,” Sophocles hissed. “That’s not news. It’s corporate gossip. It has no business in a proper paper.”

“You can’t hide from it forever, Sophocles. This is the future. This is why all your customers are drifting away. They don’t need newspapers anymore.”

“What? Of course people need newspapers. Without the news we simply wander in shadow, ignorant of the world around us. Without the news we wallow, confused, with no understanding of our place in the world. Without the news…”

“I didn’t say people don’t need news. I said people don’t need newspapers.”

Sophocles stared, bewildered. Mr. Snuggles sighed.

“Look, Sophocles. Remember when I told you about the internet?”

Sophocles nodded and said, “Isn’t that the thing humans use to share mating images?”

“Well, yeah, partly. Okay, mostly, but it’s more than that. It’s become an interco

“But… but what about the papers we have here? I mean we offer papers from the far corners of the earth. We already keep people co

“So does the internet, Sophocles, only you don’t have to wait until the afternoon print run is complete, or days for those out-of-country editions you carry. You can find out right now, the moment the news happens.”

Sophocles walked over to the rack of newspapers and ran a paw over a copy of the