The cat wouldn’t let him get his work done.

It wasn’t what you think. The cat didn’t demand attention. It didn’t want food or to be let out. The litterbox was clean. It wasn’t sitting on the keyboard or anything like that.

The cat wouldn’t let him write, and he was powerless to do anything about it. It reclined, stretched out, sanguine, on a nearby shelf. Or on the floor. It didn’t even open its eyes most of the time. But he knew it was there, observing him all the same.

It didn’t want him to write. He could feel the malevolence coming off it. No, it wasn’t really malevolence. That wasn’t fair. It was amused. It wasn’t trying to accomplish a great evil or harm – though he would argue that preventing him from writing was, in fact, doing him harm. It just suited the cat to prevent him from getting his work done.

He wasn’t even sure how it accomplished this feat. But as he reached for the keyboard, he found his fingers unable to press any of the keys. He could rest his hands on the keys, but nothing else.