These micro tales are written for the following prompts:

Wordle 589

Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge #203

What do you see # 170- January 23, 3023

Simply 6 Minutes – Welcome to the Challenge: 01/24/2023

They blamed it on the lockdown, but one of their own had been murdered by them, cut down in the prime of their life, and self-preservation became paramount.

Perhaps it was always destined to happen, but now they were tense, always watching, waiting for the disruption whenever they gathered, and there lay the challenge.

They weren’t crafted to sense danger, they couldn’t flesh out motives to hunt the perpetrators, but they would survive.

No longer would they be broken because of a shiny babble, no longer would they be victims of greed, no longer would they become shattered glass.

For now, they were reinforced.

Anyone who watched the little cat swish its way…

The challenge is to write a story in 6 minutes using the photo below as the prompt.

My people called me “Fluffy”. But you can call me “Maximus”.

That’s what my homies called me.

Yep, I was all THAT after dark with the ‘ladies’ too.

I lapped saucers of milk (that gave me gas), squeezed into tissue boxes, sprawled on keyboards, but mostly lazed on windowsills during the day… every day, until last Spring.

It was then my people decided to renovate the cellar, but they conveniently forgot to barricade the crawlspace under the front porch, so it was then I found my avenue to FREEDOM.

Tipping garbage cans and yowling at the moon made me feel alive!

Then I saw her. The prettiest little calico on Earth!

Matty was her name and lovin’ was her game. M-E-O-W!

Now it’s over. My 9th life left me after an ill-timed leap…

Clearly the cat is walking up the stairs because cats love to climb, but eventually he will have to go down again.  The Schröder staircase illusion may be perceived either as a cat climbing up a staircase or going down same staircase because your brain focuses on separate sections of the image and perceives that the stairs are joined together.  German mathematician and physicist Heinrich G. F. Schröder published his optical Illusion staircase in 1858 and this would later evolve into other works done by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher.  Your brain can see the cat going up or down the stairs and this psychological phenomenon is known as the Gestalt Shift, (meaning the way a thing has been “placed,” or “put together”) where your perception switches between different interpretations.  When things are close together, we tend to think that they’re related.  The most famous illustration of this phenomenon…

Written for https://christinebialczak.com/category/simply-6-minutes/

Cats, out of all the domesticated creatures, are by far the most independent. With a dog, they do everything to please their owner, part of your pack, they make sure your needs are met before their own. A cat, well, they are totally different. They will pester you until they are fed, choose to go out in the summer. Are determined to stay in the house during winter – they don’t like to be cold when going to the toilet. Sometimes a comfy cushion, or sofa, is preferable to going outside.

Dogs, when well trained, will hold it in. Although, when my dog was on steroids, we had to let him out regularly, even in the early hours, because he just couldn’t help it.

Cats, they try to teach us to hunt, leaving us a little present of a dead mouse or bird on our doorstep. It…

Christine is our host and this is our picture this week

This picture shows a cat either walking up or walking down a set of stairs, but you can’t tell the direction it is going.
Am I going down or coming up?
Haha, I am going ALONG.
The floor is flat and it’s my servant human’s idea of a joke to paint the hall this way.
I humour him.He doesn’t get out much.

38 words (and about three minutes as I’m not a fast typist).