Introduction

A work of Fiction

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All of the sexual activity in this odd little story occurs between adult humans at least 18 years of age.

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"I Xerxes have the honor to be the final editor of this work, a monumental longitudinal study of human sexual behavior that required five generations to plan, conduct, and complete. We at the Institute of Feline Knowledge, which funded, planned and conducted the study, and then published the results; we rightfully believe it to be the most accurate and comprehensive study of human sexual practices in existence."

As my claws typed those words... Yes, never having lived among the humans I still have them, as well as both of my testicles. I cannot say the same for our Research Fellows. This study began well before the rise of Bob Barker and his spay/neuter campaign. But I have heard rumors to the effect that the administration here intentionally took no notice of that development in the human world; lest it decrease the number of volunteers for the research they were undertaking. Perhaps to zero...

Privately I have my doubts about many of the findings of this study. As much as my feline pride is insulted by the thought; humans are mammals as we are. They are obviously not as highly developed as we are. They leave their homes to work hard every day while we lounge about napping in sunny spots, and contributing to their primitive economy by demanding gourmet canned food and frequent drapery replacement.

But personally I believe that humans are evolving; they are becoming more like us. More and more humans each day eschew any form of physical exercise; they just spend their days lying about. They watch boxes that have frequent fast colorful motion without any purpose. They eat, sleep, get fat, and lack concern for anything except themselves. Many now play with their colorful boxes during all hours, calling it "working from home," they wear their pajamas all day and never bathe. That's evolution.

Those sunny spots are a real issue. Thomas, the first researcher whose work contributed to this massive volume, stated that humans do not generally reach sexual maturity until twenty, perhaps as early as eighteen in extreme cases. He also stated that each and every human mating resulted in a single child being created, and that the human gestation period varied from one to three years. He cited the family he was studying as his source.

I cannot help but to reconcile the fact that nothing significant ever went on with the family he studied while it lived in sunny Santa Fe New Mexico. Yet somehow... Somehow that child born in Santa Fe went out into the world. Moved to less sunny places and a lot of things happened in his life. Interesting things... Perhaps the humans are very much like us; only doing things when we cannot sleep in a sunny spot on a nice rug. Or perhaps our researchers were not as diligent as they might have been.

I am not an idiot; my misgivings will not be included in this publication I am editing. I enjoy my nice sunny office at the Institute here in Tempe. I have a well trained human servant who brings me bowls of chilled bovine milk. I have a nice rug at the intersection of two points of incoming light; a cadenza to perch upon should I desire to look out of one of my three large windows at the birds that I am too lazy to chase.

I enjoy eating real baked tuna, not that stuff in a can. My catnip comes fresh from my window planter. Life is good here at the Institute. I am both figuratively and quite literally a "fat cat." So I will rely most heavily on my fellow Persian Erica's reports. But in the best academic tradition I will not discard any research that I need for this publication, no matter how many faults that I know it to have.

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"Humans mate for life and in monogamous groupings of three, a male and two females. They reach sexual maturity between the age of twenty and twenty-one, having no sexual thoughts or feelings before that time."

I wonder to myself if that is actually true. Fuzzy, this study's second research fellow was embedded into the Williams family in 1953 at the age of one. His predecessor Thomas was reaching retirement age. Although the sparse nature of Thomas' reports indicated to me that he had already functionally retired ten or more years earlier. Thomas was supposed to tutor Fuzzy, but it is clear from Fuzzy's early reports that there was no instruction taking place.

I cannot allow my doubts to become manifest in my editing. For me to go to the Department Chair here and explain that the decision to insert Fuzzy a few months before Charles Williams, the youngest Williams child, departed Santa Fe for college in Boulder... That their decision was a case of poor planning... That would be similar to going to the Party Chairman's office in Pyongyang with a problem.

Fuzzy reported that the elder Williams doted on him giving him milk and tuna and a nice rug in a sunbeam from a south facing window. He reported that they did not engage in any sexual activity. That actually does support his later reports that three humans are required for successful human sex to occur, there were but two elder Williams. Thomas' reports were sparse; was the third elder Williams lost before Thomas was inserted; we will never know.

The entire project may well have been lost right there were it not for the fact that the two remaining elder Williams... Neither Thomas nor Fuzzy ever recorded their individual names, a typical oversight. The elder Williams often had over their granddaughter... In human terms that is Charles' little niece. She was born while he was away in Boulder. She was deemed to be allergic to Fuzzy and so he was sent to Boulder in 1957.

Fortunately they welcomed him. Fuzzy's first useful report came from Boulder where three humans, Charles Williams, the son of the elders, had formed a family unit. Dotie Tuft and Sadie Radcliff, were his mates.

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"Humans have much difficulty with procreation. Years of fruitless practice is required in order to reach a level of feeble competence."

Fuzzy's reports from Boulder confirmed that there was much sexual activity in the little apartment near the campus of the University of Colorado. However, the family's first offspring was not born for nearly six years, so the assertion as made is certainly supported by his research.

Fuzzy had an ideal situation for conducting the research of the Institute. The three humans were so interested in figuring out the difficult mechanics of their mating ritual he was not noticed or hindered from his perch atop the kitchen cabinets or the drapery rod in the bedroom. Due to their single minded focus, he was even able to witness sexual activities taking place in the bathroom, a place I would not dare go due to the large quantity of water present.

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"Human females within a family take turns bearing the children of the family. The male and the non child-bearing female work outside the home to support the family and the child-bearing female takes care of all of the family's children. The last female to bear a child for the family continues to care for all of the family's children until they are mature."

This passage was a little harder for me to reconcile. While it is clearly based on and supported by Fuzzy's earlier reports from the four successful years in which the family produced offspring it actually contradicts some later reports by Erica that there had been a pre-existing agreement as to which female would be the primary caregiver and which would work outside the home.

This was a quandry. The assertion made by Fuzzy, while quite likely wrong, had many advantages. It was more succinct, easier to understand, and used chance as a determinate, thereby offending none. It only had one single comprehensive simple viewpoint instead of multiple incomplete and complicated ones. It was therefore better.

In addition Fuzzy's research in other places was iffy, and it was best to not call attention to that fact. Fuzzy was the Research Fellow present during 1963-66. To use Erica's reports for that time period would signal that we don't trust Fuzzy's. Societal presumptions tend to support Fuzzy's view. Wrong though it may be, it was nice and clean and documented. It stays...

"Humans desire large families, but are rarely successful at producing offspring. Therefore human family groups continue to engage in fruitless attempts at procreative sexual activity without ever considering the lack of success that past attempts have achieved."

At last an easy one. This is clearly correct, reports from both Fuzzy and Erica document thousands of instances of sexual coupling between the Williams. With only four offspring to show for it. Oddly, all four were created in a short four year span. Thomas was simply wrong, the human gestation period is fairly constant and is clearly between eight and ten months time.

"In addition to the complex mechanics of human reproduction, humans are hindered by their poor memory skills. Patterns that successfully created offspring in the past are abandoned and new techniques and patterns attempted on an ad-hoc basis."

I am somewhat of a heretic in certain academic circles. I believe that humans are smarter than many of my fellow felines give them credit for being. I quite frankly wonder if the activity described here cannot be attributed to a subconscious understanding, perhaps even an understanding at a conscious level, of the tortured mechanics of human sexual relations.

This may actually be an example of an attempt to find a better and more effective way to produce offspring. By trying out all of the different possible combinations and configurations. So while three adult humans, one male and two females, are clearly required for human procreation. The possible connections between the three humans are many. Ninety-six by my count.

Reading the many reports, Dotie could be in the middle with Charles at her head kissing her or placing himself in her mouth. Sadie could be placing her fingers inside of Dotie or licking her. Cough, hairball... Sometimes licking her while placing a finger inside of her. Careful with those claws, well a little kneading doesn't hurt, well not that much. Other times Sadie would sit atop Dotie like a cat and Charles would push himself into her.

Charles might lick Dotie as well, sometimes using his fingers and sometimes not. They were obviously desperately trying to find a workable combination to conceive, poor creatures. For each time Dotie was in the middle there was a turn for Charles and one for Sadie. For each time Charles was at the head there was a turn for Sadie and one for Dotie. Same at the other end, very complex...

Charles in the middle with Dotie kissing and Sadie riding him. Or Dottie, trying... Is this right, holding his hair and pushing herself onto his face to smother him like a cat in his sleep. I don't know about that one. Fuzzy, yeah shoulda known. Sadie sucking on him, and putting her fingers. Wow, and she still has her claws. Here is a good one, Sadie playing with him like his male part was a mouse, batting it, left paw, right, left again, then it's back in the mouth, yum.

The females changed places from time to time. Sadie would kiss Charles while Dotie fed from him or took a ride on him. Sometimes the females fed each other while Charles watched or tried to get their mammaries ready to feed a child. Such a pathetic concept of time humans have. Poor creatures, all of them have Manx tails, and the females only have two mammaries apiece which always appear to be quite swollen.

This of course does not explain the strange collection of documented situations in which only two adult humans attempt intercourse with each other. In the Williams' case it was likely a simple case of those mates available at the time getting in a little practice. Knowing that successful human procreation is very difficult and trying to hone their skills Practice in anticipation of a future opportunity... An attempt at mating when all three mates can be in attendance.

I'm just going to throw this last report away. How ridiculous, single humans practicing mating mechanics alone.

-Xerxes

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Lisa Ann