My cat Easy (named after the late Eazy-E) is in poor health. He’s got the stereotypical nine lives and he’s a survivor. So despite several brushes with death, he’s with us today. He’s also a motherfucking haggler. If you don’t give him something he wants, he finds a way to get it. He persists with louder meows, pacing the house (loudly, with unclipped nails), and occasionally knocking shit over until you give him what he wants.

He’s also one of the smarter animals I’ve encountered. He knows how to get your sympathy. He knows when you want to give him medicine that tastes like shit and avoids you like the plague. And he can twist fucking doorknobs with his paws.

But he does a strange thing that I’ve noticed that’s not not smart but it’s one of those revealing “ah, you don’t have the universe in the palm of your hand quite like you thought” behaviors. Here it is, step by step:

1. Looks in his food area for food.
2. Demands to be let outside.
[maybe two minutes elapse]
3. Immediately demands to be let back in.
4. Checks for food again in his food area.

Because he goes outside sometimes with no desire but to hunt rats and leap fences (which sometimes results in him being gone until dinner), I think he thinks the action of going outside at all leads to a refresh of his food bowl. Thus he observes a correlation (going outside/inside=food o’clock) that is not entirely accurate.

So, lede-burier that I am, I finally wonder: what do even the smartest humans do that’s based on a false correlation? And who is watching us with enough intellectual remove to recognize that? Because the former can’t exist without the latter and vice versa. Wondering who the who in this question might be is the closest I get to believing in aliens are in our midst. Or at least capable of observing us intimately yet from a distance.

Point being: my cat makes me confident that aliens exist. Check out the title to this record by the inestimable Jack O’ The Clock for the sliver of inspiration that led us here tonight.