There were once three mummified cats, sealed in an Egyptian tomb.

“I was deemed such a wonderful cat,” said the first, “that I was chosen to follow my little queen into the afterlife; thereupon I was strangled and packed with sawdust, with lapis chips pressed to my eyes.” 

“If one consults Herodotus,” returned the middle cat, “I’m the most favored, for so beloved was I of Pharaoh that he carried me himself to the granary at night, and now he rests his feet for eternity atop my gilded case.” 

“Actually, I’m the luckiest cat,” said a cursed cat, whose corporealities consisted of a bundle of dried-out bones in a baboon’s canopic jar.

“You —?!” laughed the other two. 

“Yes. I had one perfect afternoon on a blue sandstone ledge as the rushes sighed in the breeze,” said the final cat. “My whole life I starved, but for one terrifying and wonderful moment I cringed close and licked rancid butter from the fingers of a child. Under an enormous moon, a hundred cats screamed and fought over me in the souq, while the best of them — an Abyssinian with an earring and a golden collar—bit my neck and bred me. Many, many happy evenings I wandered a dry riverbed in the foothills, hunting bitter, crunchy beetles, and it chanced that a jackal tore me to pieces. He ate my heart and it made him strong. My dessicated bones were gathered by an outcast priest of Heka, who fashioned of them a villainous charm. My curses held such power that they freed his only daughter, a slave-girl. Then I was placed in a vessel and set to guard this pyramid for eternity, and the historians who radiograph my jug will be eternally cursed.” 

A mouse rustled in a basket.

“Luck is certainly subjective,” observed the beloved cat. 

“Such common effusions!” said the wonderful cat. “Regrettably, you are not the Pharaoh’s cat and you will never sail for eternity across the Field of Reeds.”

“True,” said the cursed cat, “yet here we are.” 

[Jessica Lackaff is an ex-book dealer and literary luddite with what Chuck Palahniuk calls a “kitchen table MFA”. Her thesaurus of choice is an old Roget’s from 1925.]