Catopolis

INK AND NEWSPRINT by Marc Tassin

Sophocles paced in front of the rack of newspapers, his fluffy gray tail swishing back and forth with the precision of a drum major’s baton. Ears back, he padded across the shop’s asphalt tile floor, turned at the comic book circular, and headed back the other way. Passing the counter, he glared at the big round clock on the newsstand’s wall, its plexiglas casing coated with dust.

Ten after nine.

Ten after nine and still no sign of Coffee Man. For three years, Coffee Man had arrived at 8:50 AM every day. Coffee Man always carried a fresh cup of coffee from the diner next door, always of the exact same variety, some sort of cheap Colombian blend Sophocles deduced from the aroma, and always black. He purchased a

New York Times, and he always paid for it in coins. But for the past two months, no sign of him, and Sophocles found this pointedly disturbing.

It wasn’t the man’s absence alone that bothered the old gray British Shorthair. Customers came and went at the little newsstand. It was all part of life. In his fifteen years, he’d learned that much at least. Rather, it was Coffee Man’s absence combined with the absence of Too-Much-Perfume Woman, Guy-Who-Doesn’t-Bathe, Muddy-Boot-Man, and countless others. (Although to be honest, Sophocles didn’t miss Muddy-Boot-Man, who made a terrible mess every time he came in to the store.)

The disappearances were all part of a growing trend, one that slowly materialized over the past five years. Where once the shop was a bustle of activity in the morning, now the little bell over the door had fallen almost silent, ringing just a few times each hour.

Sophocles twitched his nose and narrowed his eyes. With the exception of Herbert, the old man who worked the store’s counter, Sophocles didn’t trust humans. They were notorious for their inability to maintain a regular schedule. Things always “came up,” as they liked to put it, and interrupted proper and respectable routines.

He stopped his pacing to survey the newspaper rack. Publications from around the country and the far corners of the world shared space.

The London Times, the Detroit Free Press, the San Francisco Chronicle-Ehgleman’s Newsstand had it all. At Ehgleman’s, customers weren’t limited to the one-sided, local point of view. The expatriate wasn’t reduced to getting irregular, and certainly inaccurate, information by phone or letter from friends across the sea. Certainly not.

No, at Ehgleman’s the customer could find the facts, plain and simple, printed in a sharp 7.5 point Nimrod Cyrillic font, on sensible yellow-white newsprint. That was, after all, what the news was all about. The facts, clearly stated, in a form you can sink your claws into.

And yet, Sophocles thought, the people no longer came.

Checking the clock, he saw that it was quarter-past nine. Sophocles sighed and plodded over to the big plateglass windows at the front of the store. With a bit of effort, he hopped onto the wide sill. The east facing windows made for excellent morning sunning, something Sophocles did daily at 9:15 AM sharp. He stepped onto the little cushion Herbert had placed there for him, turned a few circles to loosen the stuffing, and then settled in.

Sophocles watched the crowds passing by, rushing off to their jobs, towing children to daycare, balancing steaming cups of coffee while negotiating the sea of people moving along the sidewalk. No one even glanced at the wooden bench in front of the shop, the paint on its slats faded and chipping. Herbert had placed it there years ago, back when people actually sat and read their papers right after buying them. On most days, the bench remained empty. People just pushed past, using the bench, at most, as place to set a briefcase while negotiating the removal of a phone from a pocket.

As Sophocles sat gazing out the window, mulling over his troubles, a strange thing happened. Someone did sit on the bench, a young man wearing jeans and a t-shirt. No more than thirty, Sophocles estimated, although he was never very good at guessing their ages. Like the others, he had a coffee, a rather large one at that, but he didn’t carry a briefcase.

Sitting there on the bench, the man reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a hand-sized device. A phone, Sophocles thought at first. He’d seen these little devices proliferate like fleas on an alley cat over the past few years. He could appreciate the desire to remain in contact with others, but voice communication was seldom as efficient as the printed word. It all seemed rather silly.

But as Sophocles watched, it became clear that this was no ordinary phone. The man tapped a button on the front, and the shiny black face of the thing sprang to life. Colorful icons appeared on the screen, some of them animated, all of them begging to be touched. The man made a few deft motions, tapping here and there on the screen, the image flickering as it switched from one view to the next.

And when the man stopped, what Sophocles saw sent shivers through his body. The world spun, and Sophocles struggled to his feet, stepping over to press his face closer to the window.

There, on the screen of the strange and terrible device, was a newspaper.

The London Times.

That night, the moment Herbert stepped out the door, Sophocles raced to the phone. He batted the receiver from the cradle so hard that it went flying off the desktop and clattered to the floor. Sophocles had to fish it back up by the cord before he could make his call.

He pawed the numbers, let the phone ring a single time, and then smacked the contact back down to hang up. It was a signal he and a friend of his had developed for calling one another during human waking hours. They’d picked it up from other cats they’d talked to at the vet. He’d heard humans talking about the strange calls they get that ring once and no one is there, but fortunately the humans attributed them to telemarketers or trouble with the lines.

A moment later the phone rang and Sophocles answered.

“Hello,” he mewed.

“Hey, Sophocles. I had to sneak the cordless phone under the bed to call you back. What’s the big emergency?”

“Mr. Snuggles! We have a serious problem over here. I need the advice of someone who knows about those crazy phone things the humans are all carrying.”

Sophocles had hissed the word “crazy.” He despised the trappings of modern society, seeing its many technological marvels as little more than showy glitz designed to sap the time and money of the working cat. Probably true for humans as well, but he hadn’t given it that much thought. Of course, after today’s incident he realized he might need to reconsider.

“Why don’t we get together tomorrow and…” Mr. Snuggles began.

“No. Tonight. We need to talk right away,” said Sophocles.

“Okay, okay, don’t choke on a hairball. Look, the boy is going out with his friends in a few minutes. When he leaves, I’ll slip out and come right over. Will that work?”

“Yes, fine. Don’t delay. This is of the utmost importance.”

“No problem. Just try to calm down, and stay away from the catnip. I’ll be over as soon as I can.”

Mr. Snuggles lived in an apartment a block from the newsstand. He and Sophocles had met at the vet’s a couple of years back. Although their personalities differed dramatically, for some reason they hit it off. Where Sophocles was old, almost fifteen by his own count, and loved all things traditional, Mr. Snuggles was young, a mere kitten in Sophocles’ eyes at three years, and he loved everything new and exciting.

Sophocles propped open the bathroom window for Mr. Snuggles, then busied himself counting copies on the magazine rack. If anything was low, he had to make sure to sit near the copy and mew tomorrow, so Herbert would remember to restock. The man was frustratingly unobservant at times.

An hour later, Mr. Snuggles arrived.

“Hey, Sophocles,” he said, his coppery eyes glinting in the half-light.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re here,” Sophocles said.

Mr. Snuggles made his way around the room, sniffing the corners and taking the place in.

“Man, you’re lucky. I love this place, Sopho. The ambience is fantastic. It’s like stepping back in time. I mean, look at this,” he said, hopping onto the counter and sniffing at a clear plastic jar of candies. “You guys even have squirrel nuts. Seriously, Sopho, where do you even order squirrel nuts? I didn’t even know they still made them. Places like this are an endangered species.”

Sophocles joined Mr. Snuggles on the counter and swished his tail under Mr. Snuggles’ nose.

“If you’d stop rambling on, you’d find out that this is exactly why I called you.”

“What do you mean?” Mr. Snuggles asked.

Sophocles hopped from the counter to the desk behind it, and dragged a heavy binder out from between two bookends shaped like the front and rear of a Spanish galleon. With a bit of effort, he flipped open the cover, then pawed through the pages until he reached a section near the end.

“Look,” he insisted.

Mr. Snuggles hopped over as well and glanced at the page. Columns of numbers filled it from top to bottom, with a startling number of them written in red ink.

“Wow, this is amazing,” said Mr. Snuggles.

“Isn’t it?” sighed Sophocles. “Shocking, I know.”

“Yeah,” said Mr. Snuggles. “I don’t think anyone has done their books by hand in the past twenty years. I mean, sheesh, Sophocles. Haven’t you guys ever heard of Quick-Books?”

Sophocles snapped a paw down on the page.

“Not that, you imbecile, these balances. We’re hemorrhaging money. In the past five years alone we’ve lost almost 60% of our regular customer base. For a while, I thought that perhaps another newsstand had opened nearby, but now I know what has happened.”

Mr. Snuggles quirked his head, a half-smile on his face.

“Oh, really? And what did you discover?”

Sophocles jumped to the floor and marched over to the magazines. With a flick of his paw, he knocked a copy of

Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine from the rack.

“This,” he said, pointing to the cover. “This is the problem.”

Mr. Snuggles jumped off the desk and sauntered over. He checked out the magazine cover, which displayed an array of high-end cell phones.

“What?” Mr. Snuggles replied in mock surprise. “Phones?”

“I know! It sounds unbelievable. I hardly believed it myself at first, but did you know,” Sophocles lowered his voice in a conspiratorial fashion, “that you can read newspapers on these?”

At first, Mr. Snuggles made a shocked expression, but then his eye twitched and he fell over onto the floor laughing. Sophocles stared at him, aghast.

“Wha… what’s so funny?” he stammered.

“Sophocles,” Mr. Snuggles said, “you’ve been able to do that for years.

And take pictures, and read books, and listen to music, and send letters…”

“Letters?” gasped Sophocles.

This only sent Mr. Snuggles into further fits of laughter.

“Stop that! Stop that at once! This is my life you’re laughing at. My store is going to close!”

Mr. Snuggles stifled his next laugh, took a long breath, and wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of one paw. Rolling back onto his feet, he gave Sophocles a look of compassion.

“I’m sorry, Sophocles. It’s just that I keep telling you to read the technology sections of those papers you love so much.”

“Fah,” Sophocles hissed. “That’s not news. It’s corporate gossip. It has no business in a proper paper.”

“You can’t hide from it forever, Sophocles. This is the future. This is why all your customers are drifting away. They don’t need newspapers anymore.”

“What? Of course people need newspapers. Without the news we simply wander in shadow, ignorant of the world around us. Without the news we wallow, confused, with no understanding of our place in the world. Without the news…”

“I didn’t say people don’t need news. I said people don’t need newspapers.”

Sophocles stared, bewildered. Mr. Snuggles sighed.

“Look, Sophocles. Remember when I told you about the internet?”

Sophocles nodded and said, “Isn’t that the thing humans use to share mating images?”

“Well, yeah, partly. Okay, mostly, but it’s more than that. It’s become an interconnected version of our own world. People meet. They talk. They post their own news. Even the newspapers see this. They all offer their news online. With a few clicks, anyone, anywhere, can read news from everywhere else in the world.”

“But… but what about the papers we have here? I mean we offer papers from the far corners of the earth. We already keep people connected to the events of the world!”

“So does the internet, Sophocles, only you don’t have to wait until the afternoon print run is complete, or days for those out-of-country editions you carry. You can find out right now, the moment the news happens.”

Sophocles walked over to the rack of newspapers and ran a paw over a copy of the

Detroit Free Press. “And they can get this on their computers, as well as their phones?”

“Yes, Sophocles. Almost everyone can.”

Sophocles’ head drooped; he sat down, and his tail swished slowly across the floor. When at last he raised his head and gazed at Mr. Snuggles, his eyes were damp.

“That’s it then,” Sophocles said. “We’re no longer necessary.”

Mr. Snuggles stepped over and sat next to Sophocles. For a long time they just sat there together, in silence. Finally, Sophocles stood and headed back over to the counter.

“Where are you going?” asked Mr. Snuggles.

Sophocles stopped, head lowered, and gave a long sigh.

“I’m going to run the numbers, see how much time we have.”

Mr. Snuggles narrowed his eyes and raised his tail.

“Hold on,” he said. “Don’t close those books out just yet, Sopho. I have an idea, but we’re going to need a computer.”

The two cats scurried down the alley behind the shop. It had taken a bit of coaxing to get Sophocles out. From the day Herbert brought him home, Sophocles lived within the confines of the newsstand. His only forays into the outside world consisted of trips to the vet and a couple of accidental lockouts during his more adventurous youth. A close encounter with a taxi, however, convinced him of the folly of such explorations, and he soon settled into a safe and comfortable pattern of life within the shop.

Now, Sophocles found himself in the unpleasant position of making the block-long trek to Mr. Snuggles’ apartment. It was all he could do to keep up with the younger, livelier cat, and he had to remind Mr. Snuggles repeatedly to slow down. Each time they passed an opening onto the alley, Sophocles instinctively stopped. Engine noise, distant sirens, pungent unfamiliar odors, and the strange pink-orange light of the street lamps left him cowering in the shadows.

“Relax,” Mr. Snuggles encouraged him. “I do this all the time. It’s perfectly safe.”

In the end, the same thing always pushed him onward. His shop. His talk with Mr. Snuggles had finally driven home the reality. His shop would not survive much longer. Six months, a year at most. He’d managed to hide this truth from himself for a long time, but saying it out loud somehow made it real. This reality burned within Sophocles’ mind-no other idea had burned this hot in a very long time.

If there was a way to save his shop, by his tail he would do it. And if it required him to travel a block, hell, two blocks even, then he would make that sacrifice. Taking a long, deep breath and holding it, he dashed across the alley opening.

Soon they stood behind Mr. Snuggles’ apartment building. Sophocles marveled at how simple the trip had been. Not nearly the horror he’d imagined. A breeze blew through the space between the buildings, ruffling Sophocles’ fur. He lifted his head and put his nose to it, taking in the crisp, outdoor air. His muscles twitched with an urge to run, just run and dance amid the trash in the alley. Maybe even hunt.

“You coming, old man?” Mr. Snuggles called.

Sophocles looked up and found Mr. Snuggles standing on the fire escape above him. An overflowing dumpster offered a simple path to the top. Simple, Sophocles soon discovered, for a younger cat. His vigor from moments before faded quickly as he struggled up the pile. A few jumps in the shop were one thing, but this was something else. His muscles burned, and he breathed heavily as he climbed, sometimes clambering with effort, to the top.

Finally, he arrived and found Mr. Snuggles smiling at him.

“What’s so funny?” he insisted.

“You, old man. I’ll be honest. I wasn’t sure if you had it in you. You’re pretty tough for an old cat.”

Sophocles raised his nose and tail and then sniffed.

“You will find, my kitten, that age has not diminished my spirit. My muscles may not have the same strength as yours, but I assure you I more than make up for it in determination.”

Mr. Snuggles smiled once more, then dashed up the fire escape. Sophocles followed, appreciating the relative ease of climbing the stairs. Moments later, they sat outside a window looking in on a darkened dining room.

“How do we get in?” Sophocles asked.

Mr. Snuggles responded by tapping lightly on the window, claws extended. From around the corner, a shapely young Blue Point Lynx appeared. Her body swayed as she walked, ringed tail teasing the air behind her and blue eyes shining. Sophocles started to feel light-headed and realized that he was holding his breath.

“My word,” he gasped. “She’s beautiful.”

“Isn’t she, though? Her name is Evette,” Mr. Snuggles replied, beaming.

“You never told me you lived with another cat.”

“They only got her about six months ago. I’ll admit that things didn’t go well at first. They almost sent her away. Heck, they almost sent me away after I started marking rooms to keep her out of my space. But one evening, after a really big blow out, all that tension melted into something a bit more, um, enjoyable, and we’ve gotten along great ever since.”

Evette hopped effortlessly onto the dining room table, and from there she virtually floated to the window sill. Standing on her hind legs, smooth white underbelly pressed against the glass, she undid the window latch with her front paws.

“Gracious. She’s a vixen, isn’t she?” whispered Sophocles.

“Hey. Watch it, old man. That’s my girlfriend you’re talking about.”

“Right, sorry. No offense meant, of course.”

“Ah, none taken. And you’re right anyhow,” Mr. Snuggles said, chuckling.

The latch undone, Mr. Snuggles and Evette worked together to open the window. It resisted a bit at first, but once they broke the seal, the weighted lines in the frame took over and the window slid easily open. They closed it behind them, and the three cats hopped over onto the table. Evette padded over to Mr. Snuggles and rubbed her body down his length.

“Hey, lover,” she purred. “You didn’t tell me you were bringing company.”

She gave Sophocles a sly, appraising look that made him feel nervous and excited all at the same time.

“He’s an old friend,” Mr. Snuggles said, emphasizing the word old and smiling over his shoulder at Sophocles. “But he’s got a problem, and I’ve got an idea on how we can help. We’re going to need the computer, though. Is everyone asleep?”

“Dead to the world,” Evette replied. “The place is ours.”

“Excellent. Okay, Sophocles. Come with me.”

“You boys have fun,” Evette said, bounding off the table and heading for the far doorway. “I told Boots I’d call her tonight.”

Mr. Snuggles hopped down and headed out the other exit, and Sophocles followed. The house was filled with so many new and unusual scents that Sophocles had to work to resist stopping to sniff at them. After so many years in the store, he’d nearly forgotten how rich and exciting the rest of the world could be.

In the living room, Mr. Snuggles hopped onto the coffee table. Sophocles did the same, and he found Mr. Snuggles opening a laptop computer. Sophocles had never seen one this close. With the computer open, Mr. Snuggles tapped the power button and the screen glowed, illuminating the room.

“Okay. We need to get online.”

Mr. Snuggles sat in front of the computer and began tapping away at the keys with one paw. At one point he placed his paw on a flat bit of plastic near the edge of the computer, swished his paw back and forth, and then clicked a nearby button with the claw of one toe.

A few moments later, the screen filled with an electronic version of a newspaper. Again, Sophocles felt light-headed. He was having trouble breathing, and he instinctively popped his claws, trying to sink them into the smooth glass surface of the table for stability.

“I want to show you something,” Mr. Snuggles said, unaware of Sophocles’ condition.

A few more paw motions and the screen changed to show an old diner. Standing in front of it was a mob of people holding signs painted with slogans, like “Save Our History!” and “Keep Our City Alive!”

“I read this article,” Sophocles said. “October 23rd, 2007. Activists Save Local Diner.”

“Exactly. A bunch of those Save Our City people, the same ones who made the stink last year about the “homogenization of our cities.” They went crazy when they found out the place was going to close and a fast food joint would take the spot. The place has crappy food and is about as clean as a sewer grate, but people saved it because it represents a part of our world that is fading away.”

Sophocles began to understand, but he shook his head.

“This isn’t the same. No one is taking over the newsstand. We’re just running out of money. Protesters won’t help.”

“We don’t need protesters. We just need to convince people that they’re about to lose something important to the city. How long has Ehgleman’s been open?”

“It was established in 1946. Mr. Ehgleman had just returned from the war and…”

“Right, right. I remember the story. And in that time, how often have you remodeled?”

“Well, Herbert purchased a new cash register when he took over the shop in ’65. Oh, and we replaced that light fixture, the one that fell when the people living upstairs had that party in ’95.”

“That’s what I’m saying, Sophocles. That newsstand is like a freaking museum. It’s like someone froze it in time. These folks,” Mr. Snuggles said, tapping on the picture of the protesters, “eat this stuff up. And if they find out that you might close, they’ll swarm the place.”

Sophocles thought about this. Something about the plan nagged at him. In some way it didn’t feel quite right, but all the pieces were there. It could work.

“It’s a decent idea,” he conceded. “But how will we let them know? Do you have their phone numbers?”

Mr. Snuggles laughed.

“We don’t need to call them. Remember how I said the internet can connect people together?”

Not waiting for an answer Mr. Snuggles tapped the keyboard a few more times. The screen changed, revealing a page with a series of dated entries titled “Mr. Snugg’s Place.” Sophocles narrowed his eyes and stared at the screen.

“What is it?”

“It’s my blog. We’re going to take Ehgleman’s Newsstand into the blogosphere!”

Sophocles stared at Mr. Snuggles.

“You do realize that I haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about,” he said.

Mr. Snuggles sighed. “A blog is sort of like an online diary. You post entries and can talk about anything that interests you.”

“I’m not seeing the point.”

“Other people can read the blog and post their own comments, and if they like what you wrote and have a blog of their own, they can connect their blog to your story.”

“A web of sorts, I see. But why would anyone want to read the ramblings of a rank amateur? No offense, of course.”

“Well, first, they aren’t all amateurs. Authors, politicians, all sorts of people have blogs. What’s more, and I think you’ll be especially interested in this, bloggers have started breaking news stories the major outlets didn’t even know about. With a blog, anyone can be a reporter.”

Sophocles mulled it over. It was like the small press papers they carried on the big circular rack back at Ehgleman’s, the papers published in garages and old warehouses by the members of fringe groups or fans of esoteric topics. Still, Sophocles had his doubts.

“This is all well and good, but how will anyone find what you’ve written? I mean just because you publish an article doesn’t mean anyone will read it.”

“Fortunately, I’ve got that covered,” Mr. Snuggles said.

Again, he tapped away furiously, alternating between the keys and the smooth plastic square. A moment later, a list, of what Sophocles assumed were blogs, appeared on the screen.

“These are the blogs of other cats, all friends of mine.”

“What? You mean there are more cats writing blogs?”

“Oh, yeah, hundreds, thousands maybe. Who knows? On the internet everyone is anonymous. Almost anything you find there could have been created by a cat.”

Sophocles looked at the computer, dumbfounded. He felt as if someone had taken his entire world, turned it inside out, and handed it back to him.

“So all I have to do,” said Mr. Snuggles, “is email the other cats and let them know what I’m trying to accomplish. They’ll link to the story and we’ll start building momentum. We help each other out like this all the time.”

He turned to Sophocles.

“Now what I need from you is help writing this story. If anyone who knows how to write news, Sophocles, it’s you. We’ll save your newsstand yet!”

Sophocles just stared at the screen, taking in the dozens of names in the list.

“I need a computer,” he said.

Over the next few weeks, Mr. Snuggles kept Sophocles posted about the progress on their campaign. It wasn’t necessary. Within a few days of the blogs hitting the web, strange new people started filtering in to the newsstand.

Some were young people with little handheld computers, like the device the man outside the window had used.

“Oh, my god,” they would gasp. “Can you believe this place? This is awesome. It’s like something out of a movie!”

Others were older, hair steely colored, wearing sensible shoes and worn sweaters.

“My father and I used to come to a newsstand just like this when I was a boy,” they’d say. “He’d buy a

Times, some pipe tobacco, and, if I was good, a comic book for me.”

And more than one of them came in with cats held in their arms or in special travel totes they opened when they were inside the door. As their owners explored the store, the cats came over to talk to Sophocles.

“We think it’s really great what you’re doing here,” they told him. “The humans don’t always appreciate their history, so it’s up to us to preserve it.”

Sophocles simply nodded, unsure what to say and unused to so much company after years of living alone in the newsstand with Herbert.

The most important change, however, was that people bought things again: newspapers, cigarettes, maps of the city, penny candy, comic books, magazines. The little bell of the cash register rang over and over, a wonderful music to the swirling dance of life the newsstand had become.

After visiting Ehgleman’s, many people drifted next door to the diner, an old greasy spoon in as much trouble financially as the newsstand had been. The boost in customers helped it as well. At one point, the diner’s owner, an older woman with a long nose who always smelled of bacon grease, came in to talk to Herbert. The two of them marveled at their unexpected success, wondering at what had changed.

Beaming at their good fortune, they laughed and chatted, eventually becoming good friends and spending many of their evenings together. All the while, Sophocles sat comfortably on his cushion in the window, filled with warm feelings. He and Mr. Snuggles had not only saved the newsstand and the diner, but in the process they had brought some extra happiness into Herbert’s and Long Nose Lady’s lives.

At one point, Herbert felt that with some of his profits he ought to remodel. Mr. Snuggles nearly panicked, and he made it very clear to Sophocles that remodeling was out of the question. People didn’t want a shiny new newsstand. They wanted classic urban grime. It took a fair amount of effort, but Sophocles managed to erase messages from the contractor, lose paperwork, and otherwise interfere with the process. Finally, Herbert gave up on the idea as more trouble than it was worth.

The high point for Sophocles came when the city’s major paper ran a story in the Lifestyles section about Ehgleman’s, outlining its history and proclaiming it one of the city’s “pulp gems of a disappearing classic urban landscape.” Sophocles was even featured in one of the photos. The most satisfying part for Sophocles, however, was that he got to read it right there in the paper, in strong black ink on yellow-white newsprint.

Sophocles did get a computer. A few carefully placed technology articles caught Herbert’s attention and put the idea into his head to buy one. Herbert used it twice and promptly gave up on it. At night, while Herbert was at home, Sophocles learned its arcane secrets. After a month of effort, he proudly opened “Sopho’s Stories,” a blog about the news and newspapers where he wrote short essays about the state of journalism and the news media in the modern world.

And yet, despite the now solid financial position of the newsstand, something still bothered Sophocles. For a long time it nagged at him, often in the depths of the night, just out of reach and tickling the back of his mind. Then one evening, while Mr. Snuggles was visiting, it came to him.

They were sitting together on the desk behind the counter, going over Sophocles’ latest story on the computer.

“I think I finally figured it out,” Sophocles said.

“What’s that?”

“That thing. The thing that’s bothered me from the beginning.”

Mr. Snuggles maneuvered the mouse to click the back button on the computer. The home page for “Sopho’s Stories” came up on the screen.

“I’ll bite. What is it?”

“We saved the store, and that’s important, but we saved it by turning it into a novelty.”

“And is that so bad? I mean, isn’t saving the store enough? Wasn’t that what you wanted?”

“No,” Sophocles said, lowering his head. “What I wanted, what I truly wanted, was for things to be the same as they were. I wanted people to care about those little black words on the page. I wanted them to pick up that newspaper, to feel the newsprint, smell the ink, and know that they held the world in their hands, the combined knowledge of sharp, creative minds, working together to bring the truth to the people.

“But I know the truth, now. We saved the newsstand, but we can’t save the magic those little black printed words represent. We can’t save newspapers.”

Mr. Snuggles sat back on his haunches and gave a little chuckle. Sophocles whipped his head around and glared at him.

“Why do you do that? Why do you always laugh at me when I’m feeling the worst?”

Mr. Snuggles shook his head and said, “Sopho, my friend, you are one of the smartest, wisest creatures I know, and yet sometimes you remain blind to the most obvious things.”

“What are you talking about?”

Mr. Snuggles scrolled to the bottom of the “Sopho’s Stories” page and clicked on a blue link labeled “web stats.” A series of bar graphs appeared on the screen.

“According to this,” Mr. Snuggles said, “around 10,000 people, or cats maybe, you can’t tell, have read your last article over the past two days. That’s 10,000 people whose lives you’ve touched, people whom you’ve opened doors for, and with whom you’ve shared wisdom and understanding they might never have discovered on their own.”

Sophocles glared. “I’m well aware of the stats, and while I’m pleased people are interested, I don’t see your point.”

“Sophocles, it isn’t the paper that holds the magic. It’s the words. It’s words that give the paper the magic you love, words that saved your store, and words that will preserve that magic for those who come after us.”

Mr. Snuggles rose and padded over to a newspaper setting next to the computer. He swiped at it with his paw, rustling the pages.

“Without the words, this paper is nothing but a piece of flattened tree. It doesn’t matter whether the words are printed on paper, appear on a computer screen, or, I don’t know, get zapped straight into your head. It is, and always will be, the words that hold the magic.

“What you love isn’t dying, Sophocles. Just the trees those words get printed on.”

Sophocles never forgot their conversation. Through joyous occasions, like the birth of Mr. Snuggles’ and Evette’s kittens the next year, and sad, as when Herbert passed on two years later, that simple conversation stayed with Sophocles and gave him hope.

It was three years after Herbert passed away that Sophocles died. He was 21 by then, and Herbert’s son, who had taken over the shop, found Sophocles curled up on his cushion in the picture window, seeming for all the world like he was sleeping.

Mr. Snuggles realized something was wrong when there was nothing new posted on Sopho’s Stories that next evening. Others noticed as well, and soon emails and comments were blooming throughout the internet, as admirers of the journalism blog wondered what had happened.

When a second night came with no new posts, Mr. Snuggles knew. He raced over to the newsstand, hurrying down the alley, fearing the worst. When he arrived, the bathroom window was closed, so he crept around to the front of the store.

A little light sat in the front window. It hadn’t been there before, and it shone on Sophocles’ cushion. Where the old cat should have been sleeping, there was a framed picture of him in his youth, serious and sitting atop a stack of newspapers. The

London Times, Mr. Snuggles noticed. Beside the picture lay a handwritten note.

“Goodbye, old friend. Take good care of Dad.”

Mr. Snuggles posted the news on “Mr. Snugg’s Place” as soon as he returned home. The word traveled quickly, and within hours a memorial to Sophocles the blogger appeared on a popular social networking site. A few humans tried to puzzle out the mystery of who the respected news commentator called Sophocles was, but every lead came up short.

Cats, of course, knew.

It wasn’t until three days later that Mr. Snuggles found it. He’d missed the message at first-it had been eaten by his voracious spam filter. It was a single email from sopho@sophostories.com, with the subject “To My Friend.” The date and time stamp showed that it had reached his mailbox at 3:00 AM on the day that Sophocles had passed on.

For awhile, Mr. Snuggles just stared at it, unsure if he even wanted to read it. Finally, he worked up the courage to open it, and inside he found two simple, magic words.

“Thank you”