Bell¿ngcat
You can’t vote out a storm.
Behind a locked café door, the mice convene.
The air is thick with mildew and self-congratulation.
The wine is boxed and sour, sloshed into plastic cups.
They quote poetry badly, mangled lines for clout on Threads.
One thumps for revolution—just as long as it’s grant-funded.
All agree:
The Cat is a threat.
A hairpiece with teeth.
A walking glitch in the social contract.
Still, they draft.
They tweet.
They fundraise.
Footnotes pile up.
Screenshots timestamp the damage.
The machinery purrs louder than ever.
But outside?
Kids in cages.
Books banned.
Protesters trampled.
Journalists hunted.
A noose still sways in the rose garden.
A nominee lies—on record—and wins again.
The Cat is now
in the Oval,
licking the Constitution
one paw at a time.
Inside, the mice double down.
Talk blooms like subpoenas no one reads.
Outside, the Cat…
doesn’t listen.
doesn’t answer.
doesn’t care.
He prowls cable news like a panther,
ketchup on his tie, history on his hands.
He never read the rulebook.
He uses it to clean his claws.
Then one mouse—tie askew, eyes on the floor…
whispers, barely audible over the rest:
“I like the scraps he leaves behind.
The fundraising spikes when he rages.
It’s good for my consulting gig.
Subpoenas are theater… and I prefer theater to blood.”
The room doesn’t freeze.
It nods, almost imperceptibly.
Everyone pretends not to hear.
Glasses clink anyway.
A chair creaks.
Excuses scatter like campaign flyers.
No one moves.
No one acts.
No one risks it.
And the Cat?
The Cat yawns.
The Cat tweets.
The Cat wins.
Because the mice?
They still believe you can vote out a storm.
They still believe norms are armor.
They still believe someone else will bell the cat.
But no one does.
And the Cat keeps prowling,
Unbothered.
Unbent.
Unbelled.
And the mice?
They keep the receipts.
- UpsilonA
Author’s note: Bell¿ngcat was written as an indictment not of a single predator, but of an ecosystem that allows predators to thrive. The Cat is not the poems true subject, the mice are. The title is deliberate.