Congratulations on Realizing Your Own Potential!

A lot of people spend years upon years looking for the careers that are right for them. Take, for instance, a banker who might not realize he loves money until he’s in his middle age, the autumn of his life. How much is that going to suck for him, realizing that he could’ve pursued one of the easiest and most lucrative careers imaginable if only he’d given up when he was younger?

You’re going to be a lot luckier. You’ve always known you wanted to be a cat burglar, ever since you were a young man. That first B&E, the rush of your first sale at a pawn shop where you knew you’d never be back in there to fence another piece of merch, the lightness in your feet as you ran from a resident the first time. It was all just what you’d always wanted.

But lately you’ve realized that without a calling card, without some sort of focus to your actions, you’re just a face in a crowd. And that’s not how you’d like to go down, as some two bit father of four and cat burglar who was never caught and never did anything interesting with his life. Which is why today is so important.

Because today while you’re casing an apartment for stuff to steal you’re going to see an elaborately constructed cat toy sitting on a velvet fringed pillow. Its purpose will be clear: to satisfy the curiosity of a cat that eats better on a daily basis than you do, despite its lack of a GED and opposable thumbs. Rage will well in your heart at the sight of these excesses, and you’ll snatch them up.

You’ll also steal any jewelry or laptops you see in the apartment, but you won’t think overmuch on those. They’ll go to your fence and you’ll eat for another month because of them. But the pillow you took, the cat toy, with its series of bells within bells within catnip shells, will make you feel some deep satisfaction.

Thus will begin your spree, your era of infamy, as a cat burglar who specializes in stealing cat toys and accessories, which you sometimes wittily refer to as “excessories.” The nightly news will have a field day with it, the police will spend years searching for you without success. You won’t tell a soul until your son comes of age, years from today, and you take him to a storage unit you rent in downtown Brooklyn. Once the two of you are inside you’ll begin telling him, in a hushed voice, that this is how you’ve made your mark on the world. You’ll describe that first day to him and his eyes will spark with recognition and respect for the first time.

It’ll be a good day to be a dad.

Congratulations on Realizing Your Own Potential!