Mittens Has Class

Chapter 11: Cats Are Notoriously Hard For Marketing To Target

Mittens stared hard at the blank screen in front of her, little wheels spinning furiously in her head as she considered her subject. When she'd first saw the topic 'Personalized Advertising' she'd thought it would be easy to come up with a good angle to make an essay about. However, either because there were so many good ideas that she couldn't pick one or none of those ideas really seemed good enough, she couldn't decide what to write. She'd been sitting there for fifteen whole minutes, staring at the little blinking cursor.

The damned thing seemed to be mocking her.

Camped out on her bed, Mr. Fluffbutt, her extremely fuzzy stuffed kitty, perched atop a stack of textbooks beside her, Mittens frowned at the new laptop on top of her lap, a birthday gift from Master, as though it were betraying her somehow. Of course, she quickly forgave it, since you couldn't stay mad at anything that had a giant sticker of Hello Kitty on it. Plus, she knew the issue wasn't the computer, but her own mind not being able to come up with anything she considered worthwhile.

"Come on cat-brain! Get it together." She said to her noggin, hoping maybe her grey matter just needed a little encouragement. "Just give me a place to start. One paragraph to break ground with. Then I'll feed you cookies."

Her brain seemed unmoved by the offer.

She tried just starting, without thinking about it first, typing the first few words that came into her head, using a pair of plastic chopsticks. However, those words turned out to be: 'Remember to make cookies.' As beginnings for an essay went, it wasn't all that helpful.

With a sigh, she set aside the laptop, rose from the bed, and stretched, popping up on the tips of her paws and enjoying the feel of her cramped muscles loosening back up. She'd been working on various homework since she'd gotten home from school the previous night. The various reading had been easy enough to knock out last night, as had the Spanish vocabulary list to memorize, given that she already knew many of the words already.

The botany assignment, a small research project that involved a three-page summary, had taken up a good chunk of the morning and early afternoon, but was now done. It wasn't even due until the end of the week. All that she had left now was the essay. She preferred to go ahead and get that done too before she had fresh things added to her plate tomorrow. Still, she assumed that a break from studying might be all she needed to knock out this last little item.

And what better way to spend a break than finding someone to give her pets and affection? She decided to see if Master was in his office and could use a break himself. She'd noticed that he'd been spending a lot more time focusing on his business the last few months. While his early years had required a lot of his time to build a sizable empire of holdings, he'd reached a point a few years ago where he was able to hire people who managed much of the more time-consuming aspects of the business.

Over the course of the summer, however, he'd seemed to have gone from averaging only a couple hours a day dealing with things to practically having a full-time job. While he didn't seem too stressed over it, since he did still mostly work at home and wasn't bound to a clock or anything, he always appreciated his girls coming in to love on him. He always prioritized his relationships over his business, though it was understood by all of them that the business was still pretty important.

Padding down the hallway, she peeked into the office to see if he was at his desk, but found him not there. Checking first into his and then Chloe's bedrooms, she found these too empty. That meant they were probably downstairs together, which was even better, since it meant getting to pounce the both of them. So, she headed down the stairs to the first floor already making designs for what kind of cuteness she could perform to get attention.