Gary stared at his half-finished sculpture, a towering mess of soda cans and duct tape, as his cat, Muffin, knocked over a jar of neon paint. The cat pounced on a stray pipe cleaner, sending it spiraling into a pile of used glitter. ‘No! My avant-garde masterpiece!’ Gary yelped, lunging to save a precarious stack of soup cans. Muffin blinked innocently, then batted a pencil across the room, where it struck a rubber chicken perched on a shelf. The chicken squawked, toppling a tower of old typewriters. Gary groaned, staring at the chaos. ‘You’re not helping,’ he told Muffin, who was now attempting to nest in a bucket of epoxy. The cat meowed, as if agreeing. Five minutes later, Gary discovered Muffin had rearranged his sculptures into a whimsical cluster of ‘art.’ The cans were angled like a sunflower, the typewriters formed a jagged fence, and the rubber chicken sat atop a pyramid of soup cans. Gary blinked. ‘…Maybe it’s… functional?’ He grabbed his phone, snapping a photo. ‘This is genius,’ he whispered, as Muffin curled into a glittery ball on the floor. The next day, Gary’s Instagram blew up. Comments flooded in: ‘Is this… a commentary on domestic chaos?’ ‘Who’s the real artist here?’ Gary smiled, watching Muffin knock over a vase of flowers. ‘We’re both artists,’ he said. ‘But I’m the one with the patience to clean up.’
