Margo stared at the pile of discarded socks, expired coupons, and a half-eaten rubber chicken in her garage, fingers twitching with creative urgency. ‘This is art,’ she whispered, hoisting a neon pink curling iron like a scepter. Her vision: a mosaic titled *The Symphony of Forgotten Things*.
Three hours later, the garage resembled a tornado had nested in a recycling bin. Margo’s cat, Sir Whiskers, surveyed the chaos from a stack of yoga mats, tail flicking like a metronome. ‘You’re complicating it,’ he meowed, leaping onto a keyboard covered in glue.
‘Complicating? This is depth!’ Margo yelled, slapping a used toilet paper roll onto a canvas. She’d promised her neighbor she’d ‘reinvent the wheel’ for the local art fair. Instead, she’d reinvented the *wreckage*.
A rogue bottle of glitter launched from a shelf, coating Sir Whiskers in silver. He hissed, knocking over a tower of soup cans. Margo lunged, catching one mid-air. ‘Perfect!’ she cried, sticking it to the canvas. ‘This is *raw* emotion!’
By dusk, the mural was a kaleidoscope of mismatched materials. A hair dryer dangled above a stained gym sock, while a broken ladder leaned against a vase of wilted flowers. Sir Whiskers, now a glittery specter, batted a pencil into a puddle of paint.
At the art fair, the mural drew crowds. ‘What’s the message?’ a man asked. Margo grinned, swiping a hand across her smudged glasses. ‘It’s about finding beauty in the mess we make. Also, never trust a cat with glitter.’
