The Cat Who Didn’t Sleep
by TMax
Copyright© 2026 by TMax
Humor Story: After years of sibling rivalry with her dog-loving brother, Sarah illegally gene-edits her cat Rocky to never sleep, unleashing a feline that begins quietly consolidating power over the neighborhood, the country, and the world. Caution: Animals were harmed in this story.
Tags: Science Fiction Soft SciFi Near Future Mind Control Humor Drama Young Adult
Chapter 0: The how? Why? And what?
Cats sleep. A lot. Have you ever wondered what would happen if they didn’t? Well, Sarah wondered just that. Every day of her life, well, most days anyway. She loved her two cats, Rocky and Jolly, but they slept a lot, while she didn’t sleep nearly as much.
Her older brother loved dogs, specifically Caesar, their golden retriever, who went for walks with him, played catch with him, and did whatever he wanted, as dogs tend to do. Sarah played with Caesar, but she loved her cats more, adored her cats, but hated how much Matthew, her older brother, teased her about how much her two cats slept.
When he played ball in the backyard with Ceaser, he would glance at her, more of a taunting glance, as if he said, ‘Look what dogs can do because they don’t sleep that much.’ Sarah would watch them from the living room window. Rocky curled up on her lap, and Jolly spread out in a ray of sunshine, as she ground her teeth. Sarah did wish the cats would play more and almost resented that Rocky would not let her get up to clean.
A normal person would have understood that cats sleep, a lot. A normal person would have grown out of the sibling rivalry and the silly notions of their childhood. Not Sarah. She grew more obsessed, more determined to have her cats sleep less and prove to her brother, once and for all, that cats could act better than dogs, that Sarah hadn’t wasted her childhood on loving cats.
I know what you’re thinking, because everyone asks the same questions. What about birds, reptiles, fish, and other animals that humans bring into their homes? Well, stop thinking those crazy thoughts, because crazy thoughts led to doing crazy things, like Sarah. And it will cloud the story. This story deals with revenge, cats vs dogs in the classic way, dogs doing awesome stuff, while cats ignore the competition, as if they don’t compete with lower life forms. This story tells a tale about a cat, and other than the intro, does not care about dogs at all, nor any other pets.
Chapter 1: What happened when Sarah figured out how to make a cat sleep less
Of course, she didn’t figure it out right away. At first, she tried all the stuff you would expect: caffeine, amphetamines, not letting them sleep by playing with them, or moving them when they tried to sleep, and about a bazillion other approaches that most cat lovers had tried before. But nature or God or the Gods, depending on your world view, designed the cat to sleep, a lot, for a reason, and nothing that she did, or the others who shared her passion and collaborated with her on message boards, made a difference.
A normal person would not have done what Sarah tried next.
Gene editing, while banned, could happen in your basement, if you had the knowledge, which Sarah gained through her schooling, if you had the equipment, which Sarah purchased through her underground contacts from the cat message boards, if you had the money to purchase that equipment, which Sarah had from her older brother who had made millions by inventing a dog communication device, if you had the time, which she did because she didn’t need to work for a living as she lived in her brother’s basement, and if you had the most critical thing, a blind desire to figure everything out, which she obviously did, because otherwise we wouldn’t have a story about Sarah’s success, and more importantly about her cat who didn’t sleep too much, or at all.
It took years. It took many cats, many unsuccessful attempts, dead cats, and mutated cats, to the point where you would have thought that Sarah hated cats, which she might have grown to at this point. Very possible because the cat no longer mattered, nor did her sibling rivalry. Only the task, conquering nature, or defeating God, or the Gods, depending on your worldview. Sarah’s worldview changed by the week.
Even with all that knowledge, equipment, money, time, and stubborn determination, she would not have succeeded without a little luck or evil intervention, because nothing good and divine would have let her succeed.
Rocky, the seventy-third, if you counted, received that needle filled with chemical names as long as this story, in other words, stuff that would mutate Rocky and remove his need to sleep. At first, as with the thousands upon thousands of injections into the thousands upon thousands of cats, nothing appeared to happen. Rocky slept in a ball in his little home. Until he didn’t. About four hours and thirteen minutes after the injection, Rocky opened his eyes, stretched, licked his right paw, then his left, and never slept again.
This story tells of Rocky’s life, because a cat that never sleeps, a cat with too much time, will do, did, continues to do terrible things to our world. Chapter 2: Rocky rules the neighborhood
Ok, at first, nothing much changed. The humans didn’t notice, because why would anyone ever notice a cat like Rocky? Cute sure. And a couple of young pre-teen girls did try to pet him, but he easily escaped.
Rocky consolidated his power with the other cats, not a big deal. Many would-be cat overlords have come and gone, but Rocky didn’t need to sleep.
The local warlord, Luna, curled into a small circle, hidden in the towel closet. Rocky crept into the house through an open window and slipped across the floor. The daylight followed him, as if to highlight his approach, as if the sun wished to stop him. Luna, who had stayed awake for over thirty hours, a near world record for a normal cat, snored, and her back paws twitched, nose could smell Rocky. Luna couldn’t wake, so Rocky easily defeated her.
Other would-be cat overlords, curled in their safest places, even guarded by dogs, other cats, and humans, just could not match Rocky’s cunning, and with almost unlimited time, Rocky easily dispatched them.
Worse, for the neighborhood and ultimately the world, Rocky learned of an earlier serum to keep cats mostly awake, stole it, and injected his most loyal lieutenants. They stayed awake, almost, but not as much as Rocky. They needed to sleep for only mere hours a day, instead of most of the day like the rival cats.
So, Rocky, with an ever-growing gang of cats, slowly expanded his territory until a few observant humans, non-preteen girls, noticed him and his gang of cats. However, all of them, like Mrs. Jenkins, the old lady with five cats, two of which now followed Rocky, just thought, “strange behavior from the cats.” The cats encouraged this by subtly influencing the humans’ behavior. Cute faces and balls of fluff calmed the humans, such that, like her, they didn’t take the threat seriously, because after all, what could such a small, adorable creature do? They expected the threat to their existence to come from huge wild animals, deadly, venomous snakes, or aliens. Most likely aliens.
But Rocky had more time on his hands than any cat before him, so he had time to enact his dreams.
Birds learned to avoid the neighborhood. Rats and mice disappeared. Stores had a rash of cat-related thefts.
One young man, twenty-one, in his third year working as a vet tech, noticed Rocky. The young man thought it strange that four other cats rested their heads on their outstretched paws as they encircled Rocky, who walked in circles with his tail in the air. Strange behavior, so the young man thought, and didn’t dismiss it like so many others. His name now forgotten in the passage of time, he discreetly followed Rocky, who didn’t care. After all, what could one human male do to stop his plan?
All day Tuesday, the young man’s day off, he followed Rocky. He followed him into the park, where birds used to sing, and an old lady, not Mrs. Jenkins, used to throw birdseed for the birds, but now the birdseed covered the ground in front of her with no birds, and a black cat lay in her lap as she stroked its neck. Birds no longer serenaded the lady nor anyone else in the park. Unknown to the lady, the cats secretly manipulated her senses, and each day she had a great desire to take her life savings out and make a large cat castle for her new feline friends.
You have to understand that cats have always had the ability to manipulate people. They normally already have a great life, so they don’t bother with much, and because they spend most of their time sleeping, they can only manipulate humans so much in a day. But now, the cats had more time and, more importantly, a unified plan.
New cat castles, complete with carpet-covered levels, tunnels, and balls on strings, appeared around the city.
Chapter 3: Cats have always acted strange, but this...
The young man sat on a hard, uncomfortable park bench, with his phone on his knee, an adorable white and black kitten curled in a ball beside him. He had two apps open. His banking app showed that he only had fifty-three dollars and eighteen cents left in his account, and a shopping app with a hundred and twenty dollars worth of groceries in the basket. He debated about removing the cat treats and toys, which accounted for forty-eight dollars, or removing his food, which he needed for the week. As the kitten beside him purred, he made the decision to delete the food for next week. After all, he needed to lose weight anyway.
He pressed the buy button on the cat treats and toys, rubbed the kitten’s head between its ears, and looked up to watch Rocky rub noses with a fluffy white female.
Behind her stood two large orange coon cats, the size of small dogs, with their backs to Rocky, as if to guard the encounter. Rocky and the white cat, named Princess Pea by the humans, a name she rather liked and kept, worked to seduce Rocky and move up in his harem of cats. The two spent over half an hour nuzzling each other before a scar-faced grey tabby cat appeared with fresh salmon from the local store.
Rocky ate first, then Princess Pea, then the two Coon cats, and finally, the tabby cat finished the little that remained of the fish. What odd behavior, the young man thought, and took pictures of the exchange.
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