After all, you’re a cat. Highest level of evolution and all that. Just back among us mere mortals for one more incarnation, to prove to the Eternal All that you finally and for all time have gotten your act together--" "Ow!" "Hey, don’t get sore; I didn’t mean anything by it. Monkeys are bad-tempered, is all--especially when they can’t get their paws around their morning coffee. How’m I supposed to create, I ask you, without coffee?" A pause which the cat refused to fill, then. "Listen, cat, there’s a theory--genuine scientific stuff, now, done proper--that makes coffee the Prime Motivator, the creative force of the Universe: ‘In the Beginning, there was Coffee, complete unto Itself. But, in the fullness of Time, Coffee became lonely and called into being Cream and Sugar--’ You listening to me?" But the cat had followed the rays of the early morning sun and now sat in the center of a lightpool, unconcernedly washing its toes. The Magician sighed and returned his attention to his worktable, empty except for two objects.
