A Rat, a Cat, a Turtle — and a Human

 Once there was a rat who was very sure of himself — which is to say that he was very sure he was a rat.

    Then there was the cat, who found it off-putting that the name of her species rhymed with such a loathsome little rodent of a creature. All the same, it did nothing to make her doubt her status; she was a cat. There were no questions there.

    Of course, there were turtles. Somewhere in the span of a universe, there would always be turtles. Indeed, there are those who say that the universe is filled with turtles; turtles holding things, and letting things go, and just generally turtling. One might say it's turtles all the way down. And perhaps all the way up. Possibly sideways. And, regardless of the features of this universe — or others — they were all confident that there nature was, more or less, that of a turtle.

    It was the human who had problems. Sure, it was possible there was some general humanness going on. The human could in fact be 'human'. But was it? Was it really? While the human was thinking, what was real anyway? And if there was such a thing called realness, did it really matter? Really? The human spent quite a lot of time thinking about these sorts of things. The more the human thought, the more doubt seeped into the fabric of the human's mind. And the more time spent thinking about doubt, the more the fabric wrinkled — and then developed stains.

    Thus went life for the human until the human grew old, moved to a little cottage in the wood, drank an awful lot of tea, and made even more scones. The human helped all the rats and cats and turtles that came along, and did a fair number of good deeds — which included scone baking as well as cookies and the growing of various foods pertaining to turtle digestion. 

    These things took up a bit of time. 

    And after awhile, the human became pretty confident as a human. At least, there was a kind of certainty about the human's human standing. The human never really thought about it. 

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