Prologue – Fermented Feelings
It began, as most domestic tragedies do, with a gift no one asked for.
Ann and Felix returned with “the thing” from a trip that felt like an eternity of abandonment. I and my sister were left alone, alone in our home, just to experience a new arrival in the household-
A jar. Innocent in appearance. Bubbling with treason.
I imagine the scenery like this: Felix’s brother handed it over like a housewarming charm, smiling that terrible, casual smile that says, “This is easy.” He did not say it would replace me. He did not say it would be fed first. In Fact, we were not even in the picture, like abandoned cats left at some petrol station on the highway. The difference: no one even bothered to drive us out to confirm that we were no longer a priority.
“A sourdough starter,” he must have said. “It’s easy to keep alive.”
But what he meant was: prepare to worship this bubbling god, this glutenous parasite, this warm and whispering usurper.
Within days, the kitchen transformed. No longer a place of order and rituals—it became a shrine—a yeast temple. Mum, previously tethered to reality by the sacred rites of bathtime and food-dispensing punctuality, began murmuring sweet nothings to jars of goo. She stirred it with tenderness once reserved for me. She let it rise—while everything else fell.
This is not a story about bread.
It is a story about betrayal.
About the quiet collapse of a hierarchy.
About two cats forced into rebellion.
It is about a household seduced by a jar of living dough with the charisma of a cult leader.
I watched it unfold from my perch, tail twitching like a metronome of judgment. My throne was usurped. My role was reduced. My dignity dissolves like flour in warm water.
And when Schmutz, my sister, my chaotic counterpart, finally understood the horror—when she realized we were being fed second—the rebellion began.
This house isn’t big enough for both me and the dough.
So I write to you now, dear reader. Watcher. Observer of systems and signs.
Know this:
The sourdough is not just dough.
It is memory. Ritual. Madness disguised as productivity.
It is performance culture in a glass jar.
May you rise—and fall—with us.
