Officer Tree: Born This Way

Tree, a sleek Russian Blue, was usually too dignified for whimsy. He was the perfect, silent sentinel of my apartment, his emerald eyes missing nothing. But one afternoon, the ordinary went quiet. A shimmering vapor materialised above a forgotten brass vase in the corner. A very sleepy, somewhat grumpy genie emerged. “Three wishes,” he sighed. “No, wait. I’m late for a sandstorm. Just one wish. Make it count.”

Tree blinked, for perhaps the first time in his life, utterly nonplussed. Then, a dormant desire flickered. “I wish,” he thought, his meow resonant, “to be human. Just for one day.”

The genie nodded, a little too quickly. “Granted.”

With a puff of emerald smoke, Tree was gone. In his place stood a tall, lean man, perfectly sculpted, with unusually striking green eyes and a shock of Russian Blue-colored grey hair. He wore, fittingly, a blue three-piece suit.

The day exploded with human sensory overload. The sun was hot, not warm. The pavement was rough, not texturally interesting. Coffee, he discovered, tasted like burnt dirt, not the delicious smell that lingered near the master’s cup. But the talking. He had so much to say.

His human day began at the temporary staffing agency. They eyed his peculiar intensity. “We have an opening… at the Police Academy? Special Intake?” Tree, processing the concept of ‘cademy,’ ‘academy,’ ‘police,’ agreed.

The Academy was a blur of human exertion. He excelled in night maneuvers (obviously). He was a natural at ‘following scent’ and was eerily accurate with a tranquilizer dart (close enough to a laser pointer). He passed the final exam in record time, though the instructor marked him down for ‘persistent lack of eye contact’ and ‘the uncanny ability to appear exactly when not expected.’

He was, technically, the finest recruit they’d seen. Though, admittedly, the concept of ‘authority’ was strange. Why must humans be told what to do by other humans, especially when the other humans aren’t particularly observant or agile?

Finally, the badge. A shining silver shield. He was Officer Tree. His first duty: a routine foot patrol in the very neighborhood where, as a cat, he knew every crack in the pavement.

His day as a cop was less high-octane action and more, well, human duties.

He defused a parking dispute with a simple, unnerving, ten-second emerald stare. He successfully talked down a suicidal pigeon that had accidentally become stuck in a particularly aggressive human’s apartment building air duct. He helped an elderly lady cross the street, not by taking her arm, but by stopping traffic with an assertive ‘police human’ glare that made a taxi driver visibly flinch. He even saved a small child from a very aggressive human ‘child-safe’ swing that had turned into a terrifying human launching mechanism.

As the sun began to dip, casting the city in shadows the police human could still navigate perfectly, the emerald smoke returned.

The badge, the suit, the police academy training all vanished. In their place stood the familiar, sleek, and undeniably pretty Russian Blue, his emerald eyes reflecting the fading city lights. He sat on his usual spot, the armchair sentinel.

“Meow,” he said.

We all knew what it meant. And the genie, materializing for a final, slightly panicked check, heard it too.

“He says,” the genie translated, sounding slightly relieved, “that being a police human was… instructive. Lots of rules. Strange smell of ‘donut’. But in the end? He loves being what he was born to be. Born with the best hearing, the finest whiskers, the greenest eyes, and the quietest grace. A cat.”

The genie winked. “Good cop. Terrible human, apparently. Couldn’t master the ‘hello’ properly.”

And with that, the genie was gone. And we all looked at Officer Tree, the best darn Russian Blue in the precinct, who knew that the only academy he really needed was the academy of the sunbeam, the laser pointer, and the perfect, silent meow. He was, in fact, born that way. And he wouldn’t trade it for any badge, even the shiniest.