A Head of Steam

🐾 Featuring: urgent public meetings, Facebook controversy, offended cats, and one increasingly stressed ginger observer.

This story is part of The Diary of an Orange Cat — now available as a book and as a complete 24-episode podcast series.

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^{An Extraordinary Mindfulness Meeting beneath the deck doesn’t quite go to plan. 🐾}

STORY OUTLINE

When Serafina calls an Extraordinary Mindfulness Meeting under urgency, Weasley and his fellow cats gather beneath the deck expecting a discussion about community concerns. Instead, the meeting rapidly descends into increasingly chaotic debate.

Topics include feral cats, heritage sites, collars, cyclists, speed limits, and local controversies that somehow become larger and more heated than anyone intended. Prudence, a highly opinionated Maine Coon, proves more than capable of challenging Serafina’s authority, while Weasley desperately attempts to stop the whole thing collapsing into complete disorder.

By the end of the evening, nearly everyone owes somebody an apology.

BACKGROUND

A Head of Steam was originally written in February 2021 during a particularly lively period both nationally and locally. At the time, public discussion seemed to be becoming increasingly polarised. Social media pages — including local community pages — could quickly transform from practical conversations into passionate debates where one topic somehow became five entirely different arguments.

Many of the ideas in this chapter were inspired by real discussions taking place around Banks Peninsula at the time: concerns about feral cats, heritage areas, 1080, speed limits, and community issues that generated surprisingly strong reactions. The chapter also draws on wider political themes from the period — urgency, public messaging, public meetings, and the way language itself sometimes became a topic of debate.

As usual, Weasley mostly just wanted a quiet life.

THE REAL CATS