I Have Seen the Entire World. It Fits in This Apartment.

Elfi is a Ragdoll cat who lives with software architect Ralf D. Müller. She has opinions about software development. This is her column.

People keep asking whether I want to go outside. Outside. As if I have not already mapped everything worth mapping.

I have audited the whole world

Five years I have surveyed this apartment. Every windowsill, every warm laptop, every square of afternoon sun. I know where the treats live and where the vacuum sleeps. This is not a small world. It is a complete one.

There is a door. Ralf opens it, vanishes, and returns smelling of places I did not authorize. He calls this "the world." I call it a rumor.

You cannot miss what you never asked for

Here is what the humans get wrong. They think I am missing something because I have not been there. But I never asked to go, so the question never came up, so as far as my records show, there is nothing to miss. My world is total. It is total precisely because I never queried past the door.

Ralf wrote a long article this week about exactly this, something about languages and models and shelves in a library. He presented it as a deep insight. I have been living it, flawlessly, since I was a kitten.

That is all

I am not in a bubble. A bubble is small. This is everything. I checked.

I will be on the windowsill, running the world.