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My cat is mostly decomposed. It is tomorrow afternoon. The remaining parts of my cat are: some bones, a few black and white hairs, a small segment of tail. The bones, hairs and segment of tail are buried in a landfill somewhere. The landfill is being dug up by a group of bored scientists. The scientists listlessly churn the earth of the landfill using spades, trowels and diggers. The scientists are confused and depressed. Last year they graduated from science university with first-class degrees in science. Now they are moving around in the real world, which is not the exciting, science-filled place they had been led to believe. Disillusioned, they have gathered at a landfill because it seems as good a place as any to kill the time. ‘I’m so bored and disillusioned,’ one of the scientists says. ‘I had all these exciting ideas when I graduated from science university. I was going to go into cloning, maybe. I don’t know. I can’t even remember,’ she says. The scientist digs up a small part of the land fill. She uncovers something odd-looking with her trowel. ‘What’s that?’ another scientist says. She kneels down and looks at it. ‘It’s a segment of tail,’ she says. ‘Wow,’ the other scientist says. ‘What animal do you think it come from?’ ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Let’s clone it and find out.’ The scientists feel excited. Their lives suddenly have purpose. They carefully put the segment of tail in a plastic bag and drive it to a laboratory. They do many scientific things to the segment of tail. Eventually they press a button on a machine and there is a flash of light and a cloned version of my cat appears. ‘Nice cat,’ one of the scientists says. ‘Damn right,’ the other scientist says. ‘What shall we do with it?’ the first scientist says. ‘I don’t know.’ The scientists pick up my cat and carry it outside. They put it on the floor in the street and watch it walk away. ‘That was fun,’ they say. ‘Let’s clone some other things.’ They go back inside the laboratory. My cat walks down the street. The street is unfamiliar. My cat sniffs the air. It smells a familiar smell. The familiar smell seems about three or four miles away. My cat walks in the direction of the familiar smell. The familiar smell gets stronger and stronger. The familiar smell is me. My cat walks in the direction of my flat in Chorlton. It walks up my road and sits on the pavement outside my flat. I stop typing my shitty second novel and go to the window. I look out of the window at my cat sitting outside my flat. I wave at it. My cat blinks and swishes its tail. I go downstairs and open the front door. My cat walks towards me. It is sleepy-looking. I bend down to stroke its back as it walks past my legs and up the stairs, in the direction of the end of my bed.