The origins of Māo Māo City are lost to pre-history, before rough tongues could speak, before our claws would carve these marble idols, when humans were our masters. This much we know. Some say once cats were worshipped as gods, but I say, any god gets his balls cut off, ain’t no kind of god at all.
Out of that era we hear only the howling songs yowled in the early years of cat cognition. And the Pixel Records dug from the endless chains and remants of the Virtual Multitude, still running to this day on DeCentral Station, a dangerous Multiverse of endless reflection plasma-gapped from the Global Grid.
These days there’s tension in the Double Māo. Kitty God’s Army units openly patrolling the streets, Short-cats on the scene looking for answers, Marlene can barely feed her kittens, Ol’ Mangey’s on the moloko again. I even heard a rumor the Amigos are expanding their territory. It’s like you need 10 lives just to survive in this town.
We all feel it. This city is filled with fear and that fear has a name. Kung Paw.
Once the Elite Guards, by claw and fang they cut through all opposition to their Emperor’s terrible will, until the night his Majesty’s kitcubine slipped on the raised dias, and their agile Captain Aditi caught her mid-fall. Though he kept her paw from touching the ground and preserved her honor, his own paws had broken the deepest taboo and by the Emperor’s own decree – the punishment was death.
In a moment of weakness or love, the Emperor commuted the sentence to exile. Enraged their leader was denied an honorable death, the Kung Paw slaughtered the Emperor in dark memorial and fled into exile to search for their Master, making way for the popular uprising that swept the city, and this uneasy peace that’s descended.
It was rumored that the Kung Paw found their leader in a great cavern underground in the wastes of the West, performing arcane rituals to seek forbidden power. These days I don’t know what to believe…
Pray the Eyes of the Kitty God are upon us now, my kitties. Look to the East and Shao Mountain. Surely righteous cats still walk this domain.
Collection: Async Art
