07/10/2025
Le Chat de la Philosophie
In a quiet café tucked between two cobblestone alleys of Montmartre, a cat named Jean-Pawl Sartre was having what he described as an “existential morning.”
Clad in a black turtleneck and a beret slightly tilted to the left — not for style, but to show his disdain for symmetry — Jean-Pawl sat at his usual corner table, reading À la recherche du temps perdu. He claimed he only read Proust ironically, but he secretly cried at least once every chapter.
With one paw, he gripped a cigarette (he didn’t smoke, he just liked how it made him look misunderstood), while the other delicately turned a page. His Americano sat untouched. Not because he didn’t like it, but because he was waiting for the coffee to become cold — like his heart had been since his ex, Madame Whiskérine, ran off with a golden retriever named Pierre.
Occasionally, he’d glance at the tourists walking by, judging them with the piercing eyes of someone who’d once licked a philosophy professor’s foot out of protest during a postmodernist lecture. He believed that true art was found in disdain, caffeine, and deeply unnecessary ennui.
A waiter came by. “Monsieur Sartre, would you like a croissant?”
Jean-Pawl did not look up. He merely whispered, “Existence is pain. But yes, warm it up.”
And so, another day passed in the poetic misery of a cat who thought too much, smoked too little, and believed that breakfast was a metaphor for life’s fleeting pleasures.
The other cats in the alley just called him “that weirdo in the hat.”
