“After we got settled into our room, the big drama was that we forgot your Dr. Seuss book back at the Chicken Shack in Merritt. You refused to settle down until I told you a story and so I was forced to improvise in spite of my tiredness, something I am not good at doing.

…

So then you wanted to hear about another animal, and so I asked you if you’d ever heard of Squirrelly the Squirrel, and you said you hadn’t. So I said, ‘Well, Squirrelly was going to have an exhibition of nut paintings at the Vancouver Art Gallery except…’

‘Except what?’ you asked.

‘Except Mrs. Squirrelly had baby squirrels and so Squirrelly had to get a job at the peanut butter factory and was never able to finish his work.’

‘Oh.’

I paused. ‘You want to hear about any other animals?’

‘Uh, I guess so,’ you replied, a bit unambiguously.

‘Did you ever hear of Clappy the Kitten?’

‘No.’

‘Well, Clappy the Kitten was going to be a movie star one day. But then she rang up too many bills on her MasterCard and had to get a job as a teller at the Hongkong Bank of Canada to pay them off. Before long she was simply too old to try becoming a star–or her ambition disappeared–or both. And she found it was easier to just talk about doing it instead of actually doing it and…’

‘And what,’ you asked.

‘Nothing, baby,’ I said, stopping myself then and there…”

Douglas Coupland, Life After God