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  • 20-MAY-2025 | Excerpt from “Cat’s Cradle” by Kurt Vonnegut

20-MAY-2025 | Excerpt from “Cat’s Cradle” by Kurt Vonnegut

Author

Dan Bogachek
May 20, 2025

You glance at your watch.

It’s 6:28. You’ve been at it since 3.
Crap. Your hot date is at 7. Running late. Sink shower it is.
Nowhere close to done editing…

“…at least all the ideas are laid out, so there’s that. Did I miss anything? I don’t think so? Ok, but how do I make it flow? I need to get the final draft to Stacey for design asap, team cutoff is at noon Thursday…”

You’ve spent dinner completely distracted. Your date just took off. You go home exhausted, plod to your desk, and flip open the laptop.

Or… what if:

5:41 — you’re out of the shower and lip-syncing.
6:17 — dressed to the nines and zenned out.
7:03 — the sunset glints off your aviators as you smile hello.
8:36 — it actually feels like you’re hitting it off. Not just hot, funny to boot.
Next morning, 9:27 — final draft ready in your inbox.
10:31 — Stacey messages back, “thanks, looks good!”

The difference?

Copygloss handled it. Before you left for the date, actually.

For help with editing, email Dan:
[email protected].

Excerpt from “Cat’s Cradle” by Kurt Vonnegut

My sick head wobbled on my stiff neck. The trolley tracks had caught the wheels of Dr. Breed’s glossy Lincoln again.

I asked Dr. Breed how many people were trying to reach the General Forge and Foundry Company by eight o’clock, and he told me thirty thousand.

Policemen in yellow raincapes were at every intersection, contradicting with their white-gloved hands what the stop-and-go signs said.

The stop-and-go signs, garish ghosts in the sleet, went through their irrelevant tomfoolery again and again, telling the glacier of automobiles what to do. Green meant go. Red meant stop. Orange meant change and caution. 🏁

There’s a certain… detached disgust, maybe? — the way each object get its own descriptor. So much about the narrator’s internal state and the outside environment just from this one pattern.

“Sick,” “stiff”, “glossy”, “yellow,” “white-gloved,” “stop-and-go,” “garish,” irrelevant.” “Glacier of” has a bit of the same vibe as well.

The result?

We relive one of those nauseating stuck-in-rainy-city-traffic car rides we know all too well. And all without Vonnegut spelling it out for us — because it’s all painted in.