29-year-old Alex Paulson has done everything in her power to make a sustainable living and be able to retire comfortably to no avail. Now, she is pretty much just relying on the slim chance of her cat making it big as a professional athlete one day.
“If I can’t make it happen for myself, I’m really, really hoping my cat will be able to figure something out for us,” Alex told reporters. “He’s super athletic, so it’s not, like, too far-fetched to think he could go to the NBA, or at least learn how to use a skateboard.”
Reporters didn’t have it in them to tell Alex no, so instead they said yes, further fueling the flames of her delusion.
“Okay, yeah, it’s super possible, right?” she said, reporters refusing to meet her eyes. “Maybe I should enroll him in basketball lessons…”
Alex added that she now finally understood parents that put extreme pressure on their children to be successful.
“I used to think it was selfish of them,” she said. “But now I see that there really aren’t a ton of other options. It’s either my cat makes millions as an athlete, or I work until I’m 100.”
However, Alex wanted reporters to know that she wasn’t going to pigeonhole her cat, or force him to do anything he doesn’t want to do.
“Of course he doesn’t have to play basketball!” she said. “He could try soccer, or football, or even badminton! Actually, badminton might be the way to go. He loves chasing birdies!”
When asked if she thought her cat becoming a multi-millionaire professional athlete was a bit unlikely, Alex said that, relatively speaking, no.
“What’s unlikely is me ever making enough money to ever save for retirement,” Alex said. “So, compared to that, the odds of my cat becoming the next Shohei Ohtani are, like, pretty incredible. It’s all I have to hold onto at this point.”
Reporters saw the desperation in her eyes and decided to drop that line of questioning.
As of press time, Alex had paused in the middle of her workday to drive over to Dicks Sporting Goods and buy a travel badminton set, saying something cryptic about how “training starts today.”
Her cat was unavailable for comment, as he was napping by the windowsill, as he does for 16 hours every day.
