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Ever since humanity brought the Warm Flat Rectangle (WFR) into our lives catkind has striven in both academic and laycat circles to understand its purpose. Despite it being both warm and perfectly cat-sized, humans react negatively to any attempt by a cat to stand, sit or lay on the WFR (Mittens, 2005) sparking what has become a decades long conundrum in the study of Human Behavioural Sciences.
Hypotheses as to what exactly the WFR's function is and why humans are so overprotective of the object have multiplied over the years. Early suggestions included the theory that the WFR may be an entertainment device “[as] humans have been noted to spend hours happily pressing the little buttons … despite them having no obvious effect.” (Jalapeño, 2001). Over time an increasing number of scholars have postulated that the WFR holds some ritual importance to humans (Buster et al., 2006), (Koko, 2013), (Lulu and Socks, 2020); although this argument has been criticised for lacking evidence (Mittens et al, 2016).
Most recently there have been proposals that the WFR has some application as a hunting tool: “During observation it was noted on twelve separate occasions that soon after playing with the buttons on the WFR a new human would appear at the entrance to the territory carrying food.” (Smudge and Oreo, 2022). As unlikely as this sounds it would help to explain humanity's lack of hunting ability, although as Mittens Jr pointed out in their rebuttal (Mittens Jr, 2023) this does lead to the question of how humans survived before the appearance of the WFR.
As it stands the mystery of the WFR is no closer to being solved. Short of some major breakthrough it seems likely to remain an enigma and catkind will continue to be chased off these warm, flat, perfect nap spots.