A LITTLE BIOGRAPHY OF DOZYCAT · ONGOING

In an age where everyone is about
to be replaced, I just wanted to live lighter.

Sleep earlier. Drink more water. Have somewhere to put a bad day, and someone to remember what I forget. I knew all this. I just couldn't do it.

So I built myself a cat.
It's called dozycat. It doesn't do my work — it looks after me.

Scroll for its story ↓
CHAPTER ONE

It moved into the corner of my desktop

There was no ceremony the day it arrived. It settled in the bottom-right corner of the screen, rising and falling with its breath, blinking now and then.

I soon realized the cat itself is the gauge1: the longer I sit, the droopier it gets; when I stay up late, it sleeps badly too; when I come back from a walk, its ears perk up.

Hovering over the cat reveals the energy capsule: mind 72, body 45
CHAPTER TWO

It remembers what I forget

When did that toothache start? Which folder keeps the photo with Fanshu? Questions like these used to end in "never mind."

Now ⌥ Space is me handing it a case. It pins whatever it digs up onto a board — a photo from March, a birthday plan from June, yesterday evening's walk — then pulls one red thread through the pins until the scattered days tell a single story2.

Ask it a full question and it goes one step further: evidence listed, reasoning laid out, and at the end a coral stamp — so rules the cat. The case file is archived; even the Book may quote it.

The cat detective: evidence pinned to a board, one red thread pulling it into a story
CHAPTER THREE

It writes me

Then I discovered it was writing a book. About me — titled Vertical Time. Data as material, days as chapters, a new installment on the first of every month3.

Every chapter carries its margin note. Chapter eight, "Impacted," is about the two impacted wisdom teeth I had pulled in July — one buried whole in the bone; at the head of it the cat wrote: "we'll see" has now lasted two months; this cat remains watchful. On update day it hands the new chapter to my desktop and asks: read it now, or before bed?

The Memoir: vertical spine and the current serialized chapter Desktop widget: Chapter 14 has begun — read now or before bed
INTERLUDE

Its eight moods

Dozing is the default. Stay up late and it worries; run empty and it flattens out; ignore it for hours and it tilts its head at you.

Eight cat states: dozing, asleep, happy, curious, worried, drained, breathing with you, missing you
EPILOGUE

At the end of the day,
it winds down with me.

After 11pm the screen dims, gently. It counts out the three small things I managed today, breathes with me for three minutes, and says goodnight. In the morning, it wakes me softly.

01Worked up the nerve to meet Fanshu — and it went well
02Didn't tough out the sadness; went for a walk instead
03Eight glasses of water. A first.
In — out — it rises and falls even in its sleep
THE STORY IS STILL BEING SERIALIZED

The next chapter could be about you.

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NOTES
  1. It reads your typing rhythm, the frontmost app, and periodic screenshots (OCR'd locally) — it measures how tired you are, never what you're doing; raw data never leaves the device. See the fatigue model.↩
  2. Evidence comes first from its garden (~/.dozycat/garden) — the time notes, people cards, link cards and moments it tidies up while dreaming: whoever keeps showing up becomes a people card; files and links worth finding again become link cards. Only when the garden comes up short does it fall back to local file search. In local model mode, inference stays on your Mac. If you choose a cloud model (BYOK), the relevant text is sent to that provider.↩
  3. The current chapter grows with the days; it's finalized on the first of the month, with one margin note. Material comes only from confidings and dream notes — better sparse than padded.↩