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Sooty says the six-sided die will help Cocoa make decisions, but Cocoa isn't so sure. Humans, Sooty explains, assign a choice to each side and whack the die until it tells them what to do, like whether they should move a space or lose a game. He shows her how to use it before he leaves—his favorite game shop is opening soon. On the sidewalk, Cocoa noses at the little cube, her tail wavering in question.
The die is cold and hard to the touch. On the side that looks up at her, there are six little dots; the black spots on white remind her of Sooty.
She flicks her ears back, uncertain how this will help. In order for the die to work the way Sooty showed her, she'll have to assign a decision to each side, but how can she determine what should represent which choice? And how will she know which choices to put on it? There are more than six houses in the neighborhood, each has more than six toys… and what if she should add a choice to nap or eat Frisky Bitz (or Ritzy Bitz or Thrifty Bitz or sashimi) instead?
It's all very stressful, like trying to choose between a Fairy-tale Parasol or a Beach Umbrella. Cocoa shifts restlessly, feeling guilty. Sooty was just trying to help.
Her paw knocks by accident into the six-sided die and it skitters across the ground like an insect. Cocoa's tail shoots up. She pounces and whacks the die with her paw, and the die rolls forward again. Eagerly, Cocoa gives chase.
Maybe some decisions aren't so hard after all.
Patches already flopped onto their back and purred, holding their head at just the right angle to show off the beguiling orange patch on their cheek, but the two humans in the house just ignored them, not even taking any pictures! Talking to each other about a party, the humans left through the door and came back at noon with a particularly unusual cake box—and then they didn't put it in the yard!
Breezy and Willow don't mind, and Pepper confesses shyly that she prefers the humans giving them some space, but Patches finds this intolerable. They follow the humans into the house with demanding meows. The humans pet them and offer them treats, but Patches can tell that the cake box has nefariously distracted the humans. They won't let Patches onto the table either, even though Patches is clearly interested in the box.
Sitting under a chair, Patches glowers. When the humans leave for the kitchen, Patches takes their chance, leaping onto the table and nosing open the box. The lid of the box falls down a few times, but Patches has always been a persistent cat.
As they suspected, this cake box is unlike the others. Inside the cardboard, there's a cake where a cat should be. The cake is white, with swirls of blue and pink frosting on top that please Patches's eye, and the smell of cream, butter, and vanilla tantalizes Patches's nose.
Patches licks up the frosting first. Maybe it's a good thing the cake box isn't in the yard; then Tubbs would eat the entire cake.
Patches has just started on the rest of the cake when they hear footsteps from the kitchen. Pricking their ears up, Patches leaps off the table and runs to the yard.
By the time the humans return, Patches is long gone. All that is left is a nibbled cake without frosting—as well as some candles spilled during Patches's escape, the mementos of a cat who always gets their way.
Out in the yard, Meowton washes his paw and ponders the strange spectacle from earlier that afternoon. Inside a human's home office, he found a toy with a set of five shiny gray balls. The two balls on the ends moved back and forth, one of them clacking against the other four balls and falling still while the other one rose into the air, clacking on and on… He was too fascinated to even swipe at the toy.
What caused this unceasing motion? He ponders the question as he watches Bandit wriggle his butt and pounce on a feather in the yard. Tabitha, waking up in a fruit basket, raises her head and hisses when Bandit comes too close. Movement above Meowton catches his eye, and he looks up to see Sunny knocking an apple ball from the top tier of an art deco cat tree.
The ball falls down toward the center of the earth. It thumps on the ground, rolls, and goes still.
Sunny jumps down from the other side of the cat tree, no longer interested, but Meowton bolts up. Tabitha and Bandit look at him in surprise, but Meowton ignores them. He has no time for other cats—his mind is whirring. He needs pen and paper. He has to work out the mathematics! He bolts inside, rushing past Ginger and Patsy who are playing with a rubber ball, and jumps onto a human's desk to take their memo pad and ballpoint pen. Standing on his hindlegs, he scribbles furiously over the paper.
The five shiny balls, the apple ball, even Ginger and Patsy's rubber ball: all those things obey the same laws of motion, reacting to the force exerted upon them by cats! His discovery is a revolution in feline thought—this will change playtime and the field of physics forever!
On the paper appears equations, theorems and diagrams of toys, drawn over the marks of a human's to-do list. When Meowton runs out of paper, he jumps down from the desk and continues writing on a shopping box.
The paper and cardboard box are the beginning of his magnum opus, what will surely be the most important work in feline science: Meowton's Philosophiæ Naturalis, Principia Meowthematica!
He still hasn't finished washing his paw, but there's no time for a bath: the quest for scientific understanding awaits. Mewreka!