The Cat, the King, and the Council

There was once a king who prided himself on the quality of his council. He had assembled twelve of the wisest advisors in the land — a philosopher, a general, a judge, an economist, an astronomer, a physician, a poet, a merchant, a bishop, a farmer, a shipwright, and one seat that had never been formally filled because a large orange cat had, some years earlier, decided it was his.

The council met weekly. They debated matters of trade, war, plague, harvest, and the design of new roads. The advisors argued fiercely and, most of the time, ably. The cat slept.

One winter, a difficult question arrived. A neighbouring kingdom had proposed an alliance that offered great wealth but required the king to send his own soldiers to a distant war. The council debated for six hours. The general wanted the wealth. The judge worried about the terms. The bishop invoked morality. The economist ran the numbers. The philosopher offered three definitions of 'alliance.' The poet composed a couplet. Nobody agreed with anybody.

At the end of the sixth hour, exhausted, the king turned to his most trusted advisor — the farmer — and asked what he thought. The farmer said, 'Your Majesty, I have listened all afternoon. I notice the cat has not moved.'

The council was silent.

'I've watched that cat for nine years,' the farmer went on. 'When there is genuine danger in this room — a fire in the hearth, a raised voice, an unfamiliar visitor — he leaves. He is not here for our arguments. He is here because this is the safest place he knows. Today he has not so much as opened an eye. Whatever this alliance is, it is not, at present, an emergency. Perhaps we could sleep on it.'

The council slept on it. In the morning, several members had changed their minds, several others noticed information they had missed the day before, and the king declined the alliance. Two years later, the neighbouring kingdom collapsed under the weight of the war it had been trying to conscript him into. The wealth would have been ash.

The moral, obviously, is that you should employ a cat. But underneath the joke is a real principle. Most of what looks like urgency is manufactured — by the loudest voice, the sharpest deadline, the fear of missing out. The genuinely urgent has a different quality. You do not have to be told about it. Even the cat notices.

When you are drowning in a decision, ask what is actually on fire. If nothing is on fire, sleep on it. The cat is usually right.