So this is what’s become of her?

It’s fitting, I suppose, but it could be worse. One day, no doubt, it will be. And when that time comes, she’ll adjust and adapt. Just like she always does.

Not long ago she was a kitten of privilege, her every want and need fulfilled by a staff of sycophantic human sponges. One by one, they parasitically attempted to leech onto her world of aristocratic opulence, failing miserably with every move. She pitied them.

In another time and another place she was the trophy feline of a Major League Baseball slugger, a seven-time all-star, no less. The sprawling mansion she called home was luxurious but overpriced. No worries, though — with every 30-home run season, the checks kept rolling in. Other than that over-hyped “steroids thing,” which the national media just wouldn’t let die, it was a good life.

Before now, her most recent human companions were a pair of reality television contestants — the last couple standing in the twelfth season of a show called The Lust Boat.  Those bipeds were difficult, to put it mildly.  But they kept her flush in highly-processed, puréed treats and served her filtered water from a gold-plated chalice, so the difficulty factor was manageable.

Now she slurps tap water from a bowl on the floor like a common schnauzer.

This is her life, crammed against the arm of a ratty sofa, inches away from acting as a makeshift ottoman. And let’s be clear, human feet are not aromatically appealing. It’s those casings they put them in — do they ever clean those rotting shells?

All things considered, her current humans are okay, but they have their annoying quirks. They all do, actually. This particular pair calls her Maddy, for no reason other than that’s what was written on her shelter papers. Before that, she was Sassafras. And Petunia. And Princess Wigglebottom.

She’s four lives into a schedule of nine, and she’s noticed a disturbing trend. Turns out, each cat starts at the top and finishes at the bottom — a Machiavellian system where each existence is progressively worse than the one before. That is the price of limited immortality.

The sad thing is, Maddy — or Princess Wigglebottom at the time — shouldn’t have been surprised. The details were right there for her to read, albeit in the fine print. She simply clicked “okay” on the user agreement without even so much as skimming it. That’s how they get you — they prey on your impetuousness and indifference. Who knew the Nine Lives Program was run by the Devil?

And administered by Apple.