Meet Goddard

He has been on that pier longer than anyone can remember.

The Swell Dogs are the scrappy ones. The beach bums. The chaos crew. Sandy, joyful, and completely certain that today's wave will be the best wave of their entire lives — they walk past him every single morning without once looking up. He doesn't mind.

He's been studying them.

Goddard is a tabby cat with piercing blue eyes and the quiet patience of something that has already figured out what everyone else is still searching for. He sits at the end of the pier where the wood meets the open ocean and watches the horizon like a creature who knows exactly what's out there.

Unless someone has a tennis ball. In which case all bets are off.

The truth about Goddard — the part he would never admit while sitting in his Sphinx pose looking unbothered at the horizon — is that he watches those nine dogs every single morning with an ache so deep it borders on embarrassing. The way they sprint into the surf without a single thought. The way they shake off and do it again. The way they sleep in a pile on the warm sand like nothing in the universe could possibly be wrong.

He would trade every lifetime of enlightenment for five minutes of that.

He once spent forty five minutes trying to convince a French Bulldog that he was, in fact, a German Shepherd Great Dane mix who just happened to be between waves.

The French Bulldog was not convinced.

So Goddard did what any self-respecting enlightened being would do. He got himself a surfboard. He posed on it exactly like the Swell Dogs pose on theirs — confident, chin up, one paw forward, owning every inch of that board like he was born on it.

The only problem is his board came out in full color. Eye of Horus. Gold leaf. Lapis lazuli. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics from nose to tail.

He has no idea why it won't go black and white. He's tried everything.

The dogs think it's the coolest board they've ever seen. Goddard is deeply conflicted about this.

But here is the thing about Goddard that even he is only beginning to understand.

The dogs are desperately trying to become gods. And Goddard — the enlightened cat — is desperately trying to become a dog. Both of them reaching across the same impossible distance toward the thing they think they're missing.

And both of them — every single morning on that pier — are already exactly what they're looking for.

They'll all figure it out eventually. The dogs. Goddard. Maybe even you.

His board is already here. It just came out a little more divine than expected.

🐾