in the beginning there was the hedgehog....

and the hedgehog was good. The great HedgeHog Goddess created the heavens and the earth from the swirling mists of space, time and a very hot shower. Earth came into being because the Holy HedgeHog Goddess got bored with playing Sudoku every day and thought that it might be really cool if she had worshippers. Every god and goddess gets to that point at some time or another, and although they usually wind up regretting the whole thing due to all headaches from the whining and bitching, and all the rest that invaribly goes along with maintaining not just a planet but a whole solar system, they go ahead and create sentient beings. (was that a run-on sentence? hmmm..) And for a while, it's great fun to be nice to the little sentient beings, to make them feel all important and what not, but eventually, they get boring. Especially when they've made strict rules of what the beings can and can't do and they're too damn afraid to break them.. or too stupid. So, they (the gods and goddesses) start throwing things in to mix it up a bit- to make things more interesting. Like giving a male being a matching female. Then there's fucking that goes on, and while it's one of those things closely related to a train wreck, it does get old after a while. So, to make things even more interesting, the god or goddess throws in the concepts of evil and knowledge. Now, time and time again, this has been the point where everything starts to become a headache. Too much tinkering has spoiled the soup.. or something like that, and now there's trouble in paradise. This is also usually the point where the diety in charge looses their temper, and does something very rash and very hurtful to their little pets. Thus begins a battle that they will go back and forth on until they decide to shake the etch-a-sketch of creation and begin again. Typically, the diety is really mean to their little sentient beings for a while because they're really bothered about the whole fall from grace thing. And rather than place the blame where it deserves to be placed- i.e on themselves- they blame evil, knowledge and of course, those flawed little sentient beings, that were, lest we forget, created in the image of their god. Eventually, after serveral thousand years, maybe more, maybe less, the god or goddess in question will forgive the little critters that sometimes (read- when it's convenient) look to them for answers, the cause of their suffering, and an excuse to not take responsibility for their own stupidity, and they will relieve some of the suffering they have wrought upon the critters. However, the sentient beings are usually so used to suffering and stupidity that they don't know how to function without it, and therefore create chaos, suffering and blatant idiocracy out of their lives so that they feel secure and comforted.

anyway... everyone knows that cats are the true gods and goddesses... not hedgehogs. :)