The Kafkaesque Case of the Administrative Tower of Babel

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At the heart of the bureaucratic labyrinth, a citizen finds himself lost, drowning in a maze of paperwork that makes it hard to find his bearings.

Ludovic, an average citizen residing in Nowhere-on-Absurd, recently had to embark on a true administrative odyssey to obtain a permit to build a hut for his cat in his own garden. A Kafkaesque saga that has now been ongoing for two Moons, with an uncertain ending.

It all began with a simple permit request addressed to the municipality. They then sent him back a list as long as his arm of documents to provide, including a birth certificate for his cat, an allergy-free certificate for all the residents in the neighborhood with respect to feline fur, and a good conduct certificate for the animal signed by the veterinarian.

“The apparent absurdity of the requests didn’t shock me at first; I took it for rigor. But when I received a summons for a town planning commission meeting to assess the aesthetic impact of the hut on the local landscape, I began to have doubts,” Ludovic recounts.

After meticulously filling out all the requests, Ludovic received a letter from the prefecture indicating that his file had been transferred to a national organization for review, as the proposed construction could set a legal precedent regarding feline habitation. A month later, surprise, the file ended up in the hands of the Ministry of Agriculture, as Ludovic’s land is classified as agricultural land.

“All this for a cat hut, it’s absurd!” exclaims Ludovic. “If I had built a skyscraper, I wouldn’t have had as many problems. It’s Kafkaesque!”

An anonymous expert from the administration confides his perplexity: “It’s as if someone is asked to climb to the 30th floor without an elevator, while the building only has 10. We don’t know where this will end up, and especially why it has taken on such proportions. It’s unheard of.”

No cat wished to comment on this Kafkaesque situation. As for Ludovic, he is now being offered architecture courses to ensure the robustness of his cat’s future abode. Indeed, we certainly wouldn’t want it to collapse under the weight of all this paperwork.