Mandatory Parker: "The Latest Quantum Cat"
You think your cat is unique? Well, do I have a story for you.
The automatic assumption about cats is that these are unique individuals, with their own unique perks. It’s easy to understand why: most people never travel far enough to see a truly huge number of cats, so just as Newtonian physics handles most day-to-day encounters with gravity without invoking Einsteinian theory, a typical person views all of the cats in his/her life and expects that these are all separate organisms. Some even believe that they’ve watched cats through their entire lifespans, from birth to death, and can attest in a court of law “Yes, Your Lordship, I’ve known this one cat longer than I’ve known my spouse.” But HOW do they know this?
The truth started coming out when the internet became more than a collection of erotic fanfiction (avoid the Absolutely Fabulous/Farscape slashfic, I beg you) and wild stock speculation fantasies and turned into what it was always meant to be: a concatenation (pun intended) of ailurophiliac obsession. And ailurophiliac recursion. Dogs don’t get this attention. Horses don’t get this attention. Komodo dragons, spitting cobras, and five-toed worm lizards don’t get this attention, to our permanent regret. The difference is, of course, that golden retrievers and Clydesdales and Gila monsters are distinct entities. Cats have evolved beyond that. Sometime around 20004, cats broke free of the usual constraints of causality and became unique: an animal that is simultaneously a particle and a wave. The whole of Felis catus is an Einstein-Bose condensate that purrs.
Most of the evidence that cats are really just quantum effects that wake you up screaming for attention at 3:00 am is all around us. The ability to teleport from place to place without traveling the intervening distance. The ability to fit into spaces no organism comprised of solids could enter, much less fill. Search a house for a cat for an hour, only to have it show up, happy and demanding feeding, in a place checked a dozen times by as many people. You can test this for yourself by picking up a cat. Notice as it constantly shifts under your fingers? That’s because each representation of a cat is really a demonstration of Bell’s Theorem visible to human perceptions. Anyone doubting “spooky action at a distance” has never been awakened from a dead sleep by a sudden crash followed by either frantic pattering or the sound of someone trying to cough up a hairball.
It’s actually much worse than this, and tracking cats and their behavior on the internet proves this. At a regional level, every cat seems to have unique features and behaviors that distinguish themselves from the others, and it’s easy to assume they’re differentiated. Get enough cat enthusiasts across the planet in one forum, though, and all of those features turn into homologies.
“Oh, my cat begs to be let into the garage and flop on the car hood!”
“Well, mine loses his mind if I try to use the toilet and close the door beforehand.”
“Well, MINE tries to climb in my lap and curl up in my underwear while I’m on the toilet!”
“Mine randomly knocks stuff off shelves for no reason!”
“Mine deliberately climbs up on shelves while I’m watching television and knocks stuff off at the scary moments!”
“MINE screams to be allowed to lick condensation off the inside of my shower stall!”
“Well, MINE…”
See what I mean? Just try that same experiment with dog people. This happens with a few breeds (Irish setters are the only dogs to share with ginger cats the ability to power an entire breed off one shared brain cell). Individuality exists with African grey parrots and axolotls and red-bellied piranha, but cats only exist to be measured as they are observed, and then turn back into quantum probabilities the moment you turn your back.
Every once in a great while, though, a tiny touch of further chaos seems to get into the cat algorithm, usually involving being observed. Parker, the lint-covered breast implant, is no exception. Parker shares far too much of the basic cat template with lots of others: chasing his tail when bored, demanding that I turn on the bathroom sink so he can get a drink, and randomly yelling at things that only he can see. (I’m spared his insistence that a mostly-filled cat food bowl is empty by using a guacamole bowl.) He also displays Siamese trait subsets: his mastery of English, including telling passersby “No!”, “Now!”, and “More!” Further subsets can be blamed on his being a lynx-point Siamese, the fact that he was completely declawed, front and back, when I first rescued him. This is on top of his having the worst case of Single Kitten Syndrome I’ve ever seen, resulting in both nearly two years of scars on my hands from play and his tendency to capture cicadas in the back yard and strut in the back yard with the bug hanging out of his mouth like a buzzing cigar. Compare enough notes with other cat people, though, and eventually someone else can point to similar behavior in their own moggie.
The separation of Parker from all other cats, though? Like many other cats, he loves to have his belly rubbed, and stretches so the whole belly gets full attention. Like many other cats, he hates to have his belly rubbed, causing him to reach up, grab my hand, and chew until I stop. The quantum confusion comes from observation: he loves to have his belly rubbed, but only when he cannot see what rubs said belly and the belly-rubber can’t see him. In the dark, say late at night when I’m trying to sleep, he throws himself into my armpit, rolls over, and buzzes for hours the moment fingers touch belly fur. The slightest bit of light, though, and that finger touch turns into a challenge, turning him into what animator Chuck Jones described of his own cat Johnson as “a boxing glove full of fishhooks”. The conflict is very real, and if you’ve ever watched the confusion and fear on a cat’s face as its own flatulence wakes it up, imagine how Parker feels when he simultaneously craves a good belly rub and a chunk of human flesh as compensation for the indignity.
Hence, Parker worked out a compromise to create a third state of cat matter. If he wants a belly rub but knows he has to retaliate if he sees the interfering hand, he calms right down when he’s capped like a falcon. A hand or a sock over his face, and he’s a thoroughly happy cat, but let a sliver of light through, and it’s Pleistocene South America, the dinner theater edition. The twin conflicts tear into him, so he resolves them the only way he can: by shoving his head into my hand and letting me rub until the urge to chew overwhelms all.
Yes, he’s a strange cat. That said, I’m waiting for that note letting me know “My cat does this, too,” and the cat condensate phenomenon is complete.
Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. And feel free to pass on word far and wide: the more, the merrier.