It’s well-known by cat owners that cats love boxes.
All you have to do to get a cat in a box is leave one lying around. The box, not the cat. Although chances are, the cat will be lying around prior to your putting the box down, and only then will spring into action.
After coming alive, the cat will attempt to fit into the box, whether or not the box is actually cat-shaped. For a cat, the smaller the box, the bigger the challenge.
You can leave a large, closable box near a cat, and they will certainly get into it, even though it’s not a challenge. They may even get all the way to the other, closed, end of the box that your new sofa came in — as if they are exploring the catacombs, or taking possession of a 10-bedroom, 5-bath cat mansion.
But the minute you get close enough to close the cat in the box, it will exit quicker than your kid leaves a room when bathtime approaches. Faster than a stripper — after scooping up the money — exits the stage at the end of her shift. Faster than a speeding tabby-colored bullet. You get the idea. “If it fits I sits, and if it acts like it’s closing — I’m outa there.”
There is no actual closing a cat in a box, just as there is no keeping a cat out of one.
“If it fits, I sits, and if it acts like it’s closing — I’m outta there.”
Schrödinger’s original thesis is therefore impossible from its inception. He can’t have cajoled a cat into a box if the cat did not want to enter.
Nor could he persuade the cat to leave the box — when or if it didn’t want to — to determine if it is alive or dead. If it doesn’t leave the box, perhaps it’s dead, or simply waiting for revenge. Even if it is alive, the cat won’t leave until it’s damned good and ready.
He certainly couldn’t have locked the cat into the box in the first place — not without incurring life-threatening scratches and bites.
By then, if he did indeed get the cat into the box and closed it, he would no longer care if the cat was alive or dead. In fact — as blood dripped down his sleeves and pant legs — he probably wished for the latter.
If, however, the cat was alive, it would definitely let Schrödinger know. Especially if it didn’t want to enter the box in the first place, and was then unceremoniously and sneakily locked into the box. Such a caterwauling would ensue as to raise the dead of any species.
Schrödinger also wouldn’t know if the cat was dead. If the caterwauling stopped and there was silence, then there might be some question about whether the unobserved cat was alive or dead.
However, once he opened the box to check on the cat, the heretofore silent — and presumably dead — cat would launch itself, claws unsheathed, toward his head to administer more wounding and drawing of blood. Thus, obviously very much alive and very, very angry.
Cats are methodical and vengeful that way.
Perhaps a gecko or iguana would have been a better choice.
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This post was previously published on MuddyUm.
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