On Talking to the Cat that’s no Longer There

Sad to say, our much loved moggy finally found herself on the wrong side of the Schroedinger’s Cat paradox, and died a few days ago..

She now sleeps under cloud trees in the back garden, marked by a little cairn with a “cat stone” on top of it - a tabby painted round, smooth rock - the family having decided that this was a nice peaceful spot for her.

All the words we use to deal with the death of both pets, and humans, are all euphemisms of course. “Rest”, “sleep”, “put to sleep” and the like, and our behaviour is a kind of euphemism too. People talk at gravesides, I’ve been talking to the cat under her little monument outside.

I justified it by worrying she was lonely outside, the cat never having spent a night out in all her time with us, and so I say a few words to make sure she isn’t, and ask her what the plump looking blackbirds are up to. I imagine her leaping from tree to tree, peering in bird’s nest and being naughty, or sitting on a branch looking at me as if I’m stupid as I talk to thin air or give the cat stone a little stroke, furry Maine Coon tail swaying laconically

This is all for my comfort of course. I miss her, as do we all, ergo I need to talk to her, to reconstruct her. I know the cat isn’t really there, and not being religious in any way, don’t believe there is a spirit of a cat there.

And yet…

...perhaps in the world of science not yet discovered, the science to come, there is a reason she could still be there. Some “out there” types believe the Universe is essentially the same as a hologram and even a tiny section of it contains all the information that there is in the whole. Perhaps the soul is a physically identifiable quantity that really exists, and thus her mind has slipped into my beloved eleventh dimension - if it has, I envy what she’s seeing. Maybe she is a true quantum cat and can exist in multiple states a la Schroedinger.

I don’t know. But in any event, I shall carry on talking to her about the birds, and giving the cat stone a little pat.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 11.08.14