by Michaela Roessner
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Zurich, 1935. Mieze flattens her ears to her skull and thrashes her tail about in the manner of irritated cats everywhere. She opens her jaws so that she can smell with the inside of her mouth, a motion that humans take for nervous panting. Humans, who think they know so much. Who know so little. Mieze needs the extra olfactory sense to track her surroundings in the airtight, light-tight box, where even her enormous, luminously golden eyes cannot see. But there are many ways of “seeing.” There are many ways of observing.
Eye-blinded inside the box, Mieze still knows her surroundings well. She’s been here before. She’s endured many sessions in this container. As soon as her human pet, Felicie, leaves for school, Felicie’s father, the great Herr Professor Erwin S., is prone to pop Mieze in the box.
With the sensitive organs in her oral tissues Mieze breathes in the smell of the sweet honey heavy-leaded walls of her prison, the acid metal taste and tick of the Geiger counter, the slick glassine odor of the bottle containing and masking, for now, the cyanide gas, and the wood and steel of the hammer poised to crash down on the cyanide bottle.
But even more than these she tastes/smells/observes/knows the pulse of electrons and trembling of nuclei in the little case that contains the radioactive isotope. This smaller box is surrounded by a cage to prevent her from dislodging it in the fit of fear or fury that Herr Erwin seems to expect of her. Does Herr Erwin S. think she hasn’t noticed that he hasn’t similarly secured the bottle of cyanide?
Well, that’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it? Not the great scientific experiment, the one Herr Erwin S.’s friend, the renowned Doktor Einstein, calls the “prettiest way” to show that the wave representation of matter is an incomplete representation of reality. No, the true reality, the real representation of reality, is that her human pet (Felicie)’s father (Erwin) detests cats.
So if Mieze in the process of this to-be famous experiment should inadvertently bump into the cyanide instead of waiting for the statistical judgment of the nuclei, what will Herr Erwin S. say? He will say, “I am a Swiss scientist. I am not responsible for the nonprecision of felines.”
Yet for all the innocence she knows he would profess, she notices how gingerly he lifts the lid at the end of each experiment, the gloves he dons, the air-filter mask he wears over nose and mouth.
In spite of her anger, Mieze is drawn to and fascinated by the cage around the box of radioactive matter. it reminds her of the cage that secures Felicie’s brother’s white mice and the wire prison that confines Felicie’s mother’s canary. Inside this cell, too, the atomic particles tremble, hop and spin, watching her watching them. Just like the mice and the bird. Sometimes (she cannot help herself) she feels one paw curling out toward the caged box; her hindquarters involuntarily begin their rhythmic prepounce twitch.
At these moments she sympathizes briefly with Herr Erwin S. Is this not the same twitch she has observed in him as he sets up his experiments? When he pounces upon and captures the elusive, fluttering bits of knowledge, she has seen the sharp spark of thrill of a successful hunt. She believes he may even experience a brief, atavistic sensation as of soft fur or feathers against the inside of his mouth, a rush of the sweet warmth of blood.
But after a while of such conjecture Mieze grows bored and tired and wishes she could sleep. Then she again becomes irritated with Herr Erwin S. She is not stupid. If she dozes, if she suspends her observations, she could die.
At some point in the time she spends in here, Herr Erwin S., Herr E. Schrodinger believes that there is a fifty-percent chance (in his mind at least) that one of the nuclei in the case will decay and trigger the Geiger counter, causing the hammer to descend on the bottle containing the cyanide. Herr Schrodinger lives for a brief moment’s delusion of immortality. He hypothesizes that as long as he does not open the box she is neither dead nor alive. Or she is both. During that indeterminate moment he believes himself to be her deity - that it is his paltry act of lifting the lid that determines her survival.
Yet Mieze has noticed that he has at times left her in the box far longer than necessary to make this determination. At first she believed that he lost track of the time in his addictive immersion into godhood. Later she accepted the possibility that his hatred of cats might be stronger than his egomania. If he “forgot” and left her in the box long enough, she would suffocate. Then he would say, “I am a Swiss physicist. What would I know of feline lung capacity and oxygen requirements?”
So the moment he places her in the enclosure she shallows her breathing, shuns the desire to sleep. Poor Herr Erwin S., Mieze thinks. He congratulates himself on his scientific prowess, yet he lacks the most rudimentary observational skills. Take, as an example, how he initiates this experiment. Anyone who observes cats for the briefest length of time knows that to entice a cat into a box, one has only to leave it invitingly open. The cat’s own scientific fervor (mislabeled by men as mere curiosity) will lead it unerringly to investigate. Yet time and time again Herr Erwin S. - ignorant, sadistic, and completely untalented - has picked her up and jammed her into this container. Always with the same results. It is her only satisfaction, she thinks as she licks his blood from between her claws.
No, Herr Erwin S., Herr Professor, sees and understands nothing. Even the mice and canary know more than he. They would scrutinize the subatomic particles studying them and be able to control the atomic assassins with their own watching. Creatures, being more intelligent than men, know that all the games of life and death, existence and nonexistence, are determined by oneupmanship in observation. The cat sits and waits at a mousehole. The mouse sits and waits on the other side. Each by its watching determines the other’s reality. Poor Herr E. Schrodinger does not understand how much his own existence is determined by the watchful vigilance of cats, of small birds and rodents, even of atomic particles. Poor Herr Erwin, who neither sees nor tastes/smells/observes the imprisoning box of his own reality.
Mieze yawns. Stalemating nuclei is too easy. She’s had plenty of time, too much time, to think of all the ramifications of her situation.
Oh, yes, yes, she knows that by imposing her will to live that in a parallel reality another Mieze (she assumes a retarded version of herself) is dying. But Mieze is pragmatic. She is only concerned with her consciousness continuing along this particular life line.
She’s imagined so many other possibilities. In another universe Herr Erwin S.’s daughter is not called Felicie and does not like cats. There Mieze chose to be mistress to a dairyman’s family. She lives on cream by a warm hearth. In other continuums Herr S.:
Has only sons, no daughters, and kidnaps his feline victims from alleys.
Is married, but has no children.
Is not married, has no children.
Only proposes the experiment as an idea, leaving others to follow it through as they will. But he doesn’t fool the cats in that reality. After all, if he truly meant no malice, why didn’t he suggest another animal for the experiment; say, for example, a dog?
Mieze conjectures other, earlier realities she knows must exist. A continuum where before he receives his doctorate in 1910 Herr Schrodinger is drummed out of college for a sexual scandal involving a middle-aged whore, a baron’s wife,and daughter, and great amounts of cherry strudel. Whole universes where at the age of eight young master Schrodinger trips over a black cat while on his way to school and is run over by a passing carriage, his skull crushed!
But still, later would not be too late. A universe where Herr Professor Erwin Schrodinger mysteriously disappears after a hard day of experimenting in his lab. His dear little daughter Felicie comes by to see him after her lessons, discovers him gone and in the nick of time rescues her beloved golden-eyed silver tabby. Mieze lingers over the potential of this universe. Yes, it will do nicely. After all, she has held back from meddling up until now. She has endured session after session in the box, thinking with a softened heart of Felicie, who slips her morsels of chicken livers, who knows how to sleep in just the right alignment of curves for ideal cat nestling. Mieze knows the anguish Felicie would suffer if anything should happen to her father, who she believes to be perfect. Yet Herr S. cares not a whit for the grief that Mieze’s death would cause Felicie. How heartbroken Felicie would be to know what a monster her father truly is. Far better to save the child from that trauma.
Mieze stretches in the confines of the box. It is decided, then. She cannot be like the mice and the canary, even if she wished it. She is an observer extraordinaire; a hunter far superior to Herr S. Which means she has been patient. But a cat can be patient too long. A deep, voluptuous purr fills Mieze’s throat. The moment has come. It is time to open the box on Professor Herr Erwin Schrodinger.
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