Schrödinger’s fault

A brief story of cats

It is Schrödinger’s fault. Yes, his fault. From him, who insisted on imagining a cat inside.

I’m thinking about, as I swing the pencil hesitantly on the paper and watch the cat going around the carboard cube with looseness and jumping into it. The movement is executed, in the way a cat is always used to, in an agile and elegant way.

That imaginary experiment must have messed up its imaginary collective memory and have left a mark on the felines’s subconscious; so now, whenever they can, they proclaim the memory of their ancestor inside the box. I watch it closely. Yes, to my cat. I watch him inside the receptacle as frozen in time … as keeping a minute of silence to apologize. Yes, to apologize. Because in a few moments, he will jump out of the box again, and then he will have sealed the fate of the imaginary moggy of the experiment, forever.

Ramses decides which side the coin falls on, as he propels himself with the spring of his hind legs and appears almost instantly on the opposite side. It seems to have been enough of sentimentality. He wags his tail slowly and turns gallantly around the long hallway. Parading through it, until reaching his favorite place, a luminous rectangle on the tile floor, warmed by the afternoon sun. Where now it perches spreading his front legs, adopting a position that resembles a miniature sphinx. — ¿How can infinite grace fit in such tiny body? — I wonder, while he looks at me condescendingly for not knowing the answer. Not even three seconds have passed, and he ignores me again, turning the attention to another point in space. Or only God knows … maybe even in time.

He stares at a place, apparently close to where I am. And however, totally foreign to me. The amber constellations that make up the particular universe, expanding within the pair of cat eyes, trace a journey whose destination has always been and will remain a mystery. Suddenly, I venture to try to elucidate some reasons for what they see so attentively. One of my theories says that what they see is a closed path to the sight of men; the place where they jealously guard the secrets of their grace and the mystery of their essence. Another, that during those moments, they act as the observers destined to maintain our experimental existence, of this world as it is, and therefore they know they are superior to us. Another, that this Ramses, my Ramses (thus expressed by mere affection, since cats belong only to themselves) enters a state of temporary petrification due to the rapid stampede — chasing some mouse — that another Ramses, which i do not recognize it as mine, has undertaken. And so I could continue raving … until I get tired and opt for the most boring explanation of all of them. This is, the one that states, that perhaps, is simply a bug on the wall that my tired sight cannot distinguish. I don’t know, I think it might be better if i never get to know.

In any case, I still believe it’s Schrödinger’s fault, (I insist) while I indecisively erase the title of a story, which I finally decide not to write.