fine whine

Our cat, despite being rather quite old, is still active. She often runs around the house at thirty scale miles per hour (in my estimation, based on an entirely imagined sense of scale) completely on her own, but she does occasionally interact with us, too. Jessica's bought her a number of small toys that jingle and roll and things like that, except that the cat ignores them almost completely and they lay on the floor or elsewhere still and silent.

Except for when she's in a playful mood and we are in a cooperative one, and we throw the toys around the house for her. Were she a dog, she'd fetch them and bring them back to our feet with a wagging tail, and expectant puppy dog eyes, but she is a cat and as such just sprints to where it lands, or somewhere nearby.

I have a theory. It's not that she's too lazy to return it to us, it's that she isn't interested in it like that. I think she just wants to make sure it hits the ground, as though to find reassurance in the continued existence of gravity. As though if she weren't watching it, it might not land, and instead be floating somewhere.

The act of observation changes the data, after all. Schrodinger chose to use a cat for his uncertainty analogy, after all.

I'd think it silly except that every morning as I leave for work I pause in my driveway, watching the garage door close. If I haven't seen it stop at the bottom and I go off to work I get nagging doubts that I closed it at all and often end up turning back just to make sure I'd closed it.

I haven't forgotten to do so yet. Yet I worry and turn around.

You might think that to see it start closing would be enough, but it isn't. There was a day this summer when the door would go all the way down, hesitate and then go back up--repeatedly. There was no way to keep it closed short of interrupting it going upward with a quick tap of the button.

Despite the fact that it hasn't done this since, I still find the need to make sure that the door closes and stays closed. I can only wonder if I will ever be able to trust it, and in doing so, get back those half minutes every morning on my way to work.