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cjlasky7A weird little tale to amuse you on a cold and rainy Sunday....
Every morning, around 6:30 a.m., our six year old Russian Blue tomcat, Louie, parks himself at the top of the steps leading to the second floor of our house. He waits--sometimes patiently, sometimes with a loud "meow!" of urgency--for me to get up, take down the gate separating us, give him a reassuring stroke or scratch, and go downstairs to feed him breakfast. It's a comforting ritual for us both.
Yesterday morning, I got up late, around 9 a.m. I went to the gate to check on my little friend, who must have been hungry.
He wasn't there.
This was alarming. He's ALWAYS there, dependable as the sunrise. I shot downstairs, calling his name.
I thought I heard something from the kitchen.
I stood in front of the giant breakfront occupying the left side of our kitchen. Loud meowing was coming from somewhere in that area. But where? In a frenzy, I opened up all the drawers and doors on the breakfront, opened the refrigerator (tucked into the middle of the breakfront) and the freezer. No cat. The meowing got louder. Where the hell was he? This was starting to feel eerily familiar....
(Does anybody here remember an episode of the original Twilight Zone called "Little Girl Lost"? Parents hear the cries of their young daughter coming from her bedroom, but even though they hear her, she can't be found anywhere. In true Twilight Zone fashion, she slipped through an opening in the wall to an alternate dimension.
Beautifully written by Richard Matheson; even though it's an outlandish premise, Matheson taps into the primal fear of losing your child in a split-second. After that episode, the image of the markings on the wall defining the intersection point never really leaves your head. My wife said she was tempted to yell, "Bring the chalk!")
Getting back to the story: I called up to my wife, and she and our son came downstairs, double time. Surveying the breakfront, she spotted a grey blur on top the refrigerator, near the back. "There he is." The middle of the breakfront has a "lip" that comes down around three quarters of the way to the back of the refrigerator. Louie obviously squeezed under that lip to go exploring--and then got too scared or confused to come back out.
He seemed to be okay. He was just scared. We tried coaxing him out with food, with a new toy, with pleading--but he wouldn't budge. Finally, I had to roll up my sleeves and drag his kitty butt out of there, and he did not go quietly. ("Put your head down, Louis, HEAD DOWN!"
He wasn't hurt (and I wasn't hurt) and the household returned to what passes for normal. (He slept well that night.)
My wife teases the cat about the experience, but I get the feeling he'd rather forget the whole, embarrassing incident....
Every morning, around 6:30 a.m., our six year old Russian Blue tomcat, Louie, parks himself at the top of the steps leading to the second floor of our house. He waits--sometimes patiently, sometimes with a loud "meow!" of urgency--for me to get up, take down the gate separating us, give him a reassuring stroke or scratch, and go downstairs to feed him breakfast. It's a comforting ritual for us both.
Yesterday morning, I got up late, around 9 a.m. I went to the gate to check on my little friend, who must have been hungry.
He wasn't there.
This was alarming. He's ALWAYS there, dependable as the sunrise. I shot downstairs, calling his name.
I thought I heard something from the kitchen.
I stood in front of the giant breakfront occupying the left side of our kitchen. Loud meowing was coming from somewhere in that area. But where? In a frenzy, I opened up all the drawers and doors on the breakfront, opened the refrigerator (tucked into the middle of the breakfront) and the freezer. No cat. The meowing got louder. Where the hell was he? This was starting to feel eerily familiar....
(Does anybody here remember an episode of the original Twilight Zone called "Little Girl Lost"? Parents hear the cries of their young daughter coming from her bedroom, but even though they hear her, she can't be found anywhere. In true Twilight Zone fashion, she slipped through an opening in the wall to an alternate dimension.
Beautifully written by Richard Matheson; even though it's an outlandish premise, Matheson taps into the primal fear of losing your child in a split-second. After that episode, the image of the markings on the wall defining the intersection point never really leaves your head. My wife said she was tempted to yell, "Bring the chalk!")
Getting back to the story: I called up to my wife, and she and our son came downstairs, double time. Surveying the breakfront, she spotted a grey blur on top the refrigerator, near the back. "There he is." The middle of the breakfront has a "lip" that comes down around three quarters of the way to the back of the refrigerator. Louie obviously squeezed under that lip to go exploring--and then got too scared or confused to come back out.
He seemed to be okay. He was just scared. We tried coaxing him out with food, with a new toy, with pleading--but he wouldn't budge. Finally, I had to roll up my sleeves and drag his kitty butt out of there, and he did not go quietly. ("Put your head down, Louis, HEAD DOWN!"
He wasn't hurt (and I wasn't hurt) and the household returned to what passes for normal. (He slept well that night.)
My wife teases the cat about the experience, but I get the feeling he'd rather forget the whole, embarrassing incident....
no subject
Date: 2021-12-19 10:05 pm (UTC)I have to be careful, because calling Sirius works about as well as calling for the help of Zeus. He isn't much interested in getting outside anymore, but he loves to slip into closets behind me, and hide while I come out and shut the door only to hear strange scratching hours later. If I'd call for him before he'd start scratching, I wouldn't hear a peep out of him.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-19 10:56 pm (UTC)Cats are such peculiar creatures. They have their odd habits and little private spots. I don't know if humans ever truly understand them.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-20 05:14 am (UTC)As to that Twilight Zone ep about the alternate dimension / universe, I personally have come to support the physicists who are leaning into the multiverse sector believers. Between the significant number of small parts (washers, springs, screws, e-rings-- anything tiny and necessary for the piece of equipment I'm repairing to work properly) that accidentally fall off of my bench to hit the floor and completely disappear...
... and almost every dream I have where I seem to be riding along with either an alternate version of myself or someone else, and the world around me seems like this one, but--- is not.
Did I ever post sometime in the past where in one dream, I was walking down a street here in town, a familiar street, and the color of the sunlight was wrong? I mean, wrong in that it was like my brain didn't know quite how to process it? Like the entire atmosphere was different, alien, and filtered the sunlight differently?
And that was one of the less weird ones.
So, disappearing cat? Why not! There's a great Kliban cartoon about just that, I'll see if I can find and post it.
( Meeoww.... )
The Same (But Not the Same)
Date: 2021-12-20 12:59 pm (UTC)I think Serling was the first to play around with parallel worlds and higher dimensions on television. Besides "Little Girl Lost," you had Season 3's "Mirror Image," where Vera Miles and Martin Milner were stalked by doubles from a parallel world.
More head-on was Season 4's underappreciated "The Parallel," about an astronaut who drifts through a gap in space/time while in orbit and lands on an Earth slightly different from our own. (What I liked about Serling's script is that the parallel Earth wasn't weird or evil--just different enough to be eerie and disorienting.)
I think I became aware of parallel universes through comic books. DC comics had their golden age superheroes from the 1940s stationed on a parallel universe from their main line of characters. As a kid, I always used to look forward to the annual Justice League/Justice Society team up. (Eventually, DC got crazy with the parallel worlds, and used Crisis on Infinite Earths to clean up the mess. RIP George Perez....)
One last note: mathematicians have given theoretical support to the "magic portal" of "Little Girl Lost." Intersection points between normal space and higher dimensions are possible in the spatial geometry proposed by Bernard Reimann. (The portal is called a "Reimannian Cut.")
I tried to follow the math for this theory, but it was too much for my little brain...)
Re: The Same (But Not the Same)
Date: 2021-12-21 04:58 am (UTC)Full resolution image here...
*******
One of the other things that's made me more accepting of the multiverse theory was when it was explained in some recent article I read that the reason we can't perceive the alternate 'verses is that at some quantum level they vibrate/oscillate at different frequencies. This concept worked intellectually for me in that as an electronics guy, who has tinkered with radios since childhood, we can only tune in a radio station by selecting the carrier frequency the actual audio signal rides on. Remove the carrier, and... sound!
And as to my AU dreams, which have increased in number steadily over the past few years, I can't help but wonder if the ever-increasing levels of modulated electromagnetic energy in the world is having an effect?
Now, my alternate (and better) theory is that what I'm tapping into is the "collective unconscious" concept. It is well established that our brains do emit electromagnetic energy, and therefore having the higher level of modulated RF out there is acting as a linkage booster?
Meee-OWW!!
Note-- I believe this theory could be empirically tested by arranging to have people who are having dreams similar to mine sleep for a period of at least several weeks inside a well-grounded Faraday Cage, and see if the dream content changes.
Whaddaya think?
no subject
Date: 2021-12-21 05:21 am (UTC)Is it possible that you are somehow in sync with other CJs across quantum states?
no subject
Date: 2021-12-22 07:00 am (UTC)That's one possibility. It would explain the "unworldly" elements of the dreams. The one problem with the collective unconscious is that strangeness. If I was linking in to others here on this earth, then I'd think the visuals in my dreams would be more conventional.
Side subject-- do you happen to subscribe to The Magazine if Fantasy & Science-Fiction? I still do, but it's primarily to support the mag and it's writers. Sadly, the only thing I read these days is pretty much the local newspaper, I just don't have time to do otherwise. The only other magazine I subscribe to is the (rather practical) Consumer Reports.
If you don't subscribe to F&SF, and would be interested for yourself or someone you know, I'd be glad to ship some yearly sets to you, free. It might be nice if somebody reads them!
no subject
Date: 2021-12-22 08:53 pm (UTC)Re: The Same (But Not the Same)
Date: 2021-12-21 03:26 pm (UTC)Love the cartoon. Reminds me of when Rick and Morty were stranded in a void outside time, and it was filled with Schrodinger's cats...
One more time...
Meow!