Excerpt #1:

SCHROEDINGER GROWING UP

I’m convinced that Schroedinger has a sense of humor and the ability to think things through to a conclusion. When he was almost a year old, he caught a bird and brought it into the house. I was able to get it away from him in time. There was no damage done and the bird quickly flew away. I had not yet realized that Schroedinger didn’t want to kill things, just to play with them, but I was especially anxious that he didn’t kill birds. The next day I bought a break-away collar with a bell on it so he would have a more difficult time sneaking up on them. That night, I was sitting at the dinner table reading when he came over to me. I picked him up and put the collar on Schroedinger and set him down. He fell to the floor as if it weighed four hundred pounds. He flopped around like a fish out of water, but he couldn’t get the collar off. Finally, he got up and walked into the laundry room where his food and water were kept. I was still sitting at the table reading. I heard him flopping around and thumping and finally, it got very quiet. I kept reading, but began to feel that someone was watching me. I looked down and Schroedinger was sitting next to my foot just staring up at me with an evil cat grin on his face. Instead of being on his neck, the collar was lying on my shoe. It wasn’t enough for Schroedinger just to get the collar off; he had to demonstrate once again that he was smarter than me. “So there”, he said, as he grinned his “I’m smarter than you” grin at me.

The illustration in Figure 13 below shows the grin and the collar on my shoe. This feat would be impressive if it were done by a human child, but I’ll bet not many cats are capable of such thoughts. This episode clearly demonstrates Schroedinger’s ability to reason over a number of steps in his thought processes and to make decisions based upon them. I’ve known many people who weren’t that smart.