Almost a Schrödinger

by Anne M. Carson

His cat is both alive, hovering at the moment of simultaneity, and also dead. The cartoon vet puts a sympathetic hand on the client’s shoulder, says, “About your cat Mr Schrödinger, I have good news and bad news.”

My cat wasn’t dead and alive, but in two places at once, almost a Schrödinger cat. One version of Charlie was hiding from the new cat sitter, safe in the cupboard at home. The other was in hospital comforting me. Doped up with opiods, my calves wrapped in inflatable compression sleeves to increase blood flow, I am in need of comfort.

The sensation is visceral, immediate. As the sleeves inflate, for a single moment it feels like Charlie jumps on the hospital bed, and smooches into the gaps between my calves. She elongates herself, holds companionably against me, just like she does at home. For a heartbeat I believe it utterly.

A rusty metal silhouette of a life-sized cat sits in the garden of Schrödinger’s Zurich house, tail erect, a cat who changes according to the brightness of the day—now a dead cat, and now in a different light, bursting with life.