The Cat in the Box

The humans have a story about one of us.

How do I know this? It's because they talk among themselves while they take care of us each day. Sometimes they'll even listen to things through these little white button-like objects they place in their ears. Occasionally they'll take these out and share with each other things that they find fascinating. One of the things I've overheard them talking about is the cat in the box. They never agree about what happened to this cat, which shows just how carefully they were listening.

My name is Marbles. I've lived at Special Little Whiskers Kitten Sanctuary since before it became a sanctuary. I came to live with these humans in the midst of a snowstorm in Pittsburgh. I'd been huddled up underneath a trailer when they scooped me up, put me in a thing they call a carrier (to me it feels like a cage), and brought me home to live with them.

While this story isn't about me, the fact that I'm a cat makes me better qualified than these humans to tell you what they keep getting wrong.

They say that a cat was placed inside of a sealed box with a small amount of radioactive material, a Geiger counter, a hammer, and a flask of poison. The humans call it something like Schrödinger's cat. This doesn't really matter though. Let's get on with this story.

They say that if the radioactive atom decayed, the counter would detect it, trigger the hammer, smash the flask, and the cat would die. Of course, this meant that if the atom didn't decay, the cat would live. The part that the humans continually argue about is whether the cat existed simultaneously in both states until the box was opened. This would mean they'd be both alive and dead at the same time – something that really doesn't make much sense to me. They call this a superposition but talk about it as though it's physics – which confuses me even more.

What I'd like to know is how the cat felt about any of this. I'm not talking sentimentally, but regarding information – something the story is missing even though it's important. Without this important piece the cat isn't a cat. It's a symbol with fur.

Here at Special Little Whiskers Kitten Sanctuary we have a cat named Phantom who was found in a truck engine. He's the closest we have to someone who's been found in a box. He was about 9 months old and froze nearly to death there. Phantom smelled of his own fear – something that took months to wash off even though he was clean. This smell was in, not on, him.

Phantom doesn't like tight spaces. He doesn't hide in the holes in the cat tree like the rest of us do. He also doesn't like being indoors. There's a moment when the door opens where he'll try to dart out of it if you aren't careful. Even if you wake him from a deep sleep he'll look around and zone in on the open door. At this specific moment his eyes aren't quite open yet and he's not quite sure if the door is actually open.

Every time Phantom does this there's a texture to that moment. This is something I've seen many times in the past. I know what it looks like. His ears flatten. He holds his breath. His pupils open allowing him to take in as much light and information as possible. He's checking, updating, asking the air if this is a box.

Of course, the answer is no. We're all familiar with the walls, the smell, and even the food dish here. Once he realizes this, his tail is neatly tucked back underneath his body.

The point is that a thought experiment can’t stay intact once you place a real cat inside it. Phantom isn’t suspended in theory. He exists in time. His experience changes from moment to moment. He's always checking, recalibrating, maintaining his position in relation to danger. This isn’t something he passively observes. It’s something he actively manages.

The man who created this box theory was making an attempt at showing us something that's absurd. In a way, he was on Phantom's side. His goal was to show how ridiculous it is to say something is in two states at the same time. He wanted to show that at some point, regardless of whether someone peeked inside of the box, the cat was one thing or the other.

But humans have a talent for turning warnings into beliefs. There are still some people who will say the cat exists in two states until the lid opens. These humans speak as though the act of looking at the cat is what decides the outcome. It's like the world waits politely for human eyes to see it before it commits to anything at all.

This is such a human idea. Only they would believe that when a cat is placed inside a box, the important thing becomes the box.

The humans at Special Little Whiskers Kitten Sanctuary have a waiting list. They don’t tell us about it, but I’ve pieced it together from their conversations. There are more cats who need this place than there is space for them. Some of those cats are living in difficult conditions — not fully safe, not entirely in danger either. Suspended, you might say, if you were thinking like a physicist.

When the humans talk about these cats, they admit they don’t know what’s happening. They shake their heads, then return to their tasks. As far as they’re concerned, the box remains closed.

But those cats aren't in superposition. They're somewhere specific, in a particular yard or basement or roadside ditch. They're cold or hungry or briefly warm. They're hiding or running or sleeping lightly. The fact that the humans lack information doesn't place those cats between realities. It only limits what the humans can see.

What I want to tell them is that the cats on this waiting list aren't in superposition. They don't hover between states, frozen in quantum ambiguity, waiting for someone to look at them. I try so hard with my varying levels of eye contact and intention to tell them that these cats are somewhere specific, experiencing something specific. Just because the humans don't know what these things are doesn't mean that they're undecided. In other words, the box doesn't create uncertainty. It simply limits your information.

At the moment Phantom is sleeping near the heater. He's chosen not to be in the center of the room. It’s a cold day, and his need for warmth has outweighed his instinct to stay away from the walls. This is a nuanced position that Phantom regularly updates. However, the cat in the box in the story doesn't have this choice. At this moment in the story they're reduced to being just a cat in a box for an experiment.

This is why I say simplification undoes things. If the cat in the story is anything like Phantom they aren't waiting. Instead they're assessing, cataloging everything that's going on around them, deciding how scared they are. This isn't a superstition. The box is a real place, the cat is alive, they're afraid and trying to resolve it.

For the human, the thought experiment ends when they open the box. However, for the cat this experience ends much later – if at all.

I was a stray for several months at the beginning of my life. I knew a lot about unsealed boxes at that time. I was hiding underneath trailers because there was some shelter there. This taught me that partial shelter isn't the same as no shelter. However, every time I'd seek this shelter I'd have to decide if partial shelter was sufficient – a choice I'd need to make every time. Yesterday's answer could be very different from today's answer and yet neither of them were wrong.

The man in the story had a cat – a point that the humans debate. One said they read that the guy was fond of animals. I choose to believe that he was good with cats. After all, he seemed to have a better understanding than most people that something can be true and yet not be witnessed at the same time.

There’s something I don’t understand, though. The flask was placed in the box deliberately. Someone put it there knowing what it could do. In my experience, the worst things in a box are rarely accidental. They exist whether or not anyone chooses to look inside.

What I learned as a kitten is that the cat isn't waiting for you to define them. Hunger doesn't pause. Cold doesn't soften simply because nobody is watching. I was always something — even when no one had opened the lid.

Humans end the thought experiment when the box opens. For them, that is the decisive moment. However, for the cat, the experience stretches far beyond that. The fear, the cold, the calculations about shelter — these don't vanish when someone looks. Observation isn't the same thing as safety. It never has been.

Phantom has moved. The door is closed — I didn’t see it happen. Now he sits in the center of the room, watching it. Closed doors aren't metaphors. They're simply doors. And whether or not anyone is looking, we remain entirely ourselves.