About Schrödinger

One day, I was hanging out with a buddy of mine and we were sitting in his living room watching his cat nibble on the TV cable. (Don't worry, it wasn't connected to anything.)

"Your cat's eating the cable," I said.

"No worries. She'll just get zapped by 500 channels."

An idea came to me. What if that very thing happened to a cat? What would it do if 500 channels flooded into the little cat's brain? Realistically, I suppose it would electrocute the animal and make quite a stink in the apartment. But I was in fantasy land by this point.

"What if she became hyper-intelligent?" I said.

We laughed, and quickly changed the subject, because the moment had passed. But then I went home, where my own twin cats, Ozymandias and Mau, waited for me. They were insane animals. Mau was your average, run of the mill cat, a bit shy. But Oz had a disturbingly high level of intelligence. He taught himself to use the toilet. He taught himself to play fetch. Whenever I dealt with Oz, I knew that I was dealing with a unique kind of animal.

	Ozymandias and Mau, the twins.		Ozymandias. Can't you see the fierce look of concentration on his face?

This inspired me to take the concept of a hyper-intelligent cat to fruition I casually started drawing a few cats. For any of you who are artists out there, you may know that cats are one of the hardest animals to draw. Or maybe it's just me. At any rate, I drew and drew and drew, trying a fat fluffy cat, a skin and bones cat, longhair, shorthair, a cat with glasses, a cat with clothes, but nothing seemed right. And then I drew this:

And it became clear: this cat wasn't a smart person who happened to be in a cat's body; he was, above all, a cat. That meant even though he was hyper-intelligent and could speak, he still had all the neuroses and obsessions of a normal cat.

What does one name a hyper-intelligent cat? I tried Einstein, Socrates, all the names one associates with intellect, when I remembered the old thought experiment of Schrödinger's catbox. And he was named.

From there, the story is all there. Many of the strips are more or less true stories from the lives of Oz and Mau. I drew the strip as a way of dealing with the insanity of these two animals. Sadly, I was forced to give up the cats, and I really wish I hadn't. Beyond being rare specimens of catdom, they were fantastic inspiration.

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All artwork and web design © 2002 Patrick Connelly, except where noted. All rights reserved.