The litter of kittens stretched and mewed in the straw all around the cage, nuzzling up to their mother. There were many, although two were immediately removed as they did not meet the specification. There was Neil and Judy and more names than I recall but this is the story of a black cat, except for a streak of white below her chin and four white bootie paws, called Joni and her journey.
She spent a few weeks in that cage, with its limited space to prowl around in the buzzing fluorescent light. At first, she would enjoy suckling up to her mother with her siblings but, when her mother was taken, they all soon learnt that food would appear daily in one corner. They would play together as much as the confined space would allow and the litter tray would be changed most days. It was not much of a life, a constant comfortable temperature and regular inspection from outside the wire netting by a small team of technicians. What was it all about, stalking around in this two square metres of sterile confinement, being weighed periodically?
But when her time was up there, she thought it bliss compared to her new accommodation. A dark metal box, much smaller than the cage and removed from her siblings. The food continued to arrive but the litter tray was no longer changed – she was not there long enough to necessitate that.
She was part of a modified Schrödinger experiment and, unbeknownst to Joni of course, the box was being irradiated at thirty minute intervals – sufficient, by the scientists scrupulous calculations, to give an LD50 dose of radiation to the cat, which represented any mammal of that size and weight. LD50 was a measure of toxicity, the lethal median dose meaning that, given such a dose of radiation half any cat population would die. The question became, would Joni live or die. It was of no consequence to the experimenters what quality of life might survive – they were solely interested in data, statistics, facts, knowledge.
Inside her box Joni was feeling progressively unwell; tired and nauseous with a prickly sensation in her skin. The air felt scarce, and she lay down and coughed up some vomit. There were muffled voices outside but, other than that and the foul stench of her prison, she was senseless – her senses might be working but there was nothing here to sense. Her eyes closed.
The two scientists, Doctor Friends & Doctor Strange, looked at their watches and at the timer running down. The needle on the X-Ray machine fell back to zero and the “clear” light went on. They opened the Lead Door to the dark preparation room where their cat in the box (or maybe no cat in the box) lay and carried the flimsy receptacle out into the light, laying it on their work bench.
“Now for the moment of truth” announced Doctor Strange, undoing the clips. Doctor Friends just nodded, a little upset that their experiment may have taken a life. It was the first time she had been involved in such a procedure and she had known the kittens from birth. The lid was slowly lifted.
Inside the box a very groggy Joni opened an eye, feeling more dead than alive. Was she dead or alive – much the same question as Friends and Strange were asking themselves. As the lid was being removed, a strange light flooded the box – not the yellowish electric light of the cage and not the dirty cream walls of the room where it had been kept. It was bright and she was looking out, in part, at a beautiful blue sky. Blue – a colour she had never experienced before. And there were two faces appearing above her, looking curiously down at where she lay. Strangely, there was no cage between her and the faces. They were exchanging words.
There was a surge of energy through her body as she sensed a world she had never experienced. Fresh air rushed into the box diluting the stench of her urine and faeces and containing new smells unknown to her. She stretched her back legs with some effort and their stiffness began to fall away. There was a sense of urgency. This horrible dark box need not be tolerated but those faces represent her jailors. In leaving the box she must evade capture. Her mind was racing faster than its irradiated cells seemed capable of supporting. That blue sky looked so inviting.
With a speed and a strength that belied her fatigued body she stood and leapt to the lip of the box, surveyed the long laboratory with it’s windows along one side and the two shocked retreating faces to her left. The next leap was towards the windows where the scent of fresh air, meadows and woodland flooded into her. New alien smells but their mystery held a beauty beyond her imagination. They held something primitive and instinctive that had arrived with her through generations of cats, once wild but now largely domesticated. They held freedom.
Her third leap carried her through an open window just as Doctor Strange made a belated lunge to capture her. She was falling, another new experience, and the breeze seemed to soothe her prickly skin. Instinctively she landed on all fours as she had never done before, her tail somehow adjusting her body. The ground was hard and cold as she landed on the tarmac parking lot where, just three years earlier, there had been a meadow with a sycamore tree and two silver birches. It was a jolt, almost painful, but she knew time was at a premium, she could not luxuriate in this warm new sunshine. She walked and looked. There was inviting green above a low wall not far away – a wall she could surmount by jumping up onto a bonnet of a shiny red car and then onto its roof.
Her legs were stiff and not functioning quite as they had when she had gambolled in the cage with her siblings – now distant those times seemed now but, in reality, it had been only a few days ago. She was on the wall looking out across a meadow towards trees and a lake. Behind her was a commotion, as a door opened and the two faces from above her recently escaped box appeared atop white coated running bodies.
“Puss, puss, puss!” implored Dr Strange with zero magnetism or charm.
“Go Joni! Run for you life!” called Dr Friends with far more enthusiasm.
Joni barely needed encouragement. She ran along the wall to where a branch hung invitingly over the car park. Another jump and she was scurrying down it, out of sight of her pursuers, down onto the damp grass, cooling her feet. It smelt wonderful, as though she had at last been born. All that had gone before was somehow artificial. This was real. She knew that she was ill and her body was aching from its abuse; that her brain was slower than it had been and her senses maybe dulled. But there was so much more here for her senses to feed on, as a startled wren flew up from nearby. There was birdsong for her ears, a thousand meadow smells of poppies and cornflowers, the buzz of insects, the tall grass stroking her whiskers as she headed for the wood. She felt hunger but there was no food arriving in a corner of anywhere. Tonight, she knew somehow, she would have to feast on mouse or fish or bird or frog – whatever providence sent her way. There was no longer a litter tray but this would no longer be a problem, she realised, as she emptied her bladder for the first time near a sapling and then just walked on. She reached the wood and lay down in the depths of a huge rhododendron bush beside a puddle of water which she drank from thirstily. It tasted amazing and she sensed the cool water running down into her stomach, beginning the long process of detoxifying her. It felt good. She watched a patrol of ants scurrying along a fallen log as they went about their business and lay down to rest on the cool ground. Her eyes closed. She had achieved sanctuary.
Meanwhile the two doctors looked at each other on the car park.
“There is no point in going after her Ernest, we know the result. The cat survived.” asserted Doctor Friends, almost smiling with relief.
“But we know so little Sophie. How long can the cat survive? Is it mortally damaged? There is so much data that we could gain.” replied Doctor Strange reluctantly. Neither had been expecting Joni’s bold break for freedom, they should have closed the windows. They strolled back through the door into their laboratory, one guiltily gleeful at the turn of events, the other furious with himself at the money that had been spent on the experiment, only to have it curtailed prematurely by its four legged subject. They sat on their stools and Doctor Friends reached for the deserted box.
Deserted? They had believed so but ….. “Doctor Strange – how? I don’t understand – the cat is here.” Doctor Strange stopped typing up his notes mid-sentence and looked quizzically at his deluded colleague. What sort of joke was this? He shook is head but, as Sophie Friends lowered the box to the floor he could clearly see the familiar black fur with it’s white chin and paws curled up motionless in the malodorous box. He looked up incredulous. The cat was dead.
“Wha….?” was all he could say, squinting and shaking his head more vigorously. They looked at each other and he pressed the delete key along the line of text he had just typed in. There was only the two of them in the room, they were the only witnesses. What they had seen was contradictory, impossible, unbelievable. What would they say? What could they say? They spoke haltingly to each other for the next half hour, contradicting themselves, looking for logic, looking for truth, stopping, retracing, looking again at the body in the box. They got a coffee from the corridor and continued to try to explain the inexplicable. The afternoon was slipping by, and they agreed to call it a day, go home and reconvene tomorrow. There was no great confidence they would reach any conclusions, as they carried the box and its contents to the incinerator euphemistically known as the pet crematorium.
“It seems to me that Joni is neither dead nor alive.” said one.
“On the contrary, the cat is both dead and alive.” replied the other. So, they finally agreed on the quantum of truth by contradicting each other – a truth they would never be able to share with their scientific community. A truth that was beyond comprehension was a truth best shared only between themselves.
After her afternoon sojourn she stirred with a renewed appetite. She did not feel healthy or well and yet she felt better than she had ever felt in captivity. She did not feel complete or whole, strangely as though something was missing, maybe a memory or an idea. It did not play too much on her mind as she soon dined on squirrel – an ambush more than a chase. She had chased bluetits and voles and sparrows, and they had eluded her, so she had opted to crouch stock still in the shadow of a Scots pine and wait for some prey to come to her. The struggle was primeval and reflexive. The taste of squirrel was wonderfully novel to her as she tore its warm flesh and chewed. It was gratifying to catch her first meal and she felt completely satiated as she washed it down with even better tasting water from the shore of the lake. There she gazed up into that huge, endless sky. An oh so blue sky, now populated with clouds, wonderful throws and flows of angel’s hair, ice cream castles in the air and feathered canyons everywhere.
She climbed instinctively onto the low branch of an ancient oak, exhausted but alert, and watched a hedgehog scurry by in the leaf litter below. She was free. She had left another life behind, an institutionalised life that would never have conceived the beauty of freedom. If the box experience had halved her life expectancy, then her escape had more than tripled the quality of her life – however long that maybe. Somewhere in the near distance a church clock chimed eight o’clock – a strange but pleasant tone. An owl hooted and the fragrances of the forest filled her nostrils. A breeze ruffled her fur as the setting sun transformed the sky with orange and purple hues. For the first time ever, she was content, resting her head on her paws as she closed her eyes again and began to snore softly. That night Joni slept the sleep of the righteous.
