A Professor Named Cat

I used to always wondered if those moments of déjà vu or the random chills you get down your spine meant anything. Or like those synchronicities that make you go ‘Huh, weird. That’s been everywhere lately,’ or whenever you have to stop and ask yourself ‘What was I doing?’ As if you’ve been plopped into a new body and a new reality with no clue what that version of yourself happened to be doing, but it’s close enough to what you were doing so you just keep at it.

I’d been experiencing a lot of those. Almost every day, so really every other day. They were little blips that were easy to ignore because where I moved to was almost identical to where I’d been.

Until my cat stopped being an asshole. All cats are assholes but then one day mine wasn’t. He stopped scratching at the door to be let outside (this chubby monster couldn’t make it two seconds out there without freaking out), he stopped jumping up on my keyboard, he stopped climbing onto face while I was sleeping and blocking my mouth and nose like an adorable serial killer.

“You seem put out, Samuel.” He – my cat, Cheddar – also started talking. Sort of.

Whatever did I mean, he asked when I brought it up. Cats could always talk – or project their thoughts into your mind was actually how he described it. It was a natural occurrence in the reality I stepped into, and a bigger shift than any other I encountered. Big enough that I finally noticed.

He was a lot more accepting of all this than I was at first. I was almost frothing at the mouth in a panic. He was sat there mulling it over.

“Each of these moments of incongruity is a form of universal adjustment. The reality you’ve bumbled into is accounting for your new presence, thus resulting in this odd feeling you experience. Déjà vu, the chills, or a brain fart,” Cheddar explained in a James Earl Jones deep voice.

As a side effect – or perhaps the cause – of their psychic capabilities, cats here were also hyper-intelligent. Mine here was a physicist or something.

“Common enough, but this result is not. Most correct course back into their home within a matter of moments and that’s that, but you continue to shift between them.”

“Is that bad?” I asked stupidly.

“I’m sure it’s not ideal for you being thrown between multiple realities. But in practice, it’s probably fine?” Cheddar raised his paws and gave me a feline shrug. “I don’t rightly know the meowifications of such constant shifts.”

The way he said that struck me as odd, but then Cheddar was looking up at me with a blank stare. I thought cats disliked extended eye contact because it denoted aggression but he loved to lock eyes with me and wait until he found something better to do.

Which meant he was back to the same asshole cat as before that couldn’t talk. That night he woke me up twice in a panic as I scrambled to toss him off. The second time I locked him out of the bedroom, and he scratched and whined until I gave up on rest.

Cheddar was acting needier than usual. Was this another small change or was I a bad cat parent?

Regardless, it was still my day off from work. So I spent the rest of searching high and low for differences. I actually read a newspaper for the first time perhaps in my life, then googled about cats. It occurred to me how little I actually knew about them, and there wasn’t really anything obviously weird, so that was a bust too.

When that failed, I walked the great distance between my computer and my couch (city living, small apartment, what are you going to do?) and plopped down. I flicked on the TV to a gameshow, and figuring that was good enough to shut my mind off, I settled in.

“At least this is the same,” I said to my cat as he settled in beside me. “Doesn’t matter where you’re from, everybody likes some mindless television.”

A chill crept down my spine. Cheddar was staring at me.

“Samuel, what- it’s you again, isn’t it?” He went from licking his paw in my lap to pointing it up accusatory at me. “Are you the same one or someone new?”

“The same, I think. We spoke, yesterday?” It felt more like a week ago but wasting an entire day at home and not sleeping well was probably just messing with my sense of time.

“The same.”

“Is that…I don’t know, weird? That I’ve returned here?” All of it was weird. “More weird than everything else.”

“No. If anything, it makes sense if our realities border each other. The path of least resistance is often the one closest when it comes to this sort of thing,” Cheddar replied.

“Border each other? Does that mean we’re – our worlds – are close?”

“What I just said was they are. Samuel, please listen while I’m giving my lectu-“

“I didn’t mean close. I don’t know how to phrase this, similar? Not many points of…divergence?” I said, sounding even to myself like I was fishing for a ‘smart’ word.

“Does your world have psychic talking cats?”

“No.”

“That’s a rather large difference.”

“Yes,” I replied. We could agree on that for sure.

“It is something to consider that when it comes to the placement of each universe, it is not done on the basis of how similar they are. In fact, it might be reasonable to assume that like everything else observable in the known universe, it is done seemingly at random,” Cheddar said sagely.

I couldn’t quite divorce the image of my original cat licking his behind from this professor, however. Professor Cheddar didn’t appreciate my snickering.

“But, seemingly at random doesn’t mean random?” I pointed out once I stopped laughing.

“No. We cannot disprove the idea that it isn’t random, but really the two are the same from our functional perspective.”

“Great. Now how can I stop it?”

“Do you want to stop it?”

“Of course, I…well, sure. It’s not good, is it? It must be bad if it’s happening to me.”

“I don’t rightly know. Do you feel sick? Any unusual mutations? You appear to have the normal amount of limbs for this reality, are you supposed to have more or less than four?” Professor Cheddar asked, tapping my legs. “These seem sturdy enough, if a bit spindly.” Ow, thanks. I don’t need my cat to shame me for not working out.

“Four’s fine and I don’t feel sick. If you’re right about when this happens, about the- the triggers, then this-“

“They’re not triggers. You don’t feel a little chilly and that causes it to happen, but the other way around. The feeling is a by-product of your trans dimensional-“

“I get it, alright? I misspoke, I’m sorry,” I apologized only half-what sincerely. Cheddar could sense as much.

“Are you certain? It is really only right that we get this down proper if you are to understand what is actually happening to you. Lest you go your whole life worrying about sneezing or something absurd.”

“I get it. The thing happens, we don’t know why, then I feel the aftershocks of that. My head feels foggy, or I forgot what I was thinking about or doing,” I pushed him off my lap and stood up to start pacing around the couch, which wasn’t any easier here. Just as cramped.

“Shouldn’t a cat as smart as you have a better apartment?” What were even the logistics of cats owning property and being people?

“It’s still your apartment, Samuel. You’ve very kindly allowed me to stay here while I finish my doctoral thesis. They don’t pay us particularly well, and, hm, it might take longer than expected…would you mind meowing while I grab a pen? This new data will-”

Ah, it was happening again. I fell back into the cushions and reached out to pull Cheddar into my lap. He scratched the crap out of me.

Maybe this wasn’t so bad. It was concerning at first just because it was so weird, but now I was starting to become numb to it. It didn’t seem to be harming me in any noticeable way either. Unless it was causing me to develop some sort of extra-dimensional super cancer that I wouldn’t notice until it was too late and-

And now I was pacing around the couch again. Instead of sleeping that night I got my steps in, and I went to work the next morning too exhausted to worry anymore. The hours blurred by from my cubicle until I found myself inexplicably back home and on the couch, all memory of how I returned wiped clean from the banks.

Cheddar sidled up beside me and went to town cleaning a paw.

Was it the Berenstein or the Berenstain bears?

My head snapped up.

“Professor Cheddar?”

“Graduate student Cheddar is more accurate,” the cat sniffed. “But one day. I can hope. Other Samuel, I take it?”

“Yeah.”

“You look exhausted,” he noted astutely.

“Haven’t slept in a while.” If I looked half as bad as I felt, then roadkill would be an adequate comparison.

“Too busy worrying about the possible side effects of your dimensional shifting, as I’ve recently coined the term?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s not much point to worrying.”

“Pardon?” I gaped at him.

“There’s hardly anything that can be done regardless, so why not enjoy it a little?”

“But you study this, or something similar. Can’t you help me?”

“Oh dear child, the gap between theory and practice can be a wide one indeed. All of this is still considered only theoretically possible, which means practically it’s years away from even unreliable forms of technology being built to do anything about it. I also haven’t yet fully discounted the idea that you’ve developed some sort of alternate persona.” The cat paused to examine me. “It would be very much like my Samuel to create another identity which is just like the one he currently has.”

“He’s self-centered?”

“Unimaginative, actually.” Jesus, Cheddar. You don’t need to roast me this bad.

Ah, I guess he is still a cat even here.

“So there’s nothing you can do to help me or stop this,” I concluded for him. Cheddar nodded.

“Not in the slightest, although I assure you that you’ve become a valuable data point in my research.” I was super comforted.

Actually, I kind of was. I was still terrified of super cancer or whatever other horrible things could happen to me because of this weird situation I found myself in. I was also doubting where I was even still sane, thanks for giving me this new fear cat. But, I was also okay with that. It was fine to be scared.

“You want to order in? I’m getting hungry,” I said, already reaching for my phone. A hot meal and a nap sounded like a good start.

“Do you have money?”

“This Samuel does, right?”

“An excellent point. There is this pizza place he often orders from on the corner, ah, but I can’t remember the name. It is quite good…A-something, Aunties, Ant-”

“Anthony’s!” Oh, yes. “We used to have one in my dimension, but it closed down a while back.” Right shame too, they had excellent pizza. I always blamed it on the fact they went for Anthony’s instead of Tony’s, which is just an objectively better name for a New York-style pizza joint. “Let’s order some Anthony’s.”

Grad Student Cheddar and I sat and chatted while we waited for the pizza to arrive. The finer intricacies of dimensional travel still lost on me, I shifted back to my dimension just as we sat down to eat. I managed to snag a slice before I left, though, and it came with me.

It was almost just as good as I remembered.

“Maybe this isn’t so bad,” I said to the original (to me) version of Cheddar.

He stared up at me with those blank eyes of his, then proceeded to turn my leg into a scratching post.