Cat In a Box

Those of you cat people know why this picture was taken and why it is funny.

Inevitably, a cat will enter a box like this of its own free will (except when going to the vet).

In the case of a voluntary ascent into the recesses of an empty container, the cat, thinking himself to be well-hidden, starts to play the “I-bet-you-don’t-know-where-I-am-and-to-whom-this-paw-belongs” game.

Usually one paw momentarily makes an appearance then quickly vanishes, often from out of the top or from a small opening in the side. We know the drill. This goes on for several minutes, and for reasons inexplicable to modern scientific inquiry, and to ourselves, it becomes funnier the longer it continues.

Then we get involved and bring some sort of fuzzy toy on the end of a stick and try making contact with the furtive miscreant inside his enclave. This results in more paw blindly flailing in the air from underneath the lid.

It doesn’t take much, does it, folks? Nope. And it’s one reason why I’m so easily amused by inane cat videos on YouTube.

Why two cats who repeatedly whack a moving treadmill belt with their paws make me end up laughing to the point of tears, I cannot say.

One sure way to end any sort of cat-in-the-box hijinks, however, is to become too involved and try to get the cat to “do it again.”

They won’t.

One wonders who’s really in charge.

Nonetheless, as cat owners can attest, human observation does tend to affect cat behavior. Or, perhaps, cat behavior affects human observation. Or maybe even human behavior affects cat behavior and vice versa. Either way, cats watch us and we watch them. And I watch YouTube. We affect one another.

Did you know back in 1935 a physicist by the name of Erwin Schrodinger came up with a scientific scenario which included a cat in a box?

Cutting edge physics of the time, folks. No kidding.

In addition to the cat, the box also included a vial of hydrochloric acid and a radioactive trigger mechanism which would break the vial of acid and kill the cat only if the radioactive substance actually began to decay.

Now don’t worry, Mr. Schrodinger never actually conducted the experiment. It was only a theory and a rather wry attempt to demonstrate the bizarre nature of the pullulating field of quantum mechanics of the time (quantum mechanics is the study of the eccentric behavior of very small particles with equally strange names).

According to one aspect of QM, it was possible for the cat to be both dead and alive simultaneously.

The obvious problem seems to be the fact that a cat can’t possibly be alive and dead at the same time, right?

Well, no.

Actually the problem is us. The observers.

Seems the minute we get our own paws into it, we’ve “forced” the experiment into a single conclusion.

As finite and temporal beings, we are only ever going to see the cat as alive or dead, but not both at once. In fact, if you lift the lid on Schrodinger’s experiment and let the cat out of the bag, err box, rather, your mere observation has determined what will happen, one way or the other. By lifting the lid, you “force” the outcome of the experiment to be death or life for the cat.

But until you do look, the cat is theoretically alive and dead at the same time. Science says it’s possible, but not possible to observe.

What’s really fascinating, however, is the fact that this theory actually comes close to demonstrating the truth of Scripture.

When we are dead in the grave, in the “box” if you will, we are also simultaneously alive with Christ! As the Apostle Paul says, “to live is Christ, to die is gain.”

And in Romans, he tells us, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Paul recounts his being alive the moment he died, confessing “I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.”

And he lived to tell about it.

Speaking of Paul, back in 2009, some Vatican officials ended a long-standing Schrodinger experiment and opened particular box which contained the bones of the beloved Apostle.

“Son of man, can these bones live?”

“O, LORD God, You know.”

On the one hand, Vatican officials have confirmed the identity of the bones as belonging to Paul. On the other hand, the Scriptures attest Paul is both alive and well and with the Lord Jesus at this very moment in Paradise. Dead in a box, but alive in heaven at the same time!

But as the physicists realized, we can only observe Paul in one state – in this case, Vatican officials removing the lid of the white marble sarcophagus in 2009 and finding bones.

The Cat is dead.

The Cat is alive.

Schrodinger had no idea how right he was.

To paraphrase what Paul tells his brethren in Thessalonica, we’re all going to participate in the original version Schrodinger’s experiment. The lids of our boxes will be lifted and we will rise.

And everyone will see it.

“For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.”

Turns out physicists and Christians then seem to be in agreement on this peculiar fact. “Cats” can be dead and alive at the same time!

Lord hasten the day when there’ll be no more cats in boxes.

Are you ready?