journal of a writing man

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Dolly discovers time and space

In which Dolly the Mega-Cat abandons the hide-it game in favour of trans-dimensional physics

In the year and a bit since Dolly the Mega Cat joined the establishment she's been a cat devoted to the hide-it game. You could say she's elevated hiding things to the status of an officially recognized Olympic sport.

Anything small, or not so small, and not fixed down, is in danger of being seized upon with feline glee, teased, pushed, pulled and, eventually, poked under the heaviest piece of furniture or the most difficult gap or crevice she can find. The sheer concentration and the demonstration of determination Dolly puts in to this game is an example to us all. It seems that, for Dolly, everything has a proper place. Might not be the kind of place you or I feel to be appropriate, but Dolly works to her own scale of values.

And, each time a new mission has been accomplished, she humphs in satisfaction. Another hide-it operation has succeeded.

What follows depends on the nature and the ownership of the newly hidden item. If it's something belonging to one of the humans then Dolly smiles contentedly, and goes off to her currently favoured napping place to rebuild energy levels. Starfleet ship's engineers could learn a lot about the recharging of their dilithium crystals from a close observation of Dolly when she's rebuilding energy levels.

But if it's a Dolly toy and, even more, if it's a Dolly toy that Dolly feels still has some play left in it then I'm in for a bad time.

First, the look. She catches my eye, and glares balefully at me. Dolly does a good baleful. No use asking what's the matter, because Dolly expects me to jolly well know. So I check the food bowl and the water dish just in case. Assuming all's well there, I give the litter tray a quick once-over - Dolly insists that it be kept in good order.

All the while, Dolly follows at a distance, glaring. Almost always, at this point, the penny drops and I go on search to find whatever Dolly toy it is that's gone missing in that mysterious fashion.

But, if the penny stays stuck in the slot, the tactics change. She treats me to a protracted yowl, and stomps off to her sulking spot. From there, heavy, sad sighs and waves of brain-shattering "I'm unhappy" vibes penetrate the whole house until I do something about it.

That can drive a chap to distraction. Harry Cat sniffs, and goes out to the garden. I try and ignore it, but working while Dolly is doing a sulk is a bit like trying to sleep next to a leaky tap.

Eventually, by whatever devious persuasion tactics she can summon up, I do tumble to what she's on about. Then it's out with the long bamboo, down on me hands and knees, and poking under everything where a Dolly toy might be hiding. Not a pretty sight.

This more or less happy state of affairs has been the status quo for months. Dolly hides things. If Dolly wants things back, I recover things. The pattern of the universe is stable and content.

Until a couple of weeks back when Dolly discovered the secret of space and time.

I'm not sure whether it was a Damascene or an over-flowing bathtub kind of realization, but, all of a sudden, Dolly has found that, if you stick a long paw into dark places and wiggle it a bit, "things" appear as if by some magical process from a forgotten dimension.

The hide-it game has been dropped with the same rapidity and lack of regret as last year's decorating colour scheme.

I was watching just now. There was Dolly, flattened out more than you'd think possible for a 22-pound cat, in front of the cooker and reaching into the gap underneath it that I've been meaning to cover up for the last two years. Poke. Wriggle. Pull. And, just like that, out pops some little trinket. She had them all neatly lined up. Two ballpoint pens. A matchbox. A tangle of rings from the top of milk bottles. And an old-style penny. Goodness knows where that came from. Perhaps she's really reaching into a forgotten dimension.

It's a sneezy job for a Dolly cat. Well, if you go disturbing the D-space under a cooker you're bound to stir up some dust. Not to mention more Dolly-fluff than you'd think possible. So Dolly had stopped for a good sneeze. A Dolly-sneeze is worth a story in itself, but let's stay on track as much as is possible in a cat-driven household.

Probably it was the sneezing that kept me watching. Or the smell of fierce concentration. Whatever. There was the gap under the cooker, oozing dust and Dolly-fluff. There was a row of rediscovered toys. And there was Dolly, sneezing. I don't know what happened exactly, but a sneeze must have coincided with some random cat-poking particle winging it's way through the kitchen because she leapt into the air, turned round, landed, and spat at something behind her. Nothing there of course. Well, nothing I could see, anyway. Whatever, that great plume of a tail of hers swept the whole treasure trove collection, along with the Dolly fluff, straight back under the cooker, neat as neat, out of sight.

I didn't laugh. Not out loud, anyway. No, I backed away, quietly, leaving Dolly contemplating this new twist on the management of dimension control.

She's been there for an hour now, staring into the gap. In a little while she'll be digging around again. Pulling things out. But they won't be the same things, I'll betcha. I'll bet the bell has chimed, the worlds have turned another segment, and a new forgotten dimension will be there, under the cooker, behind the Dolly-fluff. And goodness knows what she'll find this time.

February 10, 1999

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