Cat Got Your Tongue?

Astral Facts, October 2014

Astral: (Theosophy) Consisting of, belonging to, or designating, a kind of supersensible substance alleged to be next above the tangible world in refinement; as, astral spirits; astral bodies of persons; astral current.

                       Cat Got Your Tongue?

Most people know that the end of October brings the emphasis on Halloween with attention to pumpkins, spooky spirits, and witches with their feline companion, the black cat, which might even be a witch in disguise.  However, just two days prior is the oft unrecognized National Cat Day.

http://www.nationalcatday.com/

Now that tennis racquets use special synthetic strings, it makes one wonder if cats really serve any purpose except to challenge teenagers to see who can sleep more hours in the day or to perform for YouTube videos that distract people from meaningful activities.

Writer Deepak "Gotham" Chopra wondered the same thing.  Here is what he found:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slKKvm_vu9g

In spite of all these “astral facts,” we could still take a more “hard science” (STEM) approach and wonder – what if we had to ship 120,000 cats from an island to the mainland?  Perhaps that could be used as one of those irritating word problems students would wish to avoid in their math classes.

On a cold January day in 1885, Ambrose Bierce pondered that very question.  Here’s what he came up with

http://www.ambrosebierce.org/cargo.htm

Isn’t it interesting how science and imagination can combine to delight certain audiences nearly 130 years later!

Walter Lowe
Astral Facts is a somewhat regular presentation of Humanities Science, produced in the bowels of the Humanities Science offices during the academic year.