I’m making breakfast when I notice Karen standing unusually still beside the kitchen counter, staring at the floor. She stopped by a few minutes ago to return something Pandora lent her, and until now the visit has been completely ordinary. Pandora is pouring coffee, I’m attempting to prevent eggs from becoming permanently attached to the frying pan, and Mr Whiskers is somewhere beneath the kitchen table. At first I assume Karen is waiting for me to move so she can reach the coffee, but then I realize she isn’t looking at me. She’s looking underneath the table with an expression I can’t quite identify. It’s not fear exactly. It’s more concentrated than that, the expression of somebody who has noticed something and hasn’t yet decided whether to mention it. I follow her eyes and find Mr Whiskers crouched behind one of the chairs, completely still, which is unusual by itself because breakfast normally transforms him into a highly motivated kitchen inspector. Anything involving eggs, butter, cheese, milk, or the possibility that something might fall onto the floor receives his immediate supervision. This morning he’s tucked himself behind a chair with his front paws underneath him, staring back at Karen while Karen stares at him. Neither seems willing to make the first move. I turn down the heat beneath the eggs and ask, “What?” Karen looks at me as though I’ve interrupted something and asks, “What what?” I point toward Mr Whiskers and tell her she’s staring at him. She looks back underneath the table and says, “He’s staring at me.” That’s technically true, but it doesn’t explain why she was staring first.
Pandora hands Karen a cup of coffee and doesn’t seem remotely concerned, which immediately makes me wonder whether I’m the only person recognizing how unusual this is. I ask whether Mr Whiskers has been acting strangely this morning, and Pandora says no. Karen doesn’t answer. She’s still watching him, and that’s what bothers me. If Karen had simply said the cat was behaving strangely, I probably would have accepted that, but instead she has the unmistakable look of someone processing information. I know that look because I’ve worn it myself many times, although Pandora insists that when I do it, it usually means I’m about to make everyone’s day considerably more complicated. I ask Karen whether she sees something. She hesitates for perhaps half a second before saying, “Maybe,” which is not an acceptable answer when somebody is staring underneath your kitchen table. Before I can ask what she means, there’s a knock at the door and Pandora goes to answer it. John Mercer appears a moment later, having stopped by on his way somewhere else, and walks into the kitchen whistling like a man entering a room where absolutely nothing unusual is happening. He says good morning to Karen, says good morning to me, and reaches for the coffee while Karen answers him without taking her attention completely away from Mr Whiskers. John doesn’t notice. Or at least he appears not to notice. I watch the two of them for a moment and begin wondering whether I’m observing two completely different levels of awareness. Karen sees something. I see that Karen sees something. John sees coffee.
I ask John whether he notices anything unusual, and he immediately looks around the kitchen. Pandora, without even turning around, says, “Don’t.” John stops looking and asks what he’s supposed to be noticing. I tell him I’m not going to influence his observations by specifying the subject, and he points out that asking whether he notices something unusual has already influenced his observations. That’s annoyingly sophisticated for this early in the morning, so I tell him to forget I asked. He says that’s going to be difficult now, pours himself coffee, and contributes nothing further to the investigation. Meanwhile Karen bends slightly to get a better look underneath the table, and Mr Whiskers still doesn’t move. I crouch beside her and look beneath the table from her angle, but everything appears perfectly normal. Orange fur, white chest, green eyes, tail curled beside him, no obvious injury and no suspicious object nearby. There’s nothing underneath the table except the cat, chair legs, and a crumb I make a mental note to remove before Pandora notices it. I ask Karen what she’s looking at. “I’m not sure yet,” she says. I turn toward her because the word yet changes the situation considerably. Karen gives me a slightly embarrassed smile and explains that she thought she noticed something when she came in. When I ask what, she tells me she’ll tell me if she’s right.
Karen now has a hypothesis. I don’t know what the hypothesis is, which means I’m operating at an informational disadvantage inside my own kitchen. Pandora puts a plate in front of me and tells me to eat breakfast before it gets cold, but it’s difficult to focus on eggs when another person has identified a potentially significant anomaly approximately four feet away and refuses to disclose its nature. I watch Mr Whiskers while I eat. He remains underneath the table. I watch Karen. She occasionally looks at him. I watch John. He eats a piece of toast Pandora gave him and somehow manages to contribute nothing useful whatsoever. Eventually I ask Karen whether this concerns Mr Whiskers specifically or something near Mr Whiskers. She laughs and tells me I’m taking this too seriously, which is easy for her to say because she’s the one withholding information. I start reviewing Mr Whiskers’ recent behavior instead. Yesterday he spent an unusual amount of time at the window, and the day before that he refused to cuddle with me until we discovered he hated the smell of my new body wash. That incident demonstrated two important things: first, Mr Whiskers responds strongly to environmental changes; second, I’m capable of recognizing unusual behavior even if my initial explanation occasionally requires minor adjustment.
Maybe Karen has noticed another environmental change. A smell, perhaps, or something beneath the floor. Cats can hear frequencies humans can’t hear, so perhaps there’s a vibration coming through the building and Karen noticed Mr Whiskers reacting to it before I did. I mention the vibration possibility, and Pandora closes her eyes. Karen asks, “What vibration?” and I tell her that’s exactly what I’m trying to determine. “No, Hal. What vibration?” she asks again. I admit I don’t know yet. John begins laughing into his coffee, so I remind him that unexplained low-frequency vibrations are a real phenomenon. He agrees, which briefly encourages me until he adds that refrigerators are also a real phenomenon. I listen carefully. The refrigerator is humming, but that’s not it. I’ve heard the refrigerator before. This feels different, although admittedly I’m not actually feeling or hearing anything. Mr Whiskers might be, and that’s the important distinction. Pandora asks how I’ve gone from Karen looking at the cat to vibrations beneath the building in less than ten minutes. I tell her I’m eliminating possibilities. She asks how many possibilities I’ve eliminated. I decide to concentrate on breakfast.
Then Mr Whiskers moves. He slowly extends one paw toward the chair leg, taps something, and withdraws his paw. Karen immediately leans forward and says, “There!” I nearly knock over my coffee getting out of the chair. I ask what she saw, but she’s already pointing underneath the table. I look exactly where she’s pointing and see absolutely nothing except tile. “He touched it,” she says. I ask what he touched. Karen crouches, so I crouch beside her while John remains seated because apparently curiosity has limits. She points toward the floor behind the chair. I look again. Nothing. I tell her there’s nothing there. “Yes, there is.” I ask where. “Right there.” This goes on long enough for me to begin wondering whether Karen has developed some kind of visual ability unavailable to the rest of us. Pandora finally comes around the table, looks down, and says, “Oh.” I turn toward her immediately because I don’t appreciate the implications of that particular oh. She points. I still don’t see anything. Karen reaches underneath the chair and picks something up between two fingers. It’s tiny, smaller than a grain of rice, and when she holds it in front of me I realize it’s moving. There is a very small insect crawling across her fingertip.
I look at Karen, then at the spot where she’d been standing, then back at the insect. Apparently Karen possesses the visual acuity of a reconnaissance satellite. She carries it outside while I remain in the kitchen reconsidering several assumptions about human vision, and when she comes back I ask how she possibly saw something that small from across the room. Karen explains that she didn’t see the insect initially. She saw Mr Whiskers tracking something with his eyes. When she followed his gaze, she eventually noticed movement on the floor. That makes considerably more sense, but it also means she noticed Mr Whiskers noticing something before I noticed either of them. “I knew you saw something,” I tell her. Karen laughs and says, “Eventually.” I explain that I knew from the beginning because her expression changed. Pandora looks at John. John looks at Pandora. I point at both of them and tell them not to say whatever they’re about to say. Neither says anything, which somehow feels worse.
Karen finishes her coffee and gets ready to leave. Before she goes, she scratches Mr Whiskers behind the ears and tells him he’s a good hunter, praise he accepts despite having done absolutely nothing beyond staring at an insect until a human removed it for him. That’s cats for you. Karen says goodbye, Pandora walks her to the door, and within a few minutes the kitchen returns to normal. I sit down and finish my breakfast feeling reasonably satisfied with the outcome. Karen really did see something I didn’t. Technically, she saw Mr Whiskers seeing something neither of us initially saw, which means the information chain went from insect to cat to Karen to me. That’s a surprisingly efficient neighborhood intelligence network when you think about it, although I decide not to phrase it that way around Pandora. John finishes his coffee and asks whether I’m satisfied now. I tell him I am. There was an observable anomaly, Karen identified it, we investigated it, and the explanation turned out to be completely ordinary. No conspiracy, no coded messages, no hidden operation, just a tiny insect and a cat with better eyesight than everyone else in the room.
Mr Whiskers returns to his usual breakfast patrol as though nothing happened. He circles my chair, checks beneath the table, then sits near the doorway and begins washing one paw. I feel strangely reassured because this is how rational people handle uncertainty: they observe something unusual, gather evidence, identify the explanation, and move on. I’m getting better at this. At least that’s what I’m thinking when I notice John looking at the floor. Not casually, either. Intently. I stop eating and ask what he’s looking at, but he doesn’t answer immediately. Instead he leans slightly to one side, looks at me, and then looks at Pandora. Pandora follows his gaze toward the floor, and her expression changes. I turn around. There’s nothing there. I ask why everybody is looking at the floor. John starts laughing. Pandora tries not to. Mr Whiskers simply walks away, which seems unnecessarily judgmental.
I get out of my chair and look down again, and this time I finally see it. There’s a piece of egg stuck to my sock. Apparently it has been there long enough for everyone in the kitchen except me to notice. John is laughing hard enough now that he has to put his coffee down, while Pandora points out that this is probably what Mr Whiskers was looking at when he came over to my chair earlier. I remove the egg and throw it away. “Fine,” I say. Pandora asks whether the case is closed. I tell her it is and sit back down. There is absolutely nothing mysterious happening in this kitchen. Karen noticed an insect, Mr Whiskers noticed the insect, John noticed the egg, Pandora noticed the egg, and apparently everyone in my immediate social circle sees things I don’t. I take another bite of breakfast and begin considering whether that, by itself, represents some kind of pattern.
Pandora points her fork at me and says, “No.”
I haven’t said anything.
That’s becoming a problem.