I’m making breakfast when I notice Mr Whiskers lying on the floor at the edge of the kitchen, staring at me. This is unusual for several reasons, the most important being that I am cooking eggs and Mr Whiskers is not standing directly beneath me attempting to negotiate access to them. After the recent discovery that he successfully obtained three breakfasts from three different people by presenting himself to each of us as an unfed cat, I have become considerably more cautious about interpreting his behavior around food. Mr Whiskers has demonstrated both motivation and technique. This morning, however, he isn’t looking at the eggs. He’s looking at me. His body is low, his ears are forward, and his tail gives one slow movement against the floor every few seconds. I turn back to the stove. When I look again, he hasn’t moved. “What?” I ask. Mr Whiskers stares at me. This is not helpful. Pandora is upstairs getting ready, and John is still asleep in his room, which means I’m temporarily the only available recipient of whatever Mr Whiskers is attempting to communicate. I remind myself that this may be nothing. Cats stare at things. Mr Whiskers has spent significant portions of his life staring at walls, empty corners, closed doors, dust particles, insects I couldn’t see, and once, for nearly twenty minutes, a shoe. His attention is not automatically evidence of anything. Still, this feels different. I move to the left. His eyes follow me. I move to the right. His eyes follow me again. “Okay,” I tell him. “So it’s me.” He meows once. Not his food meow. I know his food meow. I have extensive recent experience with his food meow.
I turn back to the eggs, which are beginning to cook faster than I expected, so I lower the heat and reach for the spatula. Mr Whiskers meows again, louder this time. I look over my shoulder. He has stood up. “You’ve been fed,” I tell him. He takes several steps toward me, stops, and meows again. I point toward the small notepad beside his food container, where Pandora has already written 6:47 — FED HIM. Our new system has effectively closed the breakfast loophole, although Mrs Jenkins remains an external vulnerability because she does not currently participate in the household feeding log. “We have documentation now,” I tell him. “This isn’t going to work anymore.” Mr Whiskers looks briefly toward the counter, then back at me. That gets my attention. I follow his eyes. Coffee maker. Toaster. Eggs. Bread. Butter. Nothing unusual. Yesterday’s pharmacy calls have been resolved, the cookie discrepancy remains technically unresolved but inactive, and nobody has reported any new bread-related anomalies. I look back at Mr Whiskers. “What are you looking at?” He meows. I look at the counter again. Nothing. This is the fundamental problem with obtaining information from a witness who communicates primarily through posture.
Pandora comes downstairs while I’m standing between the stove and the cat trying to establish what he knows. She takes one look at us and asks, “What’s happening?” I tell her Mr Whiskers is trying to tell me something. Pandora continues toward the coffee maker without changing expression and asks whether he’s telling me he wants food. I tell her no because we have documented confirmation that she fed him at 6:47. “Then he probably wants attention,” she says. I explain that his behavior is inconsistent with his normal attention-seeking pattern. When Mr Whiskers wants attention, he approaches the person from whom he wants it. Today he is maintaining distance while repeatedly attempting to redirect my attention. Pandora pours coffee and suggests that maybe he’s trying to tell me the eggs are burning. I turn around immediately. The eggs are not burning. “See?” I say. Pandora looks at the pan. “I wasn’t presenting a theory.” Mr Whiskers meows again just as John comes downstairs looking like someone who has not yet agreed to participate in the day. He opens the refrigerator, takes out orange juice, and notices Mr Whiskers staring at me. “What’s wrong with him?” John asks. This is useful because it constitutes independent confirmation that Mr Whiskers is behaving unusually. I tell John exactly that. He closes his eyes for a moment and says, “I knew I shouldn’t have asked.” Pandora tells him Mr Whiskers is apparently trying to warn me about something. John looks at the cat and says, “Maybe he knows you’re going to eat those eggs.” I tell him ridicule is not a substitute for analysis.
Then Mr Whiskers walks toward me. He stops approximately two feet from the stove, looks directly at me, and makes a sound that is considerably more urgent than his previous attempts. I stop what I’m doing. “There. You heard that.” John admits he did. Pandora admits it sounded different. For the first time, I have independent corroboration from two witnesses. Mr Whiskers looks at me, looks toward the stove, and looks back at me. I turn toward the stove. Everything appears normal. This is when I begin considering environmental causes. Perhaps he smells something we don’t. Cats have a much stronger sense of smell than humans, so this is scientifically plausible and does not require assigning him unusual intelligence. I smell the air. Eggs. Coffee. Toast. Nothing else. I check the toaster. Normal. I check the coffee maker. Normal. I look beneath the cabinets because the rotten-potato incident established that unexpected smells can originate from locations not immediately visible. Nothing. Mr Whiskers watches the entire process with what I can only describe as increasing frustration. Pandora asks, “What exactly do you think he’s warning you about?” I tell her I don’t know yet. “Then how do you know he’s warning you?” she asks. “Because if I knew what he was warning me about, the warning would no longer be necessary.” John takes his orange juice into the living room.
I consider asking Mrs Jenkins whether Mr Whiskers behaved strangely yesterday, but I decide against it. This is another sign of progress. Mrs Jenkins is not required for every investigation simply because she lives nearby and occasionally possesses useful information. Besides, involving her before establishing the nature of the problem would unnecessarily widen the inquiry. I decide instead to observe Mr Whiskers without influencing him. He sits down. I stand still. He looks at me. I look at him. Pandora drinks her coffee while watching both of us. Then Mr Whiskers looks behind me. I turn. Nothing. I turn back. He looks behind me again. I turn again. Still nothing. “Whatever you’re doing,” Pandora says, “the eggs actually are going to burn eventually.” I return to the stove and reach for the pan. Mr Whiskers suddenly yowls. Not meows. Yowls. I freeze. Pandora freezes. Even John calls from the living room, “What the hell was that?” Mr Whiskers is standing now, his back slightly arched, staring toward the stove. I step away. He immediately becomes quieter. This changes things. There is now a repeatable relationship between my proximity to the stove and Mr Whiskers’ response. I step closer. His body tenses. I step back. He relaxes slightly. I do it again. Same result. “Okay,” I say. “That’s data.” Pandora puts down her coffee. “Hal, stop testing the cat and check the stove.”
I do, and at first I see nothing wrong. The burner is on. The eggs are cooking. The pan is sitting where it should be. Then I notice the dish towel. Part of it is hanging over the edge of the counter directly beside the flame. I grab it and move it, and Mr Whiskers immediately stops yowling. The kitchen becomes very quiet. Pandora looks at the towel, then at Mr Whiskers, then at me. John has returned from the living room and is standing in the doorway. “Was the cat actually warning you about a fire?” he asks. I tell him there was no fire. “Potential fire,” he says. “Potentially,” I admit. Pandora picks up the towel and moves it to the other side of the kitchen. “He was trying to tell you the towel was too close to the burner.” I look at Mr Whiskers. Mr Whiskers looks at me. For once, I have nothing. This is uncomfortable. For the past several weeks I have interpreted ordinary cat behavior as evidence of intelligence gathering, food manipulation, covert observation, evidence destruction, and at least one possible attempt to answer a telephone. Every one of those situations eventually had a perfectly mundane explanation. Now, on the one morning when Mr Whiskers appears genuinely concerned about something, I spend several minutes explaining to him that our new feeding documentation system has eliminated his ability to deceive me.
John starts laughing and says, “You spent ten minutes investigating why the cat was warning you instead of looking at what he was warning you about.” I tell him that is an oversimplification. Pandora says it is actually a very accurate summary. I turn off the burner and move the pan. Breakfast is slightly overcooked but recoverable. More importantly, the towel is safely away from the stove. Mr Whiskers walks over, sits beside my feet, and looks up at me. I reach down and scratch behind his ears. “You were right,” I tell him. Mr Whiskers purrs. Pandora smiles and says, “There. Personal growth.” Then Mr Whiskers walks directly toward his food bowl and sits beside it. I stop scratching. Pandora starts laughing. “No,” I tell him. Mr Whiskers meows. “You don’t get another breakfast because you prevented a hypothetical kitchen fire.” He meows again. John says, “I think he deserves a bonus.” I remind him that this is exactly how the previous system broke down. Pandora reaches into the cabinet and gives Mr Whiskers one small treat. He eats it, walks into the living room, and settles into the sunbeam as though his work here is finished.
I stand in the kitchen looking at him. The towel was too close to the burner. Mr Whiskers noticed it before any of us did. He repeatedly tried to get my attention, became more agitated when I approached the stove, and relaxed immediately after I moved the towel. There is no ambiguity in the sequence. No missing evidence. No unexplained behavior. For once, the cat really was trying to warn me. I should probably be satisfied with that, and I am. Mostly. Because approximately twenty minutes later, Mrs Jenkins knocks on the door and asks why Mr Whiskers was making so much noise earlier. I tell her he may have prevented a kitchen fire. Mrs Jenkins looks through the doorway at him lying in the sun and says, “Smart boy.” Mr Whiskers opens one eye. Mrs Jenkins reaches into her pocket. I see the treat before he does. “Absolutely not.” Mrs Jenkins looks at me. Mr Whiskers gets up. Apparently heroism has benefits, and apparently the feeding log still has an external vulnerability.