I’m sitting at the kitchen table when Pandora walks in carrying a coffee mug I have never seen before. I notice it immediately, although I would like to emphasize that I am not monitoring Pandora’s mug usage. There is a difference between monitoring something and possessing a functional memory. Pandora normally drinks her morning coffee from the same mug, the one with the orange cat on it that looks enough like Mr Whiskers for her to insist it was the reason she bought it. Today she is holding a dark blue mug with a strange geometric pattern around the outside. I look at the mug, then at Pandora, then back at the mug. Pandora takes a sip of coffee and says, “Good morning.” I say good morning. She sits down. I wait approximately thirty seconds before asking, “Is that new?” Pandora looks at the mug as though she has only just become aware that she is holding it and asks, “This?” I tell her yes, specifically the mug in her hand. “I’ve had it for a while.” This is where the problem begins. I know the mugs in this house. I do not mean that in an obsessive way. I mean there are perhaps twelve of them, they occupy one cabinet, and I have lived here long enough to recognize the objects from which I routinely consume beverages. There is the orange-cat mug, the oversized white one John likes because it holds what he describes as “a reasonable amount of coffee,” the chipped green one nobody uses but nobody throws away, two matching black mugs, several ordinary white ones, and one Christmas mug that somehow remains in circulation throughout the year despite my objections to seasonal disorder. There is no dark blue mug with geometric shapes. “How long is ‘a while’?” I ask. Pandora looks at me over the rim. “Hal.” I explain that I am merely trying to establish a timeframe. “Why?” she asks. I tell her because she said she has had the mug for a while, and I have never seen it before. Pandora takes another sip. “Maybe you never noticed it.” This is possible, but I dislike explanations that depend entirely on me failing to notice something.
John comes into the kitchen while I am still considering this. He opens the cabinet, takes out his oversized mug, and begins making coffee. I ask whether he recognizes Pandora’s mug. He looks at it for perhaps half a second and says, “Yeah.” This is unexpected. “From where?” I ask. John stops pouring coffee. “The cabinet?” I tell him I understand where mugs are stored. I am asking where this particular mug came from. John shrugs and says he doesn’t know. “It’s been around.” Pandora points at him with the mug. “Thank you.” This does not help. I now have two people independently claiming that an object I have never seen has been present in my home for an unspecified period of time. Mr Whiskers walks into the kitchen and sits beside Pandora’s chair. I look at him. After the dish-towel incident, I am attempting to treat his behavior with appropriate seriousness without granting him unlimited evidentiary authority. He looks at the mug, then at Pandora, then at me. I make a mental note of this and immediately regret doing so. The situation becomes more complicated when Pandora gets up to refill her coffee and Mr Whiskers follows her. She places the mug on the counter. Mr Whiskers rises onto his back legs and sniffs toward it. “See?” I say. Pandora turns around. “See what?” I point out that Mr Whiskers has also noticed the mug. “He smells coffee.” I remind her that Mr Whiskers recently noticed a potentially dangerous dish towel before any of us did. Pandora tells me that saving the kitchen from a hypothetical fire does not make him an expert on ceramics. This is fair, but dismissive. John takes his coffee and starts toward the living room. I ask him one more time how long he remembers seeing the mug. He thinks about it and says, “A couple weeks? Maybe longer.” Pandora says, “Exactly.” I ask why neither of them can provide a more precise date. John stops walking and looks at me. “Because normal people don’t document when mugs arrive.”
At work, I mention the situation to Karen. I present it carefully because I have learned that opening with my conclusions tends to prejudice the listener against the underlying evidence. I explain that an unfamiliar mug appeared in my kitchen, Pandora claims she has owned it for some time, John independently remembers seeing it, and I have no recollection of it whatsoever. Karen asks whether there is any reason Pandora would need to hide a mug from me. I tell her that is precisely what makes the situation unusual. Dave, who has been listening from nearby, asks whether I am suggesting the mug itself is suspicious. I clarify that I have not accused the mug of anything. “You just called it suspicious,” he says. I tell him I called the situation suspicious. Karen asks the obvious question: “Did you ask Pandora where she got it?” I pause. Dave notices the pause. “You didn’t, did you?” I explain that I was initially attempting to establish whether the mug was actually new before introducing potentially leading questions. Karen stares at me. “Hal, it’s a mug, not a witness.” I tell her that I understand the distinction. Dave asks whether I am sure. I decide the conversation has stopped being productive.
When I get home, I decide to follow Karen’s advice and ask Pandora directly. She is sitting on the couch with the blue mug on the coffee table beside her. Mr Whiskers is asleep against her leg, which I deliberately do not interpret as anything. “Where did you get the mug?” I ask. Pandora looks at it. “Mrs Jenkins.” I stop. This is new information. Apparently Mrs Jenkins went to a thrift store several weeks ago, bought a box containing six mismatched mugs, decided she did not need six mismatched mugs, and offered some of them to us. Pandora took the blue one because she liked the pattern. This explanation is straightforward, plausible, and completely ordinary, except for one problem. “When did this happen?” I ask. Pandora thinks about it. “A couple of weeks ago.” John, from the kitchen, calls, “Told you.” I ignore him. “And you put it in the cabinet?” Pandora says yes. “With the other mugs?” She looks at me. “That is generally where we put them.” I go into the kitchen and open the mug cabinet. Everything appears normal. Then I notice that the cabinet is deeper than I remembered. There are mugs in the front and several pushed behind them. Pandora’s orange-cat mug is near the front because she uses it constantly. John’s oversized mug is normally near the front for the same reason. The blue mug could easily have spent two weeks toward the back without attracting my attention. This is not an especially satisfying discovery, but it is consistent with the available evidence. Pandora joins me in the kitchen and asks whether the investigation is complete. I tell her there was never an investigation. “You interviewed John and consulted Karen.” I explain that asking two people questions does not automatically constitute an investigation. “You’re standing in front of the mug cabinet reconstructing its storage history.” I close the cabinet. “The matter is resolved.”
That should be the end of it. Mrs Jenkins bought the mug. Pandora liked it. The mug spent most of its time toward the back of the cabinet because Pandora preferred her cat mug. This morning the cat mug was unavailable, so she used the blue one instead. There is no secret message, no hidden significance, and no reason I should have noticed it before now. In fact, I am prepared to admit that Pandora’s original explanation was correct: the mug had been here for a while, and I simply had not noticed it. This represents another important lesson in not assigning significance to ordinary household changes. I tell Pandora this. She looks genuinely impressed for approximately two seconds before I ask why her regular mug was unavailable. Pandora points toward the sink. Her orange-cat mug is sitting there with a small amount of coffee residue at the bottom. “You already used it?” I ask. Pandora says no. I look toward John. He is standing in the doorway with an expression that immediately tells me he knows something. “What?” I ask. John admits that he used Pandora’s mug earlier because his oversized one was in the dishwasher. Pandora turns toward him. “You used my cat mug?” John says he washed it out afterward. Pandora points out that putting water in a mug and swirling it around is not the same thing as washing it. John disagrees. They begin discussing dishwashing standards while I stand there realizing that the entire chain of events began because John did not want to wait for his own mug to come out of the dishwasher.
I look at the blue mug, then at John, then at Pandora’s cat mug in the sink. The mystery of the new mug has now been fully explained. Mrs Jenkins bought it. Pandora accepted it. John used Pandora’s usual mug, forcing Pandora to use the blue one, which caused me to notice it for the first time. Every event has a mundane explanation, and none of them requires further investigation. Mr Whiskers jumps onto a kitchen chair and looks toward the sink. I look at him. He looks at the cat mug. Then he looks at John. I say nothing. John points at me. “Don’t.” I remind him that I didn’t say anything. “You were going to.” I look at Pandora. She is trying not to laugh. Mr Whiskers continues staring at John with an expression I am making a deliberate effort not to interpret. I’m not saying the people in this house can predict what I’m thinking. I’m just saying that Pandora has done it several times, John can apparently do it now, and I’m becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the possibility that the cat is next.