I've seen this cat

Inspired by a street cat in my neighbourhood

The university library had always been a sanctuary for me. The weight of knowledge contained in its walls created a pleasant pressure, as if gravity were slightly stronger among the stacks. I had been researching temporal bifurcations for my dissertation, a subject that had consumed three years of my life and produced little more than academic skepticism and gentle suggestions from my advisor to pursue something more "grounded."

It was between the collected works of Hans Reichenbach and a worn copy of Hermann Minkowski's papers that I first noticed the cat. The creature sat motionless, its orange-striped fur luminous against the muted spines of philosophy texts. Our eyes met for precisely four seconds, I counted them in my mind, each second stretching like taffy, before it disappeared.

Not ran away. Not jumped down. Disappeared.

The event replayed in my mind: the cat's form seemed to compress, its edges blurring inward until it collapsed to a point, then to nothing. No sound, no movement of air, no disturbance of dust motes in the afternoon light.

"Sleep deprivation," I muttered to myself, rubbing my eyes. I had been averaging four hours of sleep for the past month, subsisting on university coffee and academic stubbornness. I made a note to buy proper groceries and allow myself a full night's rest.

The next day, I was in the Curved Leaf Café, twelve kilometers from campus. I had never visited this particular place before; a colleague had recommended it for its quiet atmosphere and excellent pu-erh tea. As I waited for my order, movement at the window caught my attention.

The cat, identical in every detail to the one from the library, sat on the outside windowsill, amber eyes fixed on me. My teacup halted midway to my mouth. For thirteen seconds (again, I counted), we observed each other. Then I set my cup down and stood.

The cat repeated its impossible exit, compressing into nothingness as I approached the window.

"Did you see that?" I asked the barista, pointing to the now-empty windowsill.

"See what?" he replied, glancing up briefly from his methodical wiping of the counter.

"The cat. Orange with white paws. It was just there."

He shook his head. "No cats around here. Owner's allergic."

I paid for my tea and left, unsettled by the recurrence.

---

Professor Mei Wei taught theoretical physics with the casual brilliance of someone who found the fabric of reality marginally less complex than a grocery list. Her lecture on quantum measurement had been particularly memorable.

"Schrödinger's cat is simultaneously alive and dead until observed," she had explained, "because quantum superposition allows for multiple states to exist concurrently until measurement collapses the wave function."

At the time, I had accepted this as an elegant thought experiment. Now, I found myself wondering about its inverse: what if observation didn't collapse possibilities, but expanded them? What if my attention wasn't limiting reality but multiplying it?

The question lingered as the cat continued to appear. Three days later, it was perched on a campus monument. Two days after that, it watched me from the top of a parked car. Each time, the same: unblinking observation followed by that impossible compression into nothingness.

Then came the dreams. In the first, I walked through endless library stacks that curved and interconnected like a Borgesian labyrinth. At each intersection sat the cat, directing me with subtle movements of its tail. When I finally reached the center, I found only a mirror reflecting myself, but with the cat sitting on my shoulder, visible in reflection but not present in reality.

I woke at 4:39 AM, the specific time burning in my mind with unusual clarity. As consciousness fully returned, I felt a weight on my chest. The cat sat there, its paws pressing lightly against my sternum, eyes luminous in the darkness.

"What are you?" I whispered.

For twenty-six seconds, the longest we had maintained visual contact, it stared at me. Then, for the first time, it made a sound: a low, vibrating purr that seemed to resonate not in my ears but directly in my brain. When it disappeared this time, it left a lingering warmth on my chest.

---

"The tests show nothing abnormal," Dr. Reis said, passing me the brain scan results. "No tumors, no abnormal electrical activity, no indications of temporal lobe epilepsy that might explain your hallucinations."

"They're not hallucinations," I insisted, though with diminishing conviction. "This cat appears in specific locations, at specific times. It's consistent. Hallucinations don't work that way."

Dr. Reis's expression was sympathetic but professional. "Visual hallucinations can be remarkably consistent, especially those arising from psychological rather than neurological causes. Have you been under unusual stress?"

I almost laughed. My dissertation was stalled, my funding was running out, and I was being haunted by a cat that violated the laws of physics. "Nothing out of the ordinary," I lied.

---

Professor Heisenberg from the physics department was less dismissive but more disturbing in his reaction.

"You're describing a localized violation of conservation laws," he said when I described the cat's method of disappearance. "Matter cannot simply cease to exist. It must transform or transfer."

"Could it be moving between dimensions?" I asked, remembering theories I'd encountered in my research. "Some kind of higher-dimensional being that we perceive only partially?"

Heisenberg's silence lasted uncomfortably long. Then he said, "There are theories, purely mathematical constructs, of course, about entities that might exist orthogonal to conventional spacetime. But they're theoretical. Abstract."

"What if they're not?" I pressed.

He closed his notebook deliberately. "Then physics as we understand it is fundamentally incomplete." After a pause, he added, "Be careful with this line of inquiry, Dr. Yang. Some questions, once asked, cannot be unasked."

His warning might have deterred me had I not already been too entangled in the mystery. But the cat had become more than a curiosity, it had become an obsession, a focal point around which my understanding of reality was reorganizing itself.

---

The university archives were housed in the basement of the east campus library, a labyrinthine collection of documents ranging from founding charters to faculty research that had been deemed too speculative for mainstream publication. I had been granted access as part of my dissertation research, though I had seldom made use of it.

Now, however, I searched with purpose, looking for any reference to phenomena similar to what I was experiencing. After three days of methodical investigation, I found it: a slim volume bound in faded leather, with no library cataloging and no author named on its spine or cover page.

The text was handwritten in a precise, architectural script. It began without preamble:

The conventional understanding of reality as a singular, objectively measurable continuum is demonstrably false. Reality is instead a nested series of subjective perceptions, overlapping like partially transparent sheets, each observer creating their own layer through the act of observation.

The book continued with complex mathematical formulations describing what it called "observer-dependent entities," beings that existed "perpendicular to conventional reality," visible only to specific individuals whose consciousness "resonated at harmonically compatible frequencies."

According to the text, these entities were not confined to a single reality but moved freely between different versions, occasionally becoming visible to those who were about to experience what it termed a "bifurcation in their timeline."

The final page contained a photograph, faded and yellowed with age, but unmistakable in its subject: an orange-striped cat with white paws, sitting on top of what appeared to be this very book.

Below the photograph was a single handwritten line:

When you see the navigator, your path is about to divide.

The implications sent a chill through me. If the book was to be believed, the cat was not simply a visitor from another dimension but a harbinger of imminent change, a being that appeared at moments when reality itself was about to branch.

---

"You look like you've seen a ghost," commented Dr. Sophia Thomson as she set down her coffee cup. My colleague in the Philosophy Department specialized in metaphysics and had a refreshing disregard for academic boundaries. "Or should I say, a quantum cat?"

I had mentioned my experiences to her in passing weeks earlier, presenting them as a thought experiment rather than a personal experience. She had been intrigued rather than concerned.

"I found something in the archives," I said, keeping my voice low despite the busy campus café. "About observer-dependent entities."

Her eyebrows rose. "The Traveler's Codex? I thought that was just academic folklore."

"You know about it?" My surprise must have been evident.

"Only rumors. Supposedly written by a professor who disappeared in the 1940s. Left behind a manuscript claiming he could perceive parallel realities." She leaned forward. "You actually found it?"

I nodded. "And it describes exactly what I've been experiencing."

Sophia's expression shifted from academic interest to concern. "Be careful, Yang. That manuscript... there are stories about what happened to people who took it seriously."

"What stories?"

She hesitated. "Disappearances. Mental breakdowns. Or worse. People who seemed to become untethered from consensus reality. Present but increasingly disconnected, as if they were partially existing elsewhere."

Before I could respond, my phone chimed with a notification. A group dinner with colleagues from the department had been arranged for that evening, a gathering to celebrate Professor Mei Wei's recent publication.

"You should come," Sophia said, seeing the message. "It might help to focus on something... normal for an evening."

I agreed, though normalcy felt increasingly distant from my experience.

---

The restaurant was one of those upscale establishments that existed primarily to impress visiting academics. It was dimly lit, with abstract art and menu prices that seemed deliberately calibrated to induce guilt in university employees.

Six of us gathered around a table near the window: Professor Mei Wei, her graduate assistant Tao Ye, Dr. Harrison from Applied Mathematics, Sophia, myself, and Professor Anna Mouchez, who had retired three years ago but still attended departmental functions with religious devotion.

The conversation flowed around topics of safety, such as recent publications, department politics, and the eternal struggle for funding. I participated mechanically, my attention divided.

And then I saw it, the cat, sitting perfectly still by the restaurant entrance, amber eyes fixed on me with the same unblinking intensity. But this time, something was different. When I looked directly at it, it didn't disappear.

"Are you all right?" Sophia asked, noticing my distraction.

"The cat," I said quietly. "By the door. You don't see it?"

She glanced over, then back at me, concern evident in her expression. "There's no cat, Yang."

The others had noticed our exchange. "What cat?" Professor Mei Wei asked, curious rather than dismissive.

I was about to explain when Professor Mouchez spoke up. "Orange with white paws?"

My attention snapped to him. "Yes. You see it?"

She nodded slowly, her aged face suddenly solemn. "I've seen it for sixty-three years. Never stays long. Always at... interesting moments."

The table fell silent.

"What does it mean?" I asked her.

Mouchez sipped his tea before answering. "It means you're at a crossroads. A decision point. Or sometimes, it means you've narrowly avoided a significant event."

"Like what?"

Before she could answer, a tremendous crash sounded from the street outside. We all turned to see the aftermath of a collision, a taxi had been struck by a delivery truck at the intersection directly visible from our window.

"Like that," Mouchez said quietly. "Had we left moments earlier, we might have been in that very vehicle."

I looked back to where the cat had been, but it was gone, this time having departed by conventional means, simply walking away rather than collapsing into itself.

---

Later that night, as I sat at my desk attempting to process the events of the evening, the cat appeared once more, materializing silently on top of my scattered research notes.

For once, it didn't vanish when I approached. Instead, it blinked slowly and deliberately, a gesture that felt like acknowledgment. When I carefully extended my hand, it permitted a brief touch. The fur was warm and solid under my fingertips, proving its physical reality.

"You're a navigator," I whispered, recalling the term from the manuscript. "Moving between realities. Warning me of bifurcation points."

The cat's purr resumed, that strange vibration that seemed to bypass my ears and resonate directly in my brain. With it came not words but impressions: countless realities stacked like pages in a book, with slender gaps between them through which certain beings could slip.

I understood then that I had never truly seen the cat. I had merely glimpsed the shadow it cast across the thin membrane of my reality. The cat didn't exist in my world; rather, I occasionally existed in its perception.

"Show me," I said, the request forming before I fully understood what I was asking.

The cat stood, stretched, and then looked at me with an intensity that seemed to evaluate my readiness. Then it began to compress, not disappearing this time, but creating what appeared to be a tear in the fabric of my visual field, a vertical line of absence that widened into a slender doorway of absolute darkness.

Through this opening came a sensation of vertigo, of unimaginable depth. The cat stepped halfway through, then looked back at me expectantly.

I hesitated. To follow would mean abandoning everything I knew, my research, my colleagues, the linear progression of the life I had planned. Yet staying meant returning to a reality that I now knew was merely one page in an infinite book.

Professor Mouchez's words echoed in my mind: "It means you're at a crossroads."

I reached for the opening, my fingers trembling as they approached the boundary between realities. The darkness felt cool against my skin, neither solid nor liquid but something between states: a threshold substance.

As I stepped through, I understood why the cat had appeared to so many people throughout history, why legends of its kind existed in folklores across cultures. It wasn't merely a navigator between realities but a guide for those rare individuals who could perceive the multiplicity of existence.

---

Sometimes I wonder how many others see it, how many parallel lives are linked by this orange-striped navigator. Somewhere, in some version of reality, someone else is writing these exact words: I've seen this cat. And somewhere else, someone is reading them, unaware that the cat is watching them too, from just beyond the periphery of vision.

I have learned to move between worlds now, though with nothing approaching the cat's effortless grace. Each reality differs from the next in ways both subtle and profound: in one, I completed my dissertation to academic acclaim; in another, I abandoned academia entirely; in yet another, I never existed at all.

The mathematics of the Traveler's Codex makes more sense now, not as abstract theory but as practical navigation tools. The cat was right. The reality is not a singular stream but an ocean of possibilities, each decision point creating new branches, new currents to explore.

I return occasionally to my original timeline, observing but rarely interacting. I watched as my colleagues searched for me after my disappearance, as theories ranging from suicide to mental breakdown were proposed and eventually abandoned. I saw Sophia find the Traveler's Codex where I had left it and begin her own journey of discovery. I witnessed Professor Mouchez smile knowingly when asked about me, as if she understood exactly what had happened.

And I've seen other cats, navigators of different colors and patterns, each guiding their own observers through the labyrinth of realities. We acknowledge each other when our paths cross, fellow travelers in the spaces between worlds.

If you're reading this and have never seen the cat, don't be concerned. Your time may come, or it may not. But if you do see it, orange-striped with white paws, watching you with unblinking amber eyes, know that you stand at a threshold. What appears to be a simple feline is actually a doorway, an invitation to step beyond the single page of reality you've been reading and explore the entire library of possible existences.

Just be prepared. Once you've seen the cat, you can never unsee the doors it reveals. And once those doors are open, crossing their thresholds becomes not a question of if, but when.

Look carefully at the spaces between things, at the shadows that don't quite match their sources, at the reflections that move independently of their objects. The cat is there, waiting to be noticed.

I've seen this cat. Perhaps, soon, you will too.