So Today.. a Math Cat.

Today I found myself at home, it was late morning and nowhere to go, nothing to do, so, after eating everything in the house and watching a few  hours worth of internet videos, I phoned my friend.

'Hey.'

'Hello.'

'You free today?'

'I guess, why?'

'I'm really bored.'

'Are you not entertained!?!'

'Funny. Wanna pop over?'

'Sure.'

He decided to stay the night a bit later, we're at that stage of friendbroship where it's okay to sleep in the same bed as long as we're both wearing a few layers of clothing and don't make awkward eye contact, so it served our gaming purposes to just keep playing until we fall asleep. I seemed like it was going to be a normal gaming night until...

TAP TAP TAP

A soft, terrifying sound echoed in the room. Keep in mind that it was one in the morning, possibly later; images of some horrible machete-holding maniac or a seriously dedicated evangelist kept streaming through my mind, and I didn't really want to take a 50-50 on either death or 30 minutes of someone describing the individual benefits of Scientology.

Luckily, being less socially straight-jacketed and also insane, my friend had other, better, ideas.

'Sounds like a bird, maybe we should go shoo it away.'

Upon closer inspection (read 'being brave and opening the window'), it turned out to be a cat. But, before we could close the window or someway impede it's march, it leapt into the room and stood against us in a battle pose, ready to kill us natives and succeed in its invasion. For a few minutes my friend and I just kept glancing to each other then back to the cat, unsure of what we needed to do. I looked around at what I could use as some defense, a pillow, an umbrella, a suit of armor preferably, with particularly thick throat covering.

After what seemed like an hour of this stand-off, my friend grabbed a book from my shelf, and endeavored to use it as an unfeeling stratch-bag with which he could push the cat out of the room, where my parents or dog could deal with it. I took a sharp breath.

The book touched the side of the cat's face, and nothing happened, the cat didn't budge an inch, but neither did my friend. He continued to push, the cat's fur started to rise and his back began to arch. I took another sharp breath so hard I felt dizzy.

The cat struck.

A single slash across the hand that held the book, blood sprayed out over my room, drenching the cat and I swear I saw a glint of cruel enjoyment in his eyes. Well, I may be exaggerating the scratch on my friends hand but either way the book was dropped and the cat, thinking itself victorious, lay down next to it.

Strangely the book had fallen open, and the cat quickly became interested in the contents, and after some 2 minutes began staring rigidly into the pages. The book was on advanced mathematics, something difficult for humans to enjoy, never mind cats, so it was strange to see.

I picked up another dusty book on Calculus from my shelf and put it just outside the door (the cat was placated by it's reading) and not long after we watched as the cat left to sit and read the book on Calculus, what a cat! My friend and I, utterly surprised,  considered training it to become some famous mathematician cat but realized he was wearing a collar, ah well, it's not like we wanted to be millionaires or anything.

After some more books and careful placement, we got the cat outside, sitting with it's back to my front door with it's nose in a chapter on Algebraic Formulae. We gently closed the front door and sat behind it, collapsing in relief. We went on to talk about it all night, and my friend drew this picture.

One of the weirdest things about that night is not his arrival or his strange interest in Mathematics, but the fact that book was gone when we left in the morning. Had the cat somehow taken it with him?

We'll never know.