The Why's and What's of Whiskers*

*before I begin, I hereby cordially copyright the aforementioned title to The Roommate herself, because contrary to my starting this blog and writing lots of slanderous things about her codependent behavior, we are still friends and actually this blog has probably strengthened our friendship. Thanks, roommate.

Now, on  with the post. Ahem.

One thing that became apparent to The Roommate and I when we first moved in together many moons prior, was that I am more of what we have heretofore termed a "symbolic thinker." This means that my sensory perceptions are more keen to pick up on the symbolic world lurking behind every nook and cranny of the non-symbolic world. So, for example, when we are on a walk and the Roommate spots a hawk some 40 miles in the distance (which happens often, since the Roommate is part hawk herself, which is why Lucy meows at her so gull darn much), she is more likely to think of it as just a plain hawk. I, on the other hand, am more likely to be reminded of crows, which are a universal portent of impending misery, and will probably walk the rest of the way in contemplative silence awaiting the death that is certain to come upon us. If we happen to be eating pomegranate together because they were on sale at Kroger, The Roommate is just going to think we are eating a succulent fruit. I am going to think of how pomegranates are like little rubies, my birthstone, which can only mean that pomegranates will ensure that I live a long life.When we bake, The Roommate is likely to just bake bread. Though I may look like I am just baking bread, however, I am actually fulfilling my God-given vocation of baking This Daily Bread (see The Lord's Prayer), the ingredients for which might as well have arrived straight from the gates of heaven itself. Hallelujah.

And so, following this line of thought, when The Roommate looks at Lucy's snout, she is likely to see only long wisps of hair protruding from its sides, otherwise known as "whiskers." When I look at whiskers, however, I see rather a portal to another universe.

My suspicion that cat whiskers may hold the key to entering a dimension yet unknown to mankind is based on both experiential and observational evidence built up over a lifetime. This evidence has been meticulously stored in the file cabinet within my brain labeled "cat sekretz," because when i first started compiling data on this subject I was only in first grade and my mental spelling was terrible. But, busy as I've been figuring out the cat secrets themselves, I never bothered to fix the mental label, so whatever. In this folder, there are a rare amalgam of facts that, when read together, begin to paint a surprising and mysterious picture of the  intergalactic phenomenon of cat whiskers.

For one thing, with all the gross hair that cats manage to shed, I have never seen a cat shed a whisker before. I've never found a whisker on the ground or stuck to my black pants before--just those other smaller, fuzzy hairs. This signals to me that there is something eternal and continuously regenerative about cat whiskers, and also cats know what they're doing: if they shed their whiskers, they know that they are ultimately powerless.

Secondly, have you ever noticed that cats won't let you anywhere near their precious whiskers? They turn their faces away at the slightest pinch or pull of those measly hairs. It's because they don't want you to gain access to their secret world, the other universe.

Thirdly, anyone who has spent any duration of time with any cat will notice they frequently disappear and reappear in odd places, such as the top of a refrigerator, stuck inside a closet, or even inside a heating vent. I can only assume that this is because, when they retreat via their whiskers to that other universe, this earth continues on its rotation around the sun. Given the adjustments for temporal-spatial changes, when the cats return, the place they departed from has shifted because of the earth's rotation. 

Living with Lucy has not really lent any new insights as to how to get to this new universe,  but by being able to observe a cat up close on a day-to-day basis, I've gotten a better clue as to what that universe may be like. First of all, there is lots of cat food there and Lucy must get used to eating on demand there, because that's what she expects here. Someone somewhere is feeding her without discretion, and it isn't me, and it probably isn't even The Roommate. Also, I think there is a lot of sleeping involved in the other universe for obvious reasons--intergalactic and interdimensional travel is an exhausting endeavor for any species, let alone for the fattest and most cow-like domestic animals on our planet. Moreover, I think bathtubs have some kind of sacred significance in the hidden cat universe, because Lucy is always trying to spend more time in ours. She derives some kind of strength and foundational importance from that thing.

Those are my suspicions, anyway. The roommate has another theory, namely that whiskers are the most sensitive part of a cat's body and that's why they guard them, and could I please keep my hands to myself and stop "terrorizing" her cat (The Roommate likes to use that word a lot in regards to Lucy, it is part of her codependent personality). I don't really take this theory very seriously, because frankly it doesn't explain very much--like why did the Egyptians think cats were divine? I mean, the Egyptians were quite obviously off their rockers to think cats were divine, but I think what they were getting at is that cats had something they didn't. The Egyptians knew what I know, and they also knew a lot more about the cosmos and mysteries of this world than we did--that's why they built the pyramids, which comprise one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

In sum, the Why's and What's of Whiskers are as follows:
Why: Cat sekretz
What: Intergalactic portal