The future of the Real cat

If you're prepared to accept the Schrodinger theory, then it is rosy—in fact, the last man on Earth will probably look out of his bunker and find a cat sitting there patiently waiting for the fridge to be opened.

Actually, theories don't come into it. Real cats are survivalists. They've got it down to a fine art. What other animal gets fed, not because it's useful, or guards the house, or sings, but because when it does get fed it looks pleased? And purrs. The purr is very important. It's the purr that does it every time. It's the purr that makes up for the Things Under the Bed, the occasional pungency, the 4 a.m. yowl.

Other creatures went in for big teeth, long legs or over-active brains, while cats just settled for a noise that tells the world they're feeling happy. The purr ought to have been a pair of concrete running shoes in the great race of evolution; instead, it gave cats a rather better deal than most animals can expect, given Mankind's fairly unhappy record in his dealings with his fellow creatures. Cats learned to evolve in a world designed initially by nature but in practice by humans, and have got damn good at it. The purr means “make me happy and I'll make you happy”. The advertising industry took centuries to cotton on to that beguiling truth, but when it did, it sold an awful lot of Cabbage Patch dolls.

You've got to hand it to Real cats.

If you don't, they wait until your back is turned and take it anyway.

It's nice to think, though, that if the future turns out to be not as bad as people forecast, ie, if it actually even exists, then among the domes and tubes of some orbiting colony, hundreds of years from now, dynamic people with sturdy chins, people who know all about mining asteroids and stuff like that, will still be standing outside their biomodule banging a plastic plate with a spoon.

And yelling “Zut!” or “Wip!”, if they've got any sense.