Erwin Schrodinger’s famous thought experiment illustrating quantum superposition is a terrible thing to do a cat.

First mentioned in a 1935 letter to Albert Einstein, the physicist wanted to illustrated the absurdity of a situation in which a cat is put in a box with a device that can kill it at randomly, or not at all. The cat may or may not be alive or dead, and anyone outside the box can’t know the cat’s fate until the box is opened.

Applied to quantum superposition, in which the nature of a particle or a wave cannot be determined until it is measured or observed, Schrodinger’s Cat asks how long can a thing exist in an either/or state?

As far as I know, no one has ever tried this with a real cat. Numerous physicists have used Schrodinger’s ideas to posit stranger things about quantum phenomena, including Hugh Everett’s “many worlds” interpretation, in which, upon opening the box, one cat, perhaps the dead one, is observed, while the living cat exists in another universe.

In 1960s, a few years after Everett came up with his formulation, the notion of “parallel worlds” became a fad in literary science fiction, which gradually spread to other kinds of entertainment. We now have an “alternative reality” genre of storytelling that asks what would happen if this thing didn’t happen, or that one did. The recent Academy-award winning film “Everything Everywhere All at Once” builds on this, by suggesting that if one thing happens in our universe, there are an infinite number of universes in which something different happens, no matter how ludicrous or unlikely, and that understanding can add help us cope with our apparent shortcomings.  Walt Disney’s Marvel Comics Universe has used this idea to revive popular characters have been written out or killed, and tell the outsider-learns-humility superhero story over and over again.

This said, it still, in our universe at least, a terrible thing to do to a cat. Why dod Schrodinger put in a box, rather than some other animal? Perhaps a universe exists in which people discuss Schrodinger’s Hamster. To quote the great Chico Marx in the movie “The Cocoanuts”: “Viaduct? Why not a chicken?”

Indeed! Why be so mean to animals? Why not inanimate objects? How about Schrodinger’s Mat, a variation on the theme of Paul Simon’s song, One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor?

Or Schrodinger’s Bat: in another universe, bases were also loaded at the top of the ninth inning. The hometown hero stepped up to the Homeplate, swung the bat and did NOT strike out!

Or Schrodinger’s Spat, in which two nice, well-meaning people go into a bar, or find themselves at a family gathering, or in an office where they get into an dispute over something so infinitesimally unimportant, but the argument goes on and on and on and on….

And what can we do about Schrodinger’s Fat?  No matter how much we exercise, what fancy new drugs we take or what we do or don’t eat—those extra pounds are coming from another universe in which scheming slim fit savants have figured out a way to outsource excess flab into our world.

This brings to mind a recent evening that required us to put the dogs in a kennel. We went to sleep in an unusually quiet house. For a single night we were without terriers to bark, growl and yip at delivery trucks and people walking dogs that had the audacity to sniff, snort and raise a leg in front of our house.

I’ll admit, it was easier to go to close my eyes and dream, until I awoke in the darkest part of the night and thought of what Schrodinger described as quantum entanglement: particles that interact with each other will continue to interact with each other no matter how far apart they may be.

Did I hear a dog breathing near my ear? Was that a lick I felt on my face?

A message came into my mind. “We’re okay. We’re not with you. But we love you anyway.”