When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet

[pixie]

When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is
dropped, it always lands with the buttered side facing down. I propose to
strap buttered toast to the back of a cat; the two will hover spinning
inches above the ground. With a giant buttered cat array, a high-speed
monorail could easily link New York with Chicago.

-Theories section of 'OMNI' magazine.

[Tarbal]

alrighty then....my head now hurts very much bad...admin....PLEASE get the mud back up before we all lose our minds like poor pix

[Arizhel]

Flaws In the Flying Cat Theory: A Response Special to the Coastal Beacon by Geoffrey Baker

A logical analysis of the BFAD (Buttered Feline Antigravity Drive) propulsion theory clearly demonstrates the impossibility of such a system.

Let us begin with a simple analysis.

1) Buttered bread must fall butter side down. 2) A cat always lands on its feet.

While both theorems are indisputable, the oracle offers no proof of the construct. The oracle implies that anyone who 'would' test this construct would immediately find the secret of BFAD.

This is clearly nonsense.

Let us assume a normal Einsteinian universe (although a Euclidean universe would serve our purposes just as well, the Einsteinian is both cheaper and drinks are readily available.)

To test BFAD, one must procure: Bread, Butter (margarine, for some reason, will not work), A cat, A strapping device.

Let us assume that all of these are readily available. Attach the strapping device to the cat.

See?

No cat.

What has happened? We have run up against an a priori universal law. By a priori, we mean that it takes priority over either the Buttered Bread Principle or the Law of Feline Landings. What happens is that the instant a strapping device and a cat occupy the same four dimensional space, the cat disappears. Now, this can easily be tested, and has been repeatedly. There are two schools of thought about this phenomenon.

The first holds that a cat and a strapping device are constituted out of different fundamental building blocks. According to this theory, a cat is constituted primarily of superquarks, (called meows by current theorists.) These superquarks demonstrate qualities that are both atomic (constituted as they are of groupings of normal quark particles) and feline (because these quarks exhibit characteristic of "charmed" or "lucky" particles.) Again, according to this theory, strapping materials are fashioned out of non-charmed particles. Bringing the two together causes one or the other to cancel out. One aspect of this theory that has not been sufficiently explained to date is the fact that it is always the cat, not the strapping device, that disappears.

The second school of thought, and it is one that appears to be gaining ground in academic circles today, holds that cats are, in fact, super-intelligent pan-dimensional beings who exist in our four dimensional universe only because there is plenty of good food and a lot of creatures stupid enough to provide the food, along with plenty of attention. Whenever a strapping device appears, the cat simply opens a door to a different series of dimensions, and goes on an extended tour.

According to this theory, purring is a cat's way of maintaining a constant balance cycling across multiple dimensions. This school holds that antigravity is impossible, but that theoretically, a REALLY good grip on a cat, while reaching for a strapping device, could result in our ability to cross dimensions with ease (barring scratches, that is.) Pessimists argue that if there was anything really interesting in those other dimensions, cats wouldn't spend so much time here, so why ask for a good scratching?

[Doc]

[Ciara]

Along the same lines:

I can personally attest to the fact that when a cat rolls over and falls off the bed, it doesn't usually land on it's feet... Much to the chagrin of my 26 lb cat named Shasta.

[Pink]

My male cat is INCREDIBLY clumsy and rarely lands on his feet, even when he's propelling himself there in a 1 foot jump off the coffee table (yet alone the 7 foot jump from the top of the mirror, where he shouldn't be, and clocking himself on the dresser on the way down.) Yes, and the glass in the window isn't there either so running 20 mph straight into it just makes his head harder for the next fall My cat is special.

[DaHart85]

Arizhel said:

\To test BFAD, one must procure: A strapping device.

I stopped reading here :-)

[Sockless]

Of course you are all missing another possibility here:

Nature, when faced with an unsolvable paradox, sucks both cat and bread into an alternate dimension where bread DOES NOT land butter side down. The resulting dimensional vortex manifests as a miniature black hole - sucking in all possible witnesses to the event before winking out of existance.

No matter which of the above are true, I'm sure a properly worded proposal could get some good government grant money.

Proposal: Dairy-Based Feline Singularity Generator.