Regular readers may remember my peer-reviewed scientific paper into the "Quantative measurement of madness in female subjects over the age of 35", relating to a certain state of advanced hysteria in ladies of a certain age. To whit: Mad Cat Women.Our study into Susan Boyle's Law concluded that any female household with three or more feline co-inhabitants invites the observer to conclude that the human resident would be what is scientifically termed a Mad Cat Woman
"Ah-ha!" says one of my peer reviewers into this extraordinary paper (who wishes to remain anonymous), "We have three cats, but as my daughter has moved back in, there are TWO FEMALE ADULTS living in the house.
"That makes us," she concluded, "a mere 1.5 cats mad, which is perfectly acceptable."
Sadly, I reply, you have failed to take Schroedinger's Cat Woman Paradox into account.
Schroedinger (who is, FACT fans, the kid from Charlie Brown who played the piano all grown up and working in actual SCIENCE) wrote:
"In normal circumstances, a straight number of cats (c) divided by number of females adults (n) calculation would be acceptable. However, to the outside observer, the field collapses and n always equals one.We hope we have heard the last of this madness.
"This means that any female adult living in a house of - say - three cats, will be seen by the outside observer to be Three Cats Mad with all the stigma and/or benefits that go with said status.
"Obviously, the higher the value of c, the more likely that n tends to one, even if male adults and/or dogs are present. With higher c values of 12 or more, all adults (even males) may be termed Mad Cat Women according to the remote observer existing at zero gravity in a vacuum."
20 comments:
Meow.
I am not mad.
Is this still there when I shut the lid?
I have seen this! It is real!
Was it Linus that played the piano? With the security blanket?
Makes purrrrrfect sense.
Hugh (Kenny's brother) Everett's interpretation of this theory postulates that if a cat is removed from the house such that C:N<3:1, the states of madness and unmadness persist due to their mutual de-coherence.
This is why it is impossible to have a coherent argument with any adult female.
I'm not mad and I'll set my cats on anyone who says otherwise.
Or maybe I'll just post cat poo and coughed up hairballs through their letterbox.
SD, next time you're waxing lyrical about the popular waste of money that is homeopathy, take a look at powerbalanceuk.com. They're selling holograms at £30+ a go & promising absolutely sod all. It's got to rival homeopathy for placebo-tasticness. Yr comic wisdom will doubtless entertain more than I could :)
off-topic I know...
Woo-hoo! Still sane!
Ivor - Expect the first post at midnight.
maffs not being my strong point, help me out with this
2 adult males
3 adult females
7 cats
how much trouble am i in?
Isolator - are they holograms of cats? In which case I might buy one ...
I am mad and have cats.
PS Nice to have a decent post for once with kitten photo. Pls to post more.
The odd thing is that, given the power of homeopathy, just bringing a cat into the house is sufficient to leave enough essence of cat to count as a cat. So you might own only one cat at a time, but as soon as you have had three furry companions, that's it.
Isolator: I've been following the Power Balance thing. They've fooled some pretty big names with that woo.
TRT: So true. We have one real dog, and a homeopathic dog in our house.
I had a homeopathic dog once, but the vet said just to hit him on the nose with a rolled up newspaper if he did it again.
what's the weighting factor applied if the cats are
a) gay
b) bi, or
c) just experimenting?
Wrath of Dawn - Due to Everett's postulation they either cannot post or, if they do, it will be incoherent. Safe!
Alistair Coleman - wait until 1st March. The ASA and the Power Balancers woo-merchants will be having conversations about the claims on their website - once I've made the complaint.
We psychologists consider the term "mad " to be politically incorrect. The correct phrase is Feline Obsessive Disorder, or FOD. One of my patients has 12 cats, some of which do not go out because they have agoraphobia, and some are not allowed out because they are too precious, so counting them is an inexact science. The husband is a keen cat acquirer as well, so is empirically verified as a Mad Cat Woman, c=12. All of this, except the bit about my medical qualifications, is true.
Post a Comment