The Fidget Hypothesis

The first time Fidget found the mistress dead, he got so scared that he lost one of his lives. It wouldn’t be the last time she did this, but some warning would have been polite. Maybe he had four left — cats were never really good with math. She had obviously been working on some mystical experiment that backfired, badly. Fidget’s bushy tail twitched and he cocked his head, staring into her open mouth. A furry paw gently bapped at her cheek once, twice, and a third time for good measure.

Fidget leapt with a quick spring to the top of the work table, cluttered with the labors of the mistress. He stared down at her, thinking that she may be playing a trick on him. He meowed at her still form, irritated at her for thinking she could trick him so easily. He casually licked a paw and ran it over his face. His golden eyes narrowed, thinking, two can play at this game.

His paw tapped at a glass beaker. Tap. Tap. Tapping it closer and closer to the edge of the table. His eyes never left her, waiting to see if she’d jump up to correct his naughty behavior. It was halfway off the table by now; usually by this time she would have rushed over to him, shooing him out of the lab, threatening to eat him if he ruined another serum. The beaker hit the floor with a crash so loud that even Fidget jumped. Still, the mistress didn’t move.

She was most definitely dead.

But who will feed me now?

Fidget’s tail danced violently. While the auto feeder might still have some food in it, who knew how long it would be before it gave out. He had heard stories about cats whose owners died. They were forced to eat their late owners, usually starting with the face. Fidget licked his chops involuntarily, looking down at the mistress’s plump cheeks.

But now wasn’t the time to be thinking about such things. Besides, wasn’t she working on something that had to do with this? He remembered her talking about her work, something about technology and magic or something. “Technology is just someone else’s magic!” she always used to say. He liked when the mistress talked about her work, but eventually, he would grow bored and knock something off of her work station to get her attention. The mistress would usually chase him out of her lab, often the only good play he’d get for most of the day.

Fidget sighed — if cats could sigh — and turned in circles on the work table. He had just eaten after all, and something of this magnitude shouldn’t be decided on without a nap. He lay down, rested his chin on his furry white paws, blinked his eyes slowly at his mistress on the floor, and faded off to sleep.

He awoke several hours later to the sound of humming, a sound he never thought he’d hear again. The fluffy cat blinked his eyes open, stretched his arched back, and saw the mistress, hard at work as if nothing had ever happened, filling the place with the scent of burning things and chemicals. It was a smell Fidget still hadn’t gotten used to.

He meowed curiously, as if to ask what happened. “Sometimes things go wrong when you play in the lab,” she replied with a shrug.

Fidget began to purr, weaving his way through tubes of glass and small flames that he learned long ago to avoid. She stroked his head and the fur that puffed out around his face. “I love you too,” she said. “Except when you break my beakers. Then I only love you sometimes.” He had heard that before. He turned and shoved his poofy tail towards her face, jumped down, and went off in search of adventure.

---

He remembered the day she brought him home — found him licking his wounds after narrowly escaping being poured into a trash compactor behind a restaurant. Fidget was sure this is where he lost his first life.

He stunk and was covered in uninvited pests, skinny from malnourishment, and didn’t really know how to be a cat. But he could tell from the coo in her voice that the mistress was friendly. She scooped him up and, after a rather humiliating bath that left his skinny body matted with wet hair and a round of medication from the vet, he was home. His fluffy tail shuddered involuntarily at the thought of that, or any other vet visit.

Fidget sauntered through the cold floors and odd smells of the lab and up the stairs to the living area. He’d had enough of the mistress’s “magic” for the day and decided to go “do cat stuff,” as she would say, that even a science-witch couldn’t understand. The first order of business involved climbing to the top of his cat tree to observe the front yard.

---

As he sat, tail neatly tucked at his side, Fidget began to think about the mistress’s death. Why she was back did not concern him. She was, and that was all that needed to be said about the matter. But he even began to ponder his own existence, as cats often do, and thought about the other lives he had lost along the way.

Life number two, as alluded to before, involved the laboratory. Not long after his rescue, the mistress slowly started to introduce Fidget to the laboratory in the basement. Within a handful of weeks, he started to feel quite at home in the lab and would often jump up on places that the mistress thought he shouldn’t.

She may have been right, sometimes. After all, a cat with an extraordinarily fluffy tail should not walk casually past an open flame.

Fidget’s tail went up in a quick blaze, burning like a torch before he even noticed it. In fact, it was the look of abject horror on the mistress’s face, her hand slapped across her open mouth, that let Fidget know that something was wrong. That and the smell of burning cat hair.

Fidget shot across the lab, howling like a spirit in the night, breaking most of the things he bumped into in a frantic attempt to put out the flame. The mistress tried chasing him, but trying to catch a cat on fire is like trying to hold in your last breath. It wasn’t until she sprayed him with foam from the fire extinguisher that he slid to a stop. A trail of burnt foam covered the floor behind him.

The mistress was furious with Fidget after that, banning him from the laboratory for over a month. It wasn’t until she grew tired of his howling, heard even in the depths of the basement, that she let him back in.

Fidget never jumped on that table again.

---

Fidget shook his head at the thought of his singed tail and licked a rogue spot of misplaced fur, glaring at the white tip of his black tail, a souvenir from life two’s dramatic end. It was then that he heard the promising beep of the auto feeder and the clattering clang of kibble landing in the metal feeding bowl.

The fluffy cat licked his lips at the end of his feast, and couldn’t help but think about the end of life number three. A lesson that sometimes the most delicious things should be avoided. Or at least not placed within the reach of a curious and hungry cat.

The mistress rarely left her experiments in the living area, choosing to mostly keep work and private life separate — with the exception of Fidget of course. But one day, the fluffy cat came upon a sweet-smelling green liquid, sitting in a bowl on the countertop of the kitchen. It was still a while before feeding time, and Fidget couldn’t resist.

He sniffed at it tentatively. It smelled almost like the frozen milk the mistress would occasionally let him have. He cautiously tapped at the top of it with his paw. It was like his water dish.

She wouldn’t leave this out for me if she didn’t want me to have it.

His pink tongue eagerly lapped at the strange liquid. It was delicious. Fidget eagerly lapped up the rest of the treat and licked the bowl clean. The small metal bowl spun around on the counter and clattered to the ground. I should thank her with a dead thing later.

It was then that the mistress hurried into the kitchen, looking this way and that, muttering things like “Where did I put it?” and “How could I leave that lying around?” When she found the small bowl on the ground, she screamed Fidget’s name so loud he almost fell off the counter.

He meowed a mix of annoyance and confusion. He was right here. Do your eyes not work?

“Fidget, where are you?”

Another meow and a cock of his head. She looked in his direction but her eyes slid right past him without seeing. He meowed again in irritation and bapped at her with his paw. His paw that he couldn’t see.

“Oh no,” she gasped, “don’t tell me it did that.”

Fidget turned on the counter, purring his thanks for the treat and demanding pets. If you can’t see me, just smell for me. He couldn’t believe humans sometimes.

The serum wore off a few hours later, after an exhausting game of chase and some cat vomit that became visible a few hours later. The human looked tired as she collapsed to the couch. Perhaps a nap would do them both good.

Fidget snuggled up against her leg. Her hand dropped on his head. “I love you too,” she said, “sometimes.”

---

Later that day, while doing the kind of business only a cat could comprehend, Fidget thought again about the rest of his lives. The end of life number four happened when he tried to hunt the mistress’s new creation, the Robofalcon 9000. It turned out that metal bird flesh was not really flesh at all. Robotic birds also tended to fight back more than real birds did.

The mistress chased the bird around the lab, brandishing a broom, yelling, “I’ll deprogram you, you bastard!” But looking back, he wasn’t sure if she was saying that to the bird or him.

---

Life five ended when Fidget learned that the lab lasers are not a toy. The less said about that, the better.

---

Over the next few years, the mistress had died several other times, only to be revived again without the traumatic shock to Fidget that cost him life number six. Lives seven and eight passed without the cat even knowing they were gone. He was older now and it was harder to do the adventurous things he used to do. He found most of his days curled up on his cat tree, silently judging the world outside. If not that, then he would meow incessantly until the mistress picked him up and laid him on a cat bed on one of the tables in the lab. “You don’t really fidget anymore, do you buddy?” she asked. He let out a quick meow of agreement and closed his eyes.

---

Fidget couldn’t remember the last time he’d enjoyed eating. Water too seemed like something to be avoided. It had been like this for days. Every time he turned up his food, the mistress would start to cry.

One day, she took him down to the lab, her steps slower than usual. She laid him in a soft bed on a table. She whispered, “It’ll only sting for a moment,” and he felt a pinch in his paw. She wrapped the paw in tape, a tube leading out from under it.

Fidget looked up at her as much as his tired head would allow. He rubbed the side of his face against her hand, then dropped his chin back to his paws, being careful to avoid the one with the tube.

“I’m afraid we have to say goodbye.”

He looked up at her and blinked slowly.

“I can’t keep bringing you back. It’s unfair.”

Fidget slow-blinked his eyes at her again. Did you love me? he asked, knowing she couldn’t hear.

“I loved you all of the time,” she choked around globs of tears in her eyes. “Even when you sabotaged my work. I loved you all of the time.” Her face dove into her crossed arms on the table, shoulders racking with sobs. The tips of her fingers still caressed the side of his face. He purred quietly, knowing that she was being honest.

Fidget heard the click of a button, and he suddenly felt sleepy, more sleepy than any cat really should feel. But it was okay. The mistress was here. He could nap soundly knowing that he’d wake up, just like he always did, to the one who took him in and loved him all of the time.

He fell asleep to the soft feeling of her fingers caressing his face.

He never woke up.

---

Months later, the mistress would find herself working in her lab, still glancing behind her for a fluffy tail, listening for the sound of shattering beakers, or for a meow that demanded an earlier dinner. She would occasionally look up at the plaster paw print she had made the day Fidget took his last nap and smile.

The lab feels empty now without chaos in a cat suit watching her every move.