PeTA Tries to Rescue Schrödinger's Cat

Utterly flushed with pride from a successful fun-raising for the First Exhibition of Art Nouveau Toilet Fixtures, and having completed her establishing The Girls of NPR Granny Swimsuit Calendar, Meredith turned her organizational presence to another of her causes: animal welfare. Obviously, she was spurred by the recent horrific reports of the football player-turned dog fighter. "How tacky and depressingly Neanderthal some people can be, particularly in the Flyover States," she thought. It is only with the strenuous efforts of the Better People that we are able to avoid descending into the Stygian depths as a civilization, save a few already-lost locations such as New Jersey and Arkansas. But she was up to it: she was the local President for PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals!

She was in the process of scanning the scientific literature for those possible animal-abusing miscreants, which she tended to see primarily in those sulfurous realms of biology and psychology: fields very callous towards Our Fellow Creatures, but then she found something truly horrific: a scientist proposing the exposure of an adorable little cat to radiation! This awful researcher proposed putting an inoffensive cat in a steel chamber for an hour, together with a Geiger counter and some unspecified radioactive substance. If an atom decayed, it supposedly would trigger a relay of that would shatter a flask hydrocyanic acid and kill the cat! In effect, this awful person was subjecting the feline to an involuntary case of radiological Russian roulette! Now there is a sick mind for you!

A cold chill crept down her side. This was awful, in the maximum degree. And this horror was directed to a cute creature that most people love and is the most popular pet in the United States! There was one thing different: this miscreant was a specialist in physics, of all things! And this proposal was so long ago. "Hmmm . . . . this awful creature might be endlessly torturing kitties as I now sit."

Meredith thought of her own cute little kitty, gritted her teeth, and started to draft letters to The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and the New York Times protesting this despicable Professor Erwin Schrödinger. "We of PETA will drive this impudent and unfeeling scientist to his knees! We'll marshal the Steering Committee tonight, and picket his laboratory lair in force tomorrow."