Fluffers was a good cat. He never worried his owner. He never ran off. He didn’t hang around with strays.
But just like so many other bright young cats his age, Fluffers had a problem. A problem that would one day kill him.
It all started back when he was about three years old. He was playing with a small rubber ball on the kitchen floor. He rolled it to and fro, fro and to. Suddenly, his front left paw slipped on the cold linoleum, and he began to fall toward the floor. He threw his front right paw out to stabilize himself, but it landed on the ball, which then shot across the kitchen. He was now completely off balance; he flipped and fell on his back.
Fluffers wasn’t really hurt, except for maybe his pride. But no one had been around to see his stumble. No big deal. He dusted himself off, and began to leave the kitchen.
Then he froze.
Where did the ball get to? he thought. It had shot across the floor, but he was flipped over by the time it had been settled. Where was that ball? Fluffers felt his mouth salivating. His mind raced with ideas: maybe the ball went under a cabinet, maybe it was in the other room, maybe it bounced and was up on the counter….
So many possibilities. Fluffers’ mind was in a daze. His heart raced. His little chest pounded with exhilaration. Where was the ball?! He couldn’t stop thinking about it. He was feeling more alive than he’d ever felt. Where was it!!??? WHEEEEEERE!?!!
Then the ball rolled up against his back leg.
Oh, thought Fluffers. There it is.
The wondering was over. But the damage was done.
Fluffers was hooked.
It started off with small things. He’d purposely lose track of the ball, then wonder where it might have gotten to. He’d think about the food his owner gave him and wonder where he bought it from.
It all seemed harmless enough.
Then he started getting into bigger stuff. Fluffers would stare at the TV for hours, trying to figure out how it worked. He’s look out the garage window at his owner’s car, wondering what kind of mileage it got. He wondered about mirrors, wondered about wind chimes, wondered about food processors. He couldn’t even get through a day without wondering at least once why trees had bark or why glass was transparent. He was becoming dependent. His hunger for knowledge became insatiable. He learned to read. He came across Sartre’s “No Exit” and discovered existentialism. He was incapacitated for days.
Then he began getting into the really dangerous stuff: subatomic physics, relativity, quantum mechanics. He couldn’t help himself. With Stephen Hawking as his unwitting junkie, he explored the very fabric of the Universe itself.
And then, for Fluffers, the bottom dropped out: he received a grant from the National Science Foundation.
He built a lab in the basement of his owner’s home. He conducted cutting edge research. He developed solar powered cars and generators that formed energy from common household baking soda. He discovered new galaxies, new stars, new planets. He contacted alien races. He perfected time travel. He photographed God.
All for the kicks. All for the thrills.
But just like all addicts before, Fluffers was doomed. For every thrilling high, there was always a brutal crash. He had become too knowledgeable. All the world’s enticing unknowns were now known to him. He had made sense of grand unified theory. He had reached Nirvana. He even understood why NBC had invested so much time and money in “The Stephen Weber Show” despite its poor concept and terrible cast.
He knew all that there was to know in life. The only unknown…was the afterlife.
On May 15th, 1998, Fluffers lifeless body was found in a hotel bathroom in Detroit. He’d been in the city in April for a string theory convention, but he hadn’t been answering phone calls for the entire month of May.
Now, as for me, I like to think Fluffers didn’t die in vain. He taught us how much knowledge is too much, about how you can take something too far, about the thin line between genius and insanity. Because if nothing else, we all saw what really happened to this brave soul. We all knew what really caused his demise. The official death certificate declared that Fluffers had “choked on his own vomit,” but everyone knew the real story.
Curiosity had killed this cat.