Everything's Been Done Before
I recommended David Gerrold's SF writing book to Ben the other day, and while browsing through Gerrold's Wikipedia entry, I discovered this:"After Heinlein's death, Ginny Heinlein gave up her California home, and Gerrold adopted Heinlein's cat, Pixel."What? My cat's named Pixel, too. A little more searching revealed that Heinlein apparently had a cat named Pixel in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. The same cat also makes an appearance in To Sail Beyond the Sunset. Neither of which I've ever read.
My cat Pixel was a little upset to hear that he didn't have an original name, and more upset by the fact that his name had been used by Heinlein, of all people. He's not such a big fan of Heinlein's books.
Oh well. At least this explains how Pixel can magically appear in a room half a second after I've thoroughly looked there for him.
posted by tinatsu at 4:03 PM
4 Comments:
Pah! Pixel ought to be honoured to have a name used by Robert Heinlein, and be breathing a sigh of relief that it wasn't used by some moron like Arthur C. Clarke. Or worse, Gene Roddenberry.
Right. Thank Yahweh for that. It could be worse.
(I wonder if, when he seems to have disappeared, Pixel is actually walking through walls as first supposed, or if he gets shifted between worlds instead.)
Being serious (er...), he could also be from outer space (http://penmarric.ns.ca/funstuff/spacecat.htm.
Or maybe he's got a Tesla Transporter and has worked out a cunning way to destroy the original cat.
It's possible that he's a spacecat, but he's such a bad traveller that seems unlikely. He can hardly make it a mile to the vet's; I don't see how he'd manage interstellar distances.
Hmmm. Duplicating himself, though? That's possible. I don't think he kills off the clones, however. There are too many look-a-likes running around for that.
I used to have a cat named Cam. Her name came from a Thought Industry song: "everybody knows pets are just camcorders for God." Pixel's disappearing act could have a simple, metaphysical explanation.
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