Linda Lau: There was once a cat named Bob.
Irina Yakubovskaya: He was not a bobcat.
Rae Mansfield: He liked bobcats and he aspired to be a bobcat, but he himself was Bob.
Linda Lau: Bob was an ordinary American short-haired cat.
Irina Yakubovskaya: And he was okay with it.
Rae Mansfield: He thought about going on adventures, but then he realized he liked sitting on top of the radiator, so he wasn’t sure if he actually wanted to go on any lengthy adventures.
Irina Yakubovskaya: Bob was definitely an American.
Linda Lau: One day, the door to his house suddenly opened and he had an opportunity to go outside if he wished.
Rae Mansfield: He walked towards the door and he put one ear out the door and one set of whiskers and then the end of his nose, and then his other ear and his other set of whiskers, and then he stepped one paw over the door oh so very slowly.
Irina Yakubovskaya: He felt snow. He felt it very acutely with his paw and he did not appreciate it.
Linda Lau: It was cold! It was cold and when he licked it he didn’t like the taste of it.
Rae Mansfield: And so he pulled his paw back and backed away from the door.
Irina Yakubovskaya: And he wondered in his thoughts, whether the snow that he tasted had come from, not just the sky, but some other substance. There was part of this world, but he didn’t know what it was, and so he was intrigued.
Linda Lau: He peeked his head out to the door again and put his paw down into the snow again.
Rae Mansfield: It wasn’t any more pleasant the second time.
Linda Lau: So he decided to go to his cat food and his water bowl instead.
Irina Yakubovskaya: He looked at his water thoughtfully and then it hit him: The water had a very similar texture to the snow and then he thought, “Does it mean I’m a physicist now?
Rae Mansfield: “I made water, with what I touched with my paw, I can create water!”
Linda Lau: And just as he was about to do something about it, he felt the heat from the radiator calling to him.
Irina Yakubovskaya: He was reminded then by the sound of his best friend that he already had in the house, and that was the radiator. So Bob thought, “Well, why would I ever want to go anywhere else if I already had everything I needed right here? He was warm, he was always there for me, and I loved it so much. Why would I ever want to change it?”
Rae Mansfield: “And so,” thought Bob the Cat, “The bobcats can have the snow.”
Photo Credit: Neal Herbert, YellowstoneNPS, “Bobcat along the Madison River,” 2016