KREATIVITY FOR KATS
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine April 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
They are the aliens among us—and
their ways and wonders are
stranger than extraterrestrials!
Gummitch peered thoughtfully at the molten silver image of the sun inhis little bowl of water on the floor inside the kitchen window. Heknew from experience that it would make dark ghost suns swim in frontof his eyes for a few moments, and that was mildly interesting. Then heslowly thrust his head out over the water, careful not to ruffle itssurface by rough breathing, and stared down at the mirror cat—theGummitch Double—staring up at him.
Gummitch had early discovered that water mirrors are very differentfrom most glass mirrors. The scentless spirit world behind glassmirrors is an upright one sharing our gravity system, its floor acontinuation of the floor in the so-called real world. But the world ina water mirror has reverse gravity. One looks down into it, but thespirit-doubles in it look up at one. In a way water mirrors are holesor pits in the world, leading down to a spirit infinity or ghostlynadir.
Gummitch had pondered as to whether, if he plunged into such a pit,he would be sustained by the spirit gravity or fall forever. (It maywell be that speculations of this sort account for the caution aboutswimming characteristic of most cats.)
There was at least one exception to the general rule. The looking glasson Kitty-Come-Here's dressing table also opened into a spirit world ofreverse gravity, as Gummitch had discovered when he happened to lookinto it during one of the regular visits he made to the dressing tabletop, to enjoy the delightful flowery and musky odors emanating from thefragile bottles assembled there.
But exceptions to general rules, as Gummitch knew well, are onlydoorways to further knowledge and finer classifications. The windcould not get into the spirit world below Kitty-Come-Here's lookingglass, while one of the definitive characteristics of water mirrorsis that movement can very easily enter the spirit world below them,rhythmically disturbing it throughout, producing the most surrealeffects, and even reducing it to chaos. Such disturbances exist onlyin the spirit world and are in no way a mirroring of anything in thereal world: Gummitch knew that his paw did not change when it flickedthe surface of the water, although the image of his paw burst intoa hundred flickering fragments. (Both cats and primitive men firstdeduced that the world in a water mirror is a spirit world because theysaw that its inhabitants were easily blown apart by the wind and musttherefore be highly tenuous, though capable of regeneration.)
Gummitch mildly enjoyed creating rhythmic disturbances in the spiritworlds below water mirrors. He wished there were some way to bringtheir excitement and weird beauty into the real world.
On this sunny day when our story begins, the spirit world below thewater mirror in his drinking bowl was particularly vivid and bright.Gummitch stared for a while longer at the Gummitch Double and thenthrust down his tongue to quench his thirst. Curling swiftly upward,it