The cats of Whiskerton were no strangers to randomly appearing objects, in fact, they delighted in them. Lush feathers — rumored to be shed from a species of vibrantly plumaged birds flying unseen above the clouds, too shy to ever show their faces — iridescent stones from mountains to the west, curiously shaped flowers, and, occasionally, a stray trinket or bauble that had tumbled from an oblivious cat’s pockets as they scurried about their daily business.
The cats still spoke of the year Tes’s favorite flower hat disappeared — whisked away by an errant breeze on her way to the sewing shop, vanishing in the instant she reached for it. Two weeks passed and she grew so distraught she offered to reward anyone who could find it with a month’s supply of her famous oceanberry pies. The whole town was stirred into a frenetic, competitive search, as Tes’s pies were not only the tastiest in all of Whiskerton, but also exceedingly rare: she scarcely had time to bake amidst her countless craft projects running in parallel, a privilege of being a retired Councilcat. This scarcity rendered her pies all the more coveted.
Remarkably, the hat popped back onto Tes’s own head one humid afternoon as she knitted by the river bordering the town to the east. A bewildered Tes demanded to know where the hat had been all the while, but the hat, naturally, offered no explanation. Always one to honor her word, Tes enjoyed a month of her own oceanberry pies, much to the collective dismay of the townscats.
The rarest item of all to appear spontaneously was an unclaimed cardboard box. Every cardboard box in Whiskerton was meticulously accounted for — cats take them very, very seriously indeed.
So when an enormous unclaimed cardboard box materialized in the town square, haloed by the bright afternoon sunlight streaming through the branches of the Great Scratching Tree, tremendous excitement ensued. Two of the town’s councilcats, Arya and Poh, were first to arrive in the square, and both immediately laid claim to the box. Naturally, this led to a bit of a scuffle.
“Well, you may be older, but I invoke sniffing rights. I sniffed the box first,” Arya declared, whipping her tail decisively.
“I saw the box first,” Poh countered.
And so the argument continued.
A rather substantial crowd began gathering to witness the little spat, and eventually cats started calling out the name of whomever between Arya and Poh they believed had the rightful claim to the box.
Arya and Poh ignored them at first, for this was exceedingly serious business. However, as the sunshine began to wane, Arya remembered she had other responsibilities to attend to that day. Namely, her duties at the library. She needed this to be settled quickly and fairly. Even though she knew the box was rightfully hers, she resigned herself to the fact that only an impartial external decision-maker would placate the increasingly animated crowd.
She proposed they use a marble, which was her trusty method for choosing between two options.
“It is only fair,” Arya insisted.
Poh sighed. “Fine. If the marble turns red, the box is mine. If it turns blue, then the box is not yours.”
“Oh? Surely you meant if the marble turns blue the box is mine.” “But of course!” Poh could not suppress a cheeky grin.
Luna, the most enthusiastic of the onlookers, sprang forward, paws raised. “I will get a marble! Can I get a marble? I will get a marble for you.” She could hardly get the words out, she was wriggling so excitedly. When Arya and Poh nodded their agreement, she practically shook her fur off with her wriggles.
Poh offered to escort Luna to the toy station where the townscats kept most of the town’s marbles and other playthings. It was a squat building at the corner of the town square, one of the permanent locations that bordered the square, despite the town’s charming habit of rearranging itself every morning. Luna didn’t particularly enjoy slowing down to walk with the councilcat (she yearned to zoom to the station and back) but the thought of playing an important role in the dispute between Arya and Poh kept her composed.
“Do not forget to avoid looking directly at the marble,” Poh instructed her when they reached the doors. If Luna looked at the marble, it would turn red or blue before it ever reached Arya and Poh. He gave her a meaningful nod and returned to the box.
While they waited for Luna to fetch a marble, Arya and Poh settled themselves on opposite sides of the box, eyeing each other warily. The onlookers buzzed with fervor, and playful mini-arguments about whom the marble would choose rippled through the gathering.
When Luna returned, she placed the marble—without looking at it—between the two contesting councilcats. The marble remained unaffected by the onlookers’ gazes, for they were too distant to influence the marble; one’s eyes must be within ten centimeters of a marble to affect it.
The only exception to this rule was a special pair of binoculars that could affect marbles from afar, and was used for things like the glitter machine on Schrödinger Day where one cat could activate the machine by gazing at it from the ground.
“Are you ready?” Poh asked Arya. She offered a solemn salute.
Then, together, they observed the marble, and to Arya’s dismay, it turned red.
“Ha!” said Poh triumphantly. “The box is mine.”
Arya frowned, narrowing her eyes at Poh, for she knew he was prone to craftiness, having needed to survive many unfathomable perils out at sea. But her suspicion fled quickly. She trusted the marbles of Whiskerton, and well, she had other matters to attend to. She smiled graciously at the crowd and sauntered away to find a suitable place to lick her paws before diving into her tasks for the evening.
Poh leapt into the box to the cheers of the crowd, settled down for a contented nap, and the crowd gradually dispersed.
The thing is, Arya had been right to be suspicious. For Poh hadn’t escorted Luna to the toy station doors simply out of politeness. Indeed, avoiding looking at the marble was not the only instruction he’d given her—he had cunningly enlisted her in a little scheme.
“You know that ball of silver yarn I have that I don’t allow anyone to touch?”
“Oh, yes yes yes!” Luna had been coveting that shiny yarn for months.
“Well, a small piece of it shall be yours if you play the tune of Happy Birthday to the marble you select before you bring it to us.” And he slipped a mini flute into Luna’s eager paw.
Luna nearly swooned with excitement and darted into the toy station with unbridled enthusiasm.
Once inside, she dutifully fetched a marble, then slowly and methodically serenaded it with the tune of Happy Birthday on the flute, taking care to remain farther than ten centimeters away. The marble glimmered with swirling and shifting colors, and it took all of her very limited self-restraint not to be distracted by the glorious chromatic display and stop playing.
Now Luna wasn’t much of a musician, but she could manage Happy Birthday to a reasonable standard; all denizens of Whiskerton are trained to play mini flutes as kittens because marbles respond to music. This was one of the most delightful aspects of living in Whiskerton: learning how to make colors dance within the marbles. The musiciancats would host spectacular concerts in the theater, often conducted by Bilito, the most senior of the councilcats and an accomplished organ player.
The walls of the open theater were adorned with arrays of marbles positioned far enough away from the musicians on stage and the audience that they remained unaffected by observations. The cats reveled in how colors danced and rippled through the array under the music’s influence, iridescent hues leaping high into the sky like a celestial aurora.
The arrangement of the music, the melody, the chords, even the rhythm, all affected the marbles’ probabilities of turning red or blue when directly observed. For the purpose of musical concerts, it was the color journey that mattered and not whether each marble would ultimately appear red or blue upon direct observation. But in the case of Luna’s marble, Poh knew that the tune of Happy Birthday influenced a single marble in such a way that the probability of its turning red became vastly higher than blue.
When Luna played Happy Birthday to her chosen marble, she unwittingly ensured that Poh would almost certainly claim the box. Of course, there remained a slight chance the marble would turn blue and Arya would prevail, but Poh was quite willing to take that risk—after all, unpredictability is what makes life in Whiskerton so thoroughly interesting.
Clever, clever Poh.
And poor, trusting Arya.