Anatolian Cat

I couldn't mate with a single female in March. I've tried so hard, but it simply didn't work. I was exhausted when I returned home after days of chases, tail wagging, fights, and intrigue. I curled up in my box and got a good night's sleep. I woke up and stretched, licked my legs, stood in front of the mirror, and began to examine myself. I am no different from the others in terms of appearance: a typical Anatolian cat, a tabby.

I learned from the Uygur, the house owner where I lived, to sit and lay long writings when I could not mate with the females. His weirdo is trying to impress the females in the wrong ways, just like I am. He speaks about existentialist philosophy and the relativity of time; he speaks of neutron stars, the incomprehension of the masses, infrastructure effects on the superstructure, and quantum uncertainty. Last night, however, his friend Samet said, "Your hair color is great," and he won the girl's apprehension at the table.

They played terrible games with us, Mademoiselle. I opened my eyes to the world in a research lab in Amsterdam. They transferred some human genes to me in the first place through a virus. What did they aim for? Did they want to create a Super Cat Hero? Wick was fired in 2019 by the Chinese, who transferred the MCPH1 gene belonging to humans to macaque monkeys. They proudly declared that the monkeys they genetically modified were smarter than the others. The Westerners started arguing about ethics, but over the years, in a rush to miss the train, they also started to play with animals' genes.

We were raised in an underground laboratory at the mercy of scumbags called scientists. I speak plural because there were a dozen cats of different kinds. I didn't like the prison we were in; day after day, excessive blood is taken, and the grueling tests were made. I am an Anatolian animal; I cannot tolerate captivity. The first chance I got, I escaped from the lab and went to Amsterdam's Turkish district. I knew it was only a matter of time to be found and taken back to the lab. Do you know what the worst part is? The other cats sensed I was different. They didn't accept me. My life would be a novel if I wrote Mademoiselle.

I hid among the items in the roof rack in the car of an expatriate returning to Turkey. There was a lot of rain during the trip, so I didn't have a thirst problem. When I took the lid off to Istanbul, I was sure they could no longer take me back. It turns out their arms extend all the way to Turkey. They stuck me in an alley. Traitors threw drugs at me with a gun. I managed to throw myself into the bushes until the effects of the drugs spread through my body. And I didn't settle for that, so I went into a hole where God knows what animal made it. The drugs wore off, and when I woke up, I knew they couldn't find me, even with the transmitter on me. I scratched the place where the transmitter was, and I threw myself in front of the first girl who passed by. The girl I chose as my target didn't seem bothered, but someone else who came after her hugged me and took me to the vet. The vet couldn't understand why I had a transmitter in my belly. I started making a fuss like a transmitter was cauterizing my lung; I pulled my paws out of her hand and raked that part like hell. Thanks to my artistic performance, the vet, who was initially hesitant, obliged to remove the transmitter.

As soon as I got out of the vet, I threw a rake at the girl carrying me. This was a new example of the ungratefulness of the cat nation. Well, life is hard.

I jumped into the back of a truck, drove away from that area, and came to Beşiktaş due to a fortunate coincidence. People in that area were very nice to cats. Of course, cats were not equally good to cats, as they almost gouged my eye out for walking into the cat gang’s area in the back alley of the bazaar.

The other cats around Besiktas were not willing to take me among them. I didn't look like any other cat; they sensed the weirdness in me. I didn't really want to be a house cat because I hated people. But my theatrical talents were of no use to cats. I threw myself in front of a man with a beard and glasses who was walking down the street. I was meowing and shaking my body in a shredding tone as if my flesh were being ripped off. When the man leaned down and stroked my back, I began to rumble with a push from within. When the patting of my back got longer, I stopped meowing and gave the man a grateful look. I was hoping he'd take me home, but as soon as I stopped meowing, he turned around and walked away. So, naturally, I followed him. He didn't like me going after him, but he didn't try to chase me. As I approached the apartment's an outside door, I narrowed the pursuit distance and managed to get myself through the door at the last moment. In the following few days, I lay on the mat outside the Uygur's door. As Uygur came in and out of the house, I resolutely practiced classic cat tactics such as standing up the tail, rubbing against the leg, meowing in a pathetic voice. At the end of the third day, he couldn't stand it, so he let me in.

We had a bumpy relationship with Uygur; my imprudent display of intelligence caused the problems we had. When I listen to my cat side, who says that life's meaning is to live carelessly, I have no problems. I always screwed up when my human side was in charge. I'm happy when I follow my instincts, chase the laser light, jump and try to catch a toy ball, and attack Jako, the parrot. My human side changes television channels, watches youtube videos on a tablet, and listens to Uygur's conversations with his intellectual friends.

You may have deduced that I'm not happy with what I've told you so far. If I put aside the anxiety I have in March, I'm actually in a good mood. When Uygur says, "Baron, come here, baby,” I do nothing. I climb to the top of the closet and roll in the dust. I scratch the door of Uygur’s room on nights when he won't let me in. I'm looking at the comics I rolled from the library. Sometimes I think of cats I grew up in the lab. If they weren't in captivity, we'd have dusted the streets of Amsterdam. They were the only cats who accepted me because we were the result of similar genetic interventions.

Don't mess with the genetic makeup of cats, bro. Keep doing what you do with mice. In his thought experiment on the paradoxical nature of quantum physics, Schrödinger could well have assumed that a parrot was inside the box. And that would have solved the problems, such as the fact that the cat in the box was actually conscious.

If the radioactive element inside the box decays and the Geiger counter activates the hammer mechanism, the poison gas's container will break. Since there's a fifty percent chance the radioactive element will decay, we can't tell if the cat is dead or alive without opening the box. What does the cat in the box think about that? Why are you putting the animal in such a dangerous situation? Can't the cat's sensitive sense of smell detects whether decay is occurring? If he can make such a determination, how can he be alive and dead at the same time? You can put Jako, the parrot, in the box and change the name of the thought experiment to "Schrödinger's Parrot." It would be better for everyone.

Am I a cat or a man, dead or alive? What am I? Knowing more than necessary for everyday life harms my mental health. When I stand in front of a mirror and see my reflection, I throw paws in the mirror. All-day long, I have exciting adventures in the depths of a labyrinth of smells. In the meantime, I do not hold back from dealing with matters beyond my reach, such as the relativity of time and the production processes of cat food.

When I got home, Jako could only mimic the doorbell. Then he started annoyingly mimicking my meowing. Jako has a nice look with a grey body and a red short tail, and in fact, I can't understand the ugliness of the soul of an entity with such a beautiful appearance.

I once had a reputation in our country as a Super Cat. They even put me on TV because I could show the answers to simple math problems on the number wheel and obey commands. Uygur even received a large sum of money from a Youtube channel in exchange for my shots. I was scared when rumors walked away from that my genetics had been altered. Uygur agreed to make a program called 'Baron's World' with a television channel. We even went to the studio to shoot the first show. I thought about what fame would give me on the road. I didn't think I'd impress female cats with the reputation. They would continue to banish me by fluffing their feathers as if they had seen the devil. I already ate and drank what I like. And most importantly, I would have to give up my sleep because of the intense work pace. I couldn't let them turn me into a screen jester like Garfield. Turkish comic book hero, The Bad Cat Şerafettin could have laughed me with his ass off at the situation I was in.

I started pretending to be stupid during the audition for the first part of the show. I didn't answer math questions correctly and refused to follow stupid commands like "run," "jump," "give me your paw," "roll." As I expected, our contract was canceled that day. You should have seen the Uygur's face when he returned the down payment from the canal. Uygur said that the inappropriate behavior I was exhibiting on the channel did not suit me on the way back. He puked. It took me days to make up for it.

I spent my days playing computer games made for cats in a Uygur's tabletop hologram and scaring Jako away when I suddenly attacked and shook his cage. There was a void in me, but I couldn't understand what was missing. I saw on TV the news that animal lovers had raided a research center in Amsterdam and taken the rescued cats to a farm outside the city. The cats on TV were ours. I immediately jumped on the remote and stopped the video. By a small miracle, Uygur realized that I was born in that clinic at the time and that the rescued cats could be considered my relatives. I think he was looking for an excuse to go to Amsterdam, and he said he'd take me there.

At first, I was thrilled with this news, but as the days passed and travel time approached, the Demons in me rose and began to dance. Nine of my nine souls, all at once, began to jump into the matter and quarrel among themselves. If I went to Holland, the researchers could recapture me, I might not adapt to my friends, or the plane could crash on the way. I might never get through the tree in the garden from the window again and lose my popularity to Jako. At one point, I was in such a big panic that I even thought about running away from home. I finally decided that seeing that news on TV was a twist of fate and that no cat could escape its fate. When that big day came, I walked into the travel cage with my own feet, even though my heart was pounding.

We took a 2023 Toyota Amber cab to the airport. I prefer an Audi air taxi, but the electric Amber wasn't bad either. They put the box I was in the plane's luggage compartment reserved for live animals. The black Doberman in the cage next to me growled and growled at me along the way. I think the noise of the plane's jet engines got on his nerves.

As soon as we landed in Amsterdam, I had hoped that we would go to the animal rights activists' farm outside the city. However, Uygur dragged me to Amsterdam's famous Red Lantern Street after that grueling journey. Fortunately, my heat lasts only twenty days a year; I don't chase someone of the opposite sex for four seasons. After watching the girls on display, Uygur decided on one of them. He left me in the waiting room corner and went upstairs with a girl a foot taller than him.

After Uygur completed his mission at the rendezvous house, it was time to go to the Animal Care Center. I assumed the maintenance center was a sizeable building located close to the city. However, the space we reached after a two-hour journey was a huge park surrounded by high walls. As Uygur spoke to the gate's security guard, he had his arms crossed on his chest. He came back to the car and told me that they were not accepting visitors to the park. How could they think we'd go back after we drove all the way? I pointed to the door of the travel box I was in with my paw.

"There are not only cats inside; trespassing can be dangerous," said Uygur. If I had the ability to speak, I would say I wanted to take a chance, and I would never forget the help he had given me, no matter what happened to me. Instead, I made a light toss with my head to the door of the box.

"Shall I wait for you here?" Uygur asked.

I ignored his question because I had no idea what I wanted to do. I climbed the tree closest to the wall, rode over the branch to the park side with the comfort of a rope walker, and jumped over the wall. I was surprised by the sight I saw because inside, pigs, goats, and dogs had built modest villages. From the hill we were on, I could see the buildings built by each species of animal. Just like me, there was no significant change in their physical appearance, but obviously, when their intelligence levels increased, they concluded that protection from the Dutch cold was necessary. They all used different materials. Pigs built drips out of mud, dogs lined up small stones and built huts, goats piled branches on top of each other and built walls supporting them with soil.

I followed the wall's view to the opposite hills to calculate the terrain I had to scan, and I realized that my search might take days. I turned my head to the outside of the wall and meowed in the strongest voice I could. Uygur looked down at me with asking eyes. I signaled to Uygur to go with my head to leave me, his shoulders slumped, and he headed for the car.

I'm not used to walking the field for a long time, so I was tired when I haven't made a mile yet. I curled up in a tree shade, rested for a while, and as I was about to surrender to sleep, I got up and moved on. I set my course not to approach the village of the dogs; I made my way to the village of the goats, made of crooked low walls, smacked my tongue through a small puddle of water, sniffed the air, and tried to figure out where my relatives might be. My first goal was to go over the hill and see what was beyond it. As I approached the hill, a dog ran out of the trees and snarled at me. I wasn't ready for this because I was away from the village of the dogs; the dog grabbed me by the neck and lifted me into the air, and shook me. I heard a crack in my neck, and Schrödinger's box opened.

Now I was out of time, and all the critical turns I'd gone through in my life were laid out in front of me like shapes on the surface of a giant hologram. I felt I was alive and dead at the same time, living all my possible lives. In the first of these lives, I was born and raised in the Turkish quarter of Amsterdam instead of the laboratory, and I lived a normal cat life without feeling human anxiety. I hadn't escaped from the lab in my second life; I was being taken out of the lab with my friends by animal rights campaigners. In my third life, I refused to return to Holland and persuaded the Uygur to free Jako, the parrot. In my fourth life, I stopped entering the park at the last moment and returned to Turkey with Uygur. On the way back, the Uygur's eyes were shining with happiness. And in life, without that unscrupulous dog in my way, I was reuniting with my friends in the park.

The hologram surface containing my fate began to shrink like an evaporating black hole. For a while, I felt that my body and soul had softly blended into the fabric of all possible universes. I didn't think or feel anything else afterward.