The Tuna Equation

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Jacques hands were trembling, as he reached for the can of tuna. His French accent was back full strength though he’d lost most of it over the eight months of living in the Schrodinger experimental interstellar colony in Alpha Centauri with all Americans and British colonists.

“Eh bien,” he said. “This is our last can of tuna. If this doesn’t work…”

Mike, aka Michaela Smith, who was American, redheaded and a full head taller than him but had kind feelings for the lone Frenchman put her hand on his shoulder. “It will work Jacques. Let it rip.”

Still his hands shook and he took hold of the ring on the can, then let it go, “But what if… We remember…”

“Okay, yes,” Mike said. “We all know what Ausra did. It was a stupid idea. And we all remember how it worked.”

The people standing around in a ring shuddered, remembering Ausra’s idea for opening ten cans at once, and the mechanism she’d rigged. It had caused a reality entanglement event which had killed ten cats. And incidentally Ausra.

“Courage,” John said. “Or do you want me to open the can?” He reached for it.

“Non, no, I’ll do it.” Jacques pulled the ring back, then the lid of the can, with a barely audible sound as the metal parted along the scored portion.

For a long moment nothing happened. Long enough to wonder if all the cats in the Schrodinger program had died. Or perhaps the researchers. In which case it would be a long, slow starvation for the colony….

Then from very far off came a meow. Mike pressed the button of the remote viewer focused on the dock. The supply ship had materialized.

There was another muffled meow, this one indignant. And then the cat door between the supply ship and the station opened, and an orange tabby came running out and towards them along a long tunnel.

When the cat erupted into their room, Jacques had put the can of cat food down for him.

John had made it through the human airlock into the supply ship and now commed “We have supplies for 6 months ladies and gentlemen. And enough tuna for year. Also, starter kit for hydroponics.”

Fifty colonists dissolved into hugs and tears. The little cat ate his tuna on the floor, undisturbed by their effusions.

Who knew, through mankind’s long struggle for the stars, the key would be cat’s ability to teleport at the sound of a tuna can and human ability to create a cage from which the cat could not escape or teleport until the entire ship teleported and attached to a station in the new world?

Sure, the first tuna can and structure — a tiny dome, just large enough for the cat — had to be sent by drone. But after that? After that humans could conquer the stars.

Thanks to cats.

And tuna.

*Yes, I know it’s silly. Yes, I could make it longer and better and just as silly. Yes, I might do it later. But right now you just get this, you gonzo geeks. JUST TO GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD. And into yours. – SAH*

73 thoughts on “The Tuna Equation”

    1. Meh. Even mechanical can opener worked on our cats from the first clamp and punch. “Oh, there you are!” :-) 😸

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      1. The ordinary can opener worked with one of our elderly cats, too – opening a can of tomato sauce … anything, really … she could hear it at the other end of the house, and came running.

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        1. Our cats and I (well, sometimes CACS, but mostly me) had a deal whereby they were let out to do as they pleased but come suppertime I would step out on the porch with a can of gooshyfood and a spoon. Several sharp raps on the can bottom (a more carrying sound than the lid) and I went back in. Shortly after I would return to the door and let all cats in for service. The type of gooshyfood never seemed to matter; they’d made their brand preferences clear and accepted any of several varieties.

          My parents’ cat, OTOH, had acquired a taste for shrimp. They’d boil up a pot with allspice and bay leaf and whatever else in it and toss him a shrimp or two once all was cooked. He got so he’d turn up as soon as he could smell the seasoned water … which, of course, was a good fifteen minutes before the shrimp was cooled enough for his portion. He’d wait patiently for perhaps ten of those fifteen minutes then abandon the kitchen, softly grumbling he hadn’t really been the least bit peckish and had only shown up to supervise the big oafs.
          ~
          Rgrds,
          RES

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          1. We taught all our cats to come when called. Might take shaking of the treat bottle. Thump (’15 – ’20 :-( ) also came whenever I had Pepper out back training. He loved “helping” (loved chasing the long line). Current cats don’t go out unless supervised (backyard only). Neighborhood has changed too much. It was neighbors, don’t know who or where, putting out rat poison (backyard chickens) that got Thump. Now I have to be double careful because the rodents caught by rat poison don’t die where they are poisoned, nope. They make it into our, or other neighbors, fenced yards where our dogs can get to the poisoned rodents (or hawks or eagles or, called secondary poisoning). Everyone with dogs have made our very unhappy views plain on Nextdoor.

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            1. All I’m going to say is that if raptors are getting poisoned, the Feds might step in if informed. Our Orkin service will only bait inside (attic / garage) for precisely that reason, and because the corpse tends to stay inside…

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              1. But, yet, the Feds won’t step in if a raptor is whacked by a windmill. Or baked by a solar farm. Funny that…

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                1. That doesn’t involve the kulaks becoming more self-sufficient, does it?

                  Just because I despise the game doesn’t mean I can’t play it.

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      1. silent raising of the candy dish lid would immediately summon our dog.
        ………………..

        All we have to do is walk into the kitchen. All my husband has to do is be downstairs (he is normally upstairs in the family room where the new cat reigns).

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        1. Dog… when young.. anything that fell to the kitchen floor was a Summoning. If not immediately detected (and it was something it was acceptable or desirable for dog to eat) a tap-tap of a foot would direct her to it. When she was rather old, she was conserving her energies. A single tap was not enough for her to get up, but you saw the ears go on alert. That second tap? Summoning.

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  9. Barely co-incidentally watched Man on Wire last night. Hey, I didn’t have to read the subtitles when they were talking in their native tongue, and then you start out with a Frenchman, and, not exactly a tight wire but a long tunnel in space is akin to a wire at dizzying heights, n’est-ce pas?

    Of course now it is the sound of a foil/plastic ziplock bag rattling that brings both feline and canine to high food alert status.

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  10. 😸🥫🐱
    …….

    😸😸😸😸😸 – Five (Buddy, Bits, Amber, Tj, and Freeway) cats approved.

    Love. This.

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  11. Sarah, you KNOW that you won’t be able to leave it alone…in the still of the night, more ideas for extending it will come to you, keeping you from sleeping, from enjoying down time…

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  15. A couple of Crazy Thoughts.

    If several tuna cans are opened at the same time, how does a given cat knows which can to go to?

    Second, what happens if two cats respond to the same can?

    Oh no, I just got a dirty look from a giant black cat and I don’t have any cats. [Nervous]

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  16. (singing, Kermit The Frog voice)

    Someday we’ll find it, the tuna connection

    The kitties, the spacers, and me….

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  17. love it. Believe it or not though, our cat couldn’t care less about tuna. PORK on the other hand…

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    1. Miz Kitty prefers the water from canned tuna or chicken, only rarely eating the actual tuna or chicken and then not much of it.

      Goofy fuzzball….

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      1. Jase is the first cat at RedQuarters who does not try to rip ham or turkey out of your hand (or off the counter). And tuna interest is … intermittent. He’s passing strange, even for an orange tabby boy.

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        1. Similar here. Stoick (brown tabby identifies as trash panda) likes cat food and Chicken. Not turkey, no fish (except tuna fish water), no beef or pork (except ribs he steals the remains of those out of the garbage). Except he knows the chicken as SALAD as my wife was making herself salads (with chicken as the protein) for lunches for a while and would say that she was making a salad and then would throw a little chicken in his bowl as a treat. So now if you say salad he comes running and is very put out if you show him leaves.

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  25. As opposed to the early failed experiment with the system where they tried to teleport the cat along with the supply ship TSS Melody, but had the polarity of the system reversed. They opened the can of tuna and its contents teleported back to the cat, so the tuna was gone, while the Melody lingered on.

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    3. “Continue the operation. You may fire when ready.”

      “COMMENCE PRIMARY FISHIN!”

      ominous huuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmm….

      sploosh!

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    4. As I read this again just now, Miz Kitty appeared next to me. When she does that I almost can hear the Star Trek TOS alien-teleport

      “BWONG!”

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  29. For Artemis, it is the sound of the Star Spangled Banner being played at the airbase (17:00 hours, on the dot, every weekday). That is when she teleports next to me on the desk and begins staring.

    I somehow adopted a USAIN cat…

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  33. That reminds me of a short story, probably in Analog, about a scientist investigating why people blinked when their pictures were taken. Logically, one would think they blinked in reaction to the flash, so the picture, taken before they could react, would catch them with their eyes still open, but so many pictures showed folks with their eyes already closed. How?

    This led him to discover the FTL properties of human eyelashes.

    In the epilog, set several decades later, a family sits in their seats, waiting for their starship to depart for another system. One of the kids asks the parents, “So why do they call it the Revlon Drive?”

    I figured the answer was probably ‘Because Maybelline missed their chance.’ :-D

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  35. My sisters cats are vegan. Literally. They’ll eat green beans and asparagus, but not meat based cat food. Turn up their noses at cheese.

    My last cat was a stray for a month or so and learned to eat absolutely anything. A special favorite was potato peelings, but only if they had pepper on them.

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      1. Oh, none of mine have been vegan. My sisters cats have no problem with kibble, they just won’t eat bugs, mice, any dairy, or anything visibly meat based. So they get their nutrition, as long as they don’t know what they’re eating.

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  37. As others have said, gooshyfood has power. Much power. With great power comes great responsibility (like cleaning the litter box.)

    My dog? Rattle plastic cheese bags, you know, the ones the slices come in that have that semi-resealable thingy on it. Touch one when running the mixer, while the sink is running and the dishwasher is making noise while the washer and dryer are adding their noises to the bundle while listening to loud music? Poof, 140lbs of black and tan with a serious look on his face right at the opening of the kitchen.

    So weird, if the semi-resealable thing fails and I stick the cheese slices in a regular ziploc bag, that doesn’t stir him. Just those cheese bags.

    As to the above story, excellent. Finally someone explains FTL travel in a way that would actually work!

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  39. Another teleport trigger: I stand up from my favorite chairs. Miz Kitty is on it. Table, office, whatever. I stand. BWONG! She is on my chair. ” Mrrrreeep! Brrrrwrr!”

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