Cats Who Think They're Liquid: A Fluid Dynamics Investigation

In 2017, a French physicist won an Ig Nobel Prize for a paper titled "Can a Cat Be Both a Solid and a Liquid?" The answer, based on extensive photographic evidence from the internet, was a resounding "apparently, yes."

If you live with a cat, this is not news to you.

The Evidence

Exhibit A: The Vase Cat. Your cat has somehow inserted itself into a vase that is demonstrably narrower than its own head. You have questions. Your cat does not care about your questions.

Exhibit B: The Sink Cat. Despite having a bed, a sofa, three blankets, and your lap available, your cat has chosen to sleep in the bathroom sink. It has poured itself in like pancake batter and is now purring with the smugness of someone who has solved a spatial puzzle you didn't know existed.

Exhibit C: The Shelf Cat. You find your cat on a shelf between two books, occupying a space roughly the width of a paperback novel. It appears to have no bones. You check. It bites you.

How Do They Do It?

Cats have 230 bones -- that's about 24 more than humans -- and an unusually flexible spine. Their collarbone is free-floating, which means they can compress their shoulders to fit through any gap their head can pass through.

But let's be honest: that doesn't explain the vase thing. Nothing explains the vase thing.

The Unspoken Agreement

Every cat owner knows there is an unspoken agreement at play here. Your cat will defy physics in increasingly alarming ways, and you will take a photo, post it online, and say "I can't even with this cat." This is the social contract. It has worked for thousands of years.

A Word of Warning

If your cat has not recently squeezed into an impossible space, do not be relieved. Be worried. They are simply planning something more ambitious. The shoe. The tissue box. The bread bin.

Nothing is safe. Everything is a potential bed.

Your cat is not broken. Your cat is fluid, and frankly, it's time we updated the physics textbooks.