No one has seen chaos like I have seen chaos. Believe me, it is true.Chaos Theory... the study of nonlinear dynamics. Nonlinear, huh? Is that like when a cat like me, walkin' in a straight line from one room to the next, does a back flip with a twist seemingly out of nowhere? I'll tell you what came out of nowhere. That fly came out of nowhere. I had to catch him. It had to be done.
Peeps have been talkin' about this Chaos Theory for years. For more years than I have been alive. It's a science. It's a science that studies random events and shows how they only seem to be random. Shows that in fact, these random events may be predictable from simple deterministic equations... or maybe not. I think that the maybe not part may just be part of the chaos.
I guess what they're tryin' to say is that a lack of order is only an apparent lack of order and that even though it appears to be orderless, the system containing the randomly disorderly events does, in fact, obey certain rules. That no matter how complex a system is, it still relies upon some sort of underlying order.
Chaos Theory is supposed to be synonymous with dynamical instability. But is it synonymouse? And what the mouses is dynamical instability anyway?
Chaos Theory also says that a very small event can have super big repercussions. Some guy named Edward Lorenz discovered that events can be incredibly sensitive to initial conditions. Apparently, this Lorenz dude was one of the first peeps to experiment in the area of chaos. Hmmm... experiment in the area of chaos. I'm pretty sure that my brother Seville has been applying Lorenz' theories when workin' with his whisks.
Lorenz found that even teeny tiny differences in initial conditions could make it impossible to predict past and future outcomes. Interestin'... This differs from Newtonian physics 'cause with Newtonian physics, one assumes that nearly perfect predictions can be made. The more precise the measurements, the more precise the prediction. But back to the chaos.Anywho... Lorenz came up with this idea he coined, the Butterfly Effect. He suggested that a butterfly flapping his - or her - wings in Brazil could cause a tornado in Texas. I don't know much about tornadoes and I've never been to Brazil but let me tell you 'bout somethin' that happened a little while ago at my house.
I call this, The Whisker Effect. I have intentionally not named most of the participants in the kerfuffle in order to protect their identities.
Out on our sunbathing area which is the little roof outside the kitchen window, a cat sniffs a bug. That bug tickles said cat's whiskers. That first cat jumps backwards, bumping into a second cat. The second cat fizzes at the first who ignores the fizz but a third cat is spooked by the sound and turns tail, running into the house through the open kitchen window. The third cat jumps onto the kitchen table to escape the fizz of the second cat but lands on the flyers carelessly left there by a peep and skids across the tabletop. The third cat regains her footing but the flyers go flyin', tumbling down onto the floor and, onto a fourth cat's head as I had been peacefully sleeping below that table. The fourth cat is startled - of course - and jumps up, running into the family room but has to jump over a fifth cat who is asleep on the family room floor near its entrance way. The fifth cat is awakened and fizzes at the fourth cat but it is a sixth cat who takes the fizz personally even though it's not directed at her, resulting in that sixth cat running out of the family room at high speed and knocking over a water dish on the way. Meanwhile, a seventh cat has been wondering about the cause of all the fuss in the kitchen and the family room and has wandered over to check things out only to be splashed with water from the water dish upset by the sixth cat. The seventh cat freaks out by the unexpected shower, spins around and sends a bowl of dry kibble flyin'. The bowl of dry food skids across the kitchen floor leaving a trail of kibble behind. An eighth cat - and that would be Seville - calmly walks over to the trail of kibble and starts muching' even though he's not supposed to eat that kind of food 'cause he's supposed to eat his special special as the peep calls it, 'cause of his issues with the crystals. Talk about chaos. MOUSES!
From this example, we may find that the simple act of a bug ticklin' the whiskers of a cat can cause chaos and result in Seville eatin' the wrong kind of kibble. Again I say, MOUSES!
And where exactly were the other cats in my family? I don't know. They were seemingly uninvolved in this particular chaotic mess of chaos. Or were they? Perhaps they actually started the whole thing by tellin' that bug to tickle those whiskers. Or maybe they were just out chasin'
butterflies.
