Dear Dr. Schlechtekatz,

Our deepest apologies for not contacting you sooner. We need not remind you that our work must remain completely secret, and as a consequence of attempting to maintain our undercover status, we have been until now unable to post a letter on our progress here. It is quite to difficult to slip any missives into the outgoing mail without arousing suspicion, not to mention write legibly without the benefit of opposing thumbs, but we will try to correspond more regularly in future.

We did not have a great deal to report during the initial period in any case. The reflexive cerebral implantation procedure proved an unqualified success, but the adjustment to our temporary feline bodies took much longer than we had anticipated in our proposal. Cat food is, if anything, even more wretched than our preliminary taste tests had indicated, and it took us several days to approach the food bowls without gagging noticeably. Executing a proper bathing ritual became a problem, as we quite obviously do not lick ourselves under ordinary circumstances. Dr. Graufettes in particular had trouble washing up, as the feline host body assigned to him is exceedingly plump and round; said host also seems to have something of an issue with dental plaque, which makes any exposure to the saliva quite unpleasant. While attempting to leap gracefully (and, of course, inconspicuously) from one surface to another as real housecats do, we often misjudged the distance at first, falling heavily on the floor in a most unfeline fashion, and the necessity of using the litter box threw us into a deep funk for days, which made it hard to work effectively. Needless to say, we had to take extra pains not to arouse suspicion in the human subject, and several times we considered discontinuing the experiment altogether, as we found it almost unbearable to abstain from all normal activities. But when the subject failed to notice the claw marks on several of her favorite DVDs or the subscription to Scientific American which she began receiving unprompted, we elected to persevere.

After a week or two, though, we felt ready to begin testing the human subject. We began with the planned longitudinal survey of the effects of sleep deprivation on the subject, a series of nighttime trials for which we prepared by sleeping during daylight hours. The subject would approach her bed with a book or magazine and settle onto the mattress, at which time we exercised for a period of one half hour, performing wind sprints the length of the subject’s apartment and sparring with one another while generating ominous-sounding growls and emitting puffs of dander. Following our exercise, we would rest and allow the subject to grow drowsy; whenever her eyelids began to close, we initiated one of seven wake-up sequences, as follows:

1. Stand by front door of apartment and howl plaintively;
2. Gallop about with tails inflated;
3. Hop back and forth over subject;
4. Paw paperwork on subject’s desk, knocking certain important items into trash can;
5. Pushing breakable objects off of bookshelf, then disappearing from view;
6. Pouncing on limbs of subject;
7. Rustling mysteriously.

Dr. Graufettes recorded the time elapsed between the initiation of each sequence and the angry emergence of the subject from her bed, as well as any excited utterances, and also the time elapsed between the initiation of the wake-up cycle in its entirety and our banishment to the bathroom. Average times varied widely depending on the sequences employed, but overall, a tag-team approach using nos. 1 and 4 seemed to bring about the swiftest loss of patience in the subject. Once in the bathroom, we updated our logs and drank out of the sink faucet; eventually, the subject would feel a bit guilty, which effected our release.

Another, more remarkable experiment involved linguistic range. Our theory posited that, even if the subject believes that other creatures present cannot understand what she is saying, she will still demonstrate a full range of expression when annoyed, angered, or frustrated. In order to gather as much accurate data as possible, we deemed it necessary to irritate the subject beyond all reason. Methods of irritation included, but were not limited to:

1. Digging through cat grass to layer of soil beneath, then tracking soil across bills and invoices, on counter, and along top of DVD player;
2. Ingesting sofa stuffing, then vomiting stuffing and most recent meal into water dish;
3. Suddenly and violently attacking straw in venti-sized drink on desk, spilling drink all over creation, and leaving drink-stained pawprints on kitchen floor after casual stroll away from wreckage;
4. Mauling items at back of closet while simultaneously disrupting carefully arranged items at front of closet;
5. Generating sound akin to fingernails on chalkboard by inexplicably licking lampshade beside subject’s night table;
6. Sitting on subject’s magazine, then biting subject’s hand when magazine is touched or moved;
7. Random and inappropriate humping on, in, near, around, and of major appliances;
8. Climbing into refrigerator, then screeching like banshee when removed.

We limited our data collection to epithets, but even that narrow stratum of information would seem to support our hypothesis. The subject exceeded even our most optimistic forecasts; in trying to record the sheer volume of invective employed, we could scarcely keep up. In terms of frequency, the phrases “goddammit,” “Jesus fucking Christ,” “get down right now, you horrid little imp,” “if you won’t behave yourselves, at least have the decency to claw me to death so that I can get some fucking sleep for once in my miserable fucking life,” and “I have an announcement to make, namely that I HATE CATS” appeared the most often, followed by “STOP that,” “I said STOP THAT,” “for the love of all that is holy, STOP THAAAAAAT,” and “arrrrrrrrrrggghhhh!”

Following a brief experiment designed to test how many objects we would have to break before the subject burst into tears, wondered aloud why we hated her so much, and zipped herself into a suitcase to get away from us, we decided to push a single object onto the floor over and over again and measure the time that elapsed before the subject finally got the hint and put the object away in a safe place. To our mild surprise, the subject’s reaction time varied depending on the object in question; shoving a ballpoint pen off of the subject’s desk repeatedly evoked little or no reaction, whereas shoving a small container of hand cream onto the floor and batting it about soccer-style drew a thick hail of “nos” and “stop thats.” We had expected similar results to the experiment in which we pushed all of the objects off of a single surface, but the outcome did not support that theorem.

A few experiments remain before the final set of trials, but we can complete these at our leisure, as the subject does not appear to think anything amiss. If she believes that two middle-aged psychologists have inserted themselves into the bodies of her cats, she has betrayed no sign, and we can move relatively freely around the apartment; we often enjoy a dry martini and a cigarette or two while the subject is taking a nap or visiting the post office. All in all, we have had categorical successes here, although the covert nature of the experiment has begun to wear on us somewhat, and it bears mentioning that the subject watches truly lamentable television, has a terrifying singing voice to which we are subjected daily during her shower, and has thrown off several sets of results by speaking to us in a baby voice and talking to herself while vacuuming. Furthermore, it requires the utmost forbearance for us not to dissolve into hysterical laughter during her yoga practice, as it is both ridiculous and hazardous to the health of our tails.

However, the results of the final experiment should make these nuisances seem trivial indeed by comparison. We will await clearance from the board before beginning the experiment, but we do hope that you can influence the directors to approve the last round of testing — evidence gathered during live surveillance of a human subject’s rapid and irrevocable descent into full-fledged pet-induced psychosis could change the landscape of the social sciences as we know it. Based on our observations thus far, we feel confident in our ability to induce such a fugue state without much effort; destruction of key elements in the subject’s wardrobe, coupled with the wake-up sequences and muscular clawing of the bathroom door, should produce the desired cognitive break in a 48-to-72-hour timeframe. At that time, we will require a prompt reversal of the cerebral implantation process in order to remove us from possible harm; we trust that the clinic has kept our human host bodies in their usual condition.

Thank you again for your confidence in our work. We look forward to a positive, and possibly even revolutionary, conclusion to Project Gaslight in the near future. And now I must conclude, as I have heard a can opening in an adjacent room and feel an overwhelming urge to run towards the sound.

Sincerely yours,
Drs. Herbert Arancioforte and Joseph Graufettes

P.S. An anonymous delivery of Nova Scotia salmon to the subject’s domicile would be most appreciated.

June 17, 2002

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