Last night I was visiting some friends. Since I happened to have my telescope in the car, I volunteered to set it up in the backyard for some views of the Moon, planets, and so forth.

Well, there happens to be a young longhaired furrball that is less than a year old, still learning how to run a household, living there. This cat just loves to get attention from all visitors. So quite often one finds a cat in their lap, demanding attention.

While we were out looking through the telescope, the cat decided to see what else was getting the attention instead of her. Now, my telescope is a 6" Dobsonian, for those who care to know. Basically, it's a tube 8" in diameter, 4 feet long. There is a wood box frame around the middle of it, and that supports it inside another box frame called the rocker. The telescope tube rotates in the rocker, to allow it to be moved around the sky. Of course, to do this, there is little friction in the bearings, and the telescope has to be well balanced so as to stay pointed where it is aimed.

At first, the cat just checked out the box of eyepieces I had sitting on the ground. She was probably wondering what anti-reflected coated glass smells like. I gently shooed her away, not wanting cat hairs on the optics. Then I closed the cover to the box, to keep her out. But the cat's curiosity was well aroused by now.

The cat, deciding to get closer to the action, jumped on top of the telescope to perch. (The telescope was pointing near the horizon at the time, so was nearly horizontal.) The added mass though put the scope clearly out of balance. That meant the tube started to rotate in response.

The cat suddenly discovers that her 'perch' is quickly shifting underneath her! The prudent move then was to jump off. That meant a significant force was added to the already shifting telescope tube, and it shot up. Good thing no one was looking through it at that moment! They would have had an eyepiece jammed into their eye.

Now, one would think that the cat would keep away from such an unpredictable monster. But no, curiosity got the best of her, and she came back to investigate. This time, she crawled into the rocker box underneath the telescope tube, banging around investigating this 'thing'. And she would not come out!

Finally, the owner had to reach in underneath to retrieve the cat, and hold her so she wouldn't go near it again. I half expected the cat to crawl into the telescope tube itself next!

At this rate, she might end up 'cat'aloging a new asteroid or something....

Copyright © Brian Armstrong
November 17, 1999