Most lecture slides from my college physics class on electricity and magnetism have long since exited my memory — convoluted diagrams about magnetic fields, bizarro models of waves, squiggly circuit diagrams — but there’s one image that pops into my head unannounced every now and then. It’s a guilt-stricken tabby cat standing next to a box, covered head to toe in packing peanuts.
I remember when the image appeared in front of the lecture hall: after an hour of Coulomb’s Law calculations, the stunned feline was welcome comedic relief — a fellow victim of physics. The photo has graced Reddit before (many times), and Instagram, at least one textbook, and six different English Wikipedia articles (Electric field, Triboelectric effect, Static electricity, Electrostatics, Electrostatic induction, Static cling). The photo tells a story: you see the cat covered in styrofoam with an unbelievably guilty expression and, in the background, you see the boxes that made the situation happen. She’s no Grumpy Cat or Stepan, but as far as iconic cat images go, she’s gotta be in the upper echelons.
