When the future genetic biologist and Nobel Prize recipient Marie Rosalind Gupta found her aging tortoiseshell cat, Miffy, hunched up and stiff beneath her bedside table on coming home from school one Tuesday in May, her first reaction was not to burst into floods of tears, though she did that later. Nor was it to seek solace by wrapping herself around her mother’s waist, a hug so intense and prolonged that it would have caused the precocious thirteen year old considerable embarrassment at any other time, just as it brought a shocked gasp of almost forgotten closeness from her mother.
No, it was to make a solemn, silent promise: that she would do everything she could so that she, and other true pet lovers, would never have to feel such terrible loss again.
Until she achieved that noble goal, there were no more pets in what remained of Marie’s childhood. Hefty science books and online papers and increasingly expensive lab equipment, yes. But she pushed aside suggestions of a Miffy-II, ploughing all her feelings and precocious energy into late night sessions behind locked bedroom doors, strange lights and smells, a ruinous electricity bill.
It was little surprise when she was offered places at Harvard and MIT, at Heidelberg and Montpelier and Oxford. Quite a big surprise when she turned them all down.
“I’m beyond what they can teach me,” she claimed.
“Yes, but you’re also beyond my budget. And you’ve outgrown the house,” her mother pointed out, exasperated, over a kitchen counter covered in flasks and centrifuges.
Marie sold one of her fledgling ideas to one of the bigger biotechs–nothing more than a stepping stone she had long surpassed–and moved them both into a much bigger house, with a dedicated basement lab, stuffed with the very best equipment provided for free by the grateful biotech, on the basis that one doesn’t not feed the golden goose.
It was there she spent the next two decades, every so often churning out a patent to pay the bills, or publishing a groundbreaking scientific paper merely as a calling card, so that if she hit a roadblock, any scientist anywhere in the world would leap at the opportunity to help her past it.
When even those rare collaborations went quiet, the academic community mournfully assumed she must have given up, and perhaps blown a gasket in the process. She didn’t reach out because there was nobody with anything to offer. She was close, very close, but this was a path she must travel alone, far ahead of any other travellers.
And then, unexpectedly, excitedly, after almost five years of reclusive silence during which she was largely forgotten, a myth spoken of in hushed voices, she called a press conference. Published a teaser abstract, full of hints about a radical new telomere therapy, that had the world’s top science journalists descending en masse to the sleepy town, and to the local school’s sports hall–the biggest space available for hire within walking distance of her home. A strange setting for the science discovery of the century.
She began the presentation with a blurry photo: a nondescript, tortoiseshell cat, two years separated by a dash and encompassing most of her infant life.
“Nine lives,” she said, looking small and somehow both lost and simultaneously intense and yes, more than slightly mad-scientist, “were never enough. Nine times nine lives… now that would make things bearable.”
A series of graphs, 3-D molecular models, and computer simulations whizzed by at such an impatient rate that it suggested she was giving her audience far too much credit. A brief excursion into the problems of accumulated cell damage and protective carotenoids and tweaks of the immune system suggested she might, merely as a by-product, have worked out how to prevent ninety-five percent of cancers. And then she reached into a travel carrier and pulled out a small black cat, complete with white socks and a white bib.
“This here is Gerry,” she announced, eyes wide and as proud as any mother. “Gerry may look like a kitten, but he’s actually three and a half years old. The extended juvenile phase is an added bonus, for those who enjoy cats at their most playful, fluff-ball stage, but Gerry, based on rather conservative estimates, has another ninety healthy years ahead of him. That’s human years, not cat years.
“Any questions?” she asked. She’d almost turned away from her gobsmacked, stunned-into-silence audience, when one leapt giddily to his feet, spilling his iPad and mobile phone in the process.
“Dr. Gupta–”
“It’s Ms., actually,” she said, amused, Gerry on her shoulder, the purr picked up by her lab coat-lapel microphone. “But do carry on.”
“Ms. Gupta, This is remarkable! Astounding! World changing! But… how long, do you think, will it take to apply it to humans?”
She blinked. “I thought–?” A shake of her head, a look of… disappointment? “I thought I’d made my intentions quite clear. A pet that lives as long, if not longer, than even a teenage owner? And I’ve achieved that. Heck, I cracked that in my first five years,” she said, stroking the black cat, which had decided to go exploring, winding his way from shoulder to shoulder and then arching his back and kneading her neck. “But if my therapy could be applied to humans then we’d be back to square one, wouldn’t we? Which is why I’ve spent the following much more difficult and frustrating fifteen years tailoring my therapies to make sure they can’t be used on anything but cats.
“Come, Gerry,” she said, walking off the temporary stage and heading back towards her subterranean lab.
“That went pretty well,” Gerry whispered into her ear along the way, the voice a medley of yowls and hisses that would have been difficult for most to tease apart, but were perfectly understandable to Marie. “But why didn’t you discuss our advances in feline intelligence?”
She flicked a glance over her unoccupied shoulder, at the milling crowd spilling from the hall, busy on phones and laptops and desperate for good reception, so that they might be the first to break the news, even if they weren’t quite sure yet how best to frame it. “Let them discover that for themselves, once there’s a whole generation of geri-cats out there. They’ll pass it off as a consequence of the extended adolescence and lifespan, meaning of course my cats learn more than normal cats. Though as soon as their pets start talking… well. I really do think that will change the world!
“Now, how about tuna flakes and an Audrey Hepburn movie to celebrate before we get back to work?”
“Breakfast at Tiffanys? Please?”
“What, again?” Marie chided with amusement. “Ah sure, why not?”
Gerry purred even louder.
