The adventures of Jasper the time travelling cat (Volume 1. Episode 1)

Volume 1. Episode 1. How it all began…

As we reported in a previous issue of Shitegeist, we here at Blather Paranormal Investigations Inc. have been dabbling with experiments in that old chestnut ‘Time Travel’. As we explained, we had made an earlier attempt by harnessing the power of a particle accelerator, some Tesla warp-field technology, a small lump of plutonium, a can of tuna and a rather docile black cat by the name of ‘Jasper’. All went well. Kind of.

Jasper has been gone for some time now. In time. If you follow me. He is in 1908 to be precise. But, hark! Yesterday evening as we sat tinkering with the dials on the flux capacitor and oiling the tubing between the mass spectrometer intake valve and the large brass vat where we store the absinthe, a distant crackling could be heard on the vintage wireless in the corner of our dusty workshop. We frantically tried to tune it in and (after a time) could just make out a faint snarling and miaowing.
We both agreed that he sounded quite pissed off. We eventually lost the signal after hearing what sounded like a catastrophic explosion and the very ill-tempered screech of a feline. Our instruments tell us that Jasper spontaneously ‘time-shifted’ (it’s all very complicated and I won’t bore you by explaining it) to somewhere else entirely just before what sounded like a monstrous impact. We’ll let you know more when he reports back in.

Anyway, before he did his ‘leap’ we had managed to zero in on Jasper?s location long enough for us to download some data from the exceptionally clever scanning devices which we installed on his collar. According to our readings, Jasper was actually in an area of the great Siberian wastes called Tunguska. The date was June 30, 1908 and our adventurous moggy was witness to one of the most celebrated ‘weird happenings’ of the 20th century.
It seems (from historical records) that a meteor impact took place, with almost cataclysmic results. To give you a sense of the size of the explosion, seismic vibrations were recorded by sensitive instruments as much as 1000 km (600 miles) away. This was one big bang. It has been, ever since, a tale beloved of conspiracy nuts and cranks producing wild theories by the bucket load. So famous has it become in fact, that it even functioned as a plot device for those thieves over at the X-Files.

You can read more about the Tunguska event at this site here, this site here, or even this one which contains a new, more recent theory on what happened. And finally, this one has photos.

We await Jasper’s next report with baited (and faintly tuna smelling) breath…

damien

Damien DeBarra was born in the late 20th century and grew up in Dublin, Ireland. He now lives in London, England where he shares a house with four laptops, three bikes and a large collection of chairs.