Here's a testiment to the stickiness of this story in the brain. Also spoilers for the Season 4 finale of Gotham.
It's the opening scene of the episode and Selina is on a hospital gurney after being shot. The recording is paused because someone (me) had to get up between episodes.
So, my wife quips "We don't know she's going to live or die. She's Schrödinger’s Catwoman!" (Have I mentioned that I love my wife's sense of humor?). After we all laugh, my daughter says she was just telling a friend about this story, "Schrödinger’s Cat Lady". (Have I mentioned I love that my kids enjoy some of the same things in fiction that I do?)
After we explain the story to my wife, I told them about the Schrödinger reference in Dirk Gently's Hollistic Detective Agency. Somehow when I'd first heard this story I didn't make the connection.
Oh, that. Well, some researchers were once conducting such an experiment, but when they opened up the box, the cat was neither alive nor dead but was in fact completely missing, and they called me in to investigate. I was able to deduce that nothing very dramatic had happened. The cat had merely got fed up with being repeatedly locked up in a box and occasionally gassed and had taken the first opportunity to hoof it through the window. It was for me the work of a moment to set a saucer of milk by the window and call "Bernice" in an enticing voice -the cat's name was Bernice, you understand
Dirk is my favorite character that Douglas Adams created, so making the connection, no matter how tenuous, between these two stories made me smile a bit. I thought I'd share in hopes of making someone else chuckle.