I usually play with my cat twice per day with a string. I get frustrated that she ignores the string for a long time, sometimes. I guess she is practising her looking like part of the background skills. Or is waiting for the perfect time to stalk the string.
Getting bored by this I will start making the string go very close to her in a repeating circle. This sometimes still isn’t enough for a reaction so I make the string go so close to her that it hits her in the face. Usually this stimulates a gut reaction in the cat making her swat the string. But sometimes there still is no reaction.
I’m certain she doesn’t react because she cannot suspend her disbelief enough to get into the game. When is the last time in nature you’ve seen a mouse come up to a cat, ten times in a row, and slapped that cat in the face? It just never happens.
So I’ve come to the conclusion that my cat may very well want to play, it’s just that she is too discerning to accept the premises I am offering.
Kids are very likely to play cops and robbers a few times in their youth. Usually this is tried amongst a large group of kids.
There is always one kid in the group who thinks his every shot results in a death. And when others get good shots at him, he never dies. If he is more slick of a player they are just flesh wounds. But more often he says they missed completely.
Kids know that Rambos never happen in real life. When you are shot at 30 times, you are almost certainly dead. When you shoot at 30 moving targets in quick secession you are bound to miss a few shots.
That kid who never dies and always kills, fails to get the other kids to suspend their disbelief. As a result the game ends in arguments and everyone quits and little fun was had all around.
As I’ve gotten older, I find it harder to get sucked in to new fiction. I think it’s because I find it harder to suspend my disbelief. As I’ve gotten to know more and more science or facts, I find many authors haven’t kept up and they will trip up and not let me suspend disbelief.
Myself and others aren’t being anal when we say ‘get your facts right’ to the authors. It’s a simple matter of them not getting the facts we know correct enough for us to suspend disbelief. This makes us not want to play with those authors ever again. Suspension of disbelief is always key in fiction. Something even cats and kids know.g
