A small diversion

If I Fits I Sits

A cat is a liquid: it takes the shape of whatever it is in, and there is always exactly as much cat afterwards as there was before. Pick the vessel this one fills most exactly, then watch it post itself in rear-first and spread to the walls. It never gets bigger or smaller — a narrow vessel just makes it taller. Too much cat and the surplus mounds over the rim.

Score0
Round1
Lives

How much cat is that?

Five vessels, no measurements, a different cat each round. Judge it by eye. Nine lives, obviously — one goes whenever a cat overflows or rattles about. A purrfect fit hands one back.

Scoring. The closer the cat comes to filling the vessel exactly, the more it is worth, and steeply so — a snug fit beats a safe one by a mile. Purrfect is a narrow window and worth several times a merely snug fit; land one and a lost life comes back, though nine is still the ceiling. The trick is that shape lies: a cone fills fast at the top and slowly at the bottom, so a flask and a deck box holding the same cat look nothing alike. Judge the area, not the height.