Time Pussy

"Time Pussy" is an early science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov.

Campbell rejected the first two stories, "Big Game" and "First Law", but reluctantly accepted "Time Pussy".

[1] The unnamed narrator of "Time Pussy" relates a story he heard as a boy from Old Mac, who had been an asteroid prospector back during the "Rush of '37".

Old Mac tells the narrator about some cat-like animals he knew on Pallas that existed in four dimensions: in addition to the usual spatial dimensions, the Pallan cats "stretched somewheres into middle o' next week" (and were thus living precursors of Asimov's fictional chemical compound thiotimoline).

Old Mac tells how some scientists back on Earth were willing to pay a million dollars for the preserved remains of a time pussy, but the animals would decay too quickly after death to be useful.