The whole thing is impossible.

You show me a cat that will allow you to strap anything to its back, let alone a piece of food. At best, the cat would thrash as soon as you let go of it, shaking the toast free and allowing both the cat-on-its-feet and the butter-on-the-floor outcomes.

My dog would eat the toast AND the cat long before they reached the ground.

If you put toast on BOTH sides of the cat with the butter facing the cat's body then.... uh... you'd have a cat sammich. Let's eat.

Schodinger's Cat would do a double twist in mid air, thus ridding itself of the toast, and land on its feet in the 3rd parallel universe over. The toast would land butter side down in this one.

If I know cats, and I think I do ... by the time the cat was dropped, there wouldn't be any butter left on the bread, so there wouldn't be a butter-side anymore.

T'Pau, Queen of the Universe, wishes to comment that she has performed this experiment in my kitchen several times and the answer is obvious: a cat weighing more than the slice of buttered bread will supercede any metaphysical efforts of said bread. She therefore concludes that the experiment should be attempted with a slice weighing more than her weight of 8 pounds, and she volunteers to demonstrate this. She has requested that everybody send Colombo's San Francisco Sourdough only, with cinnamon-honey butter since she is going to all this inconvenience for us :yum:

Wolf;
Good point.

So does buttered bread (either the butter itself, or the bread with butter on it) that has been licked by a cat land face side up or down?

Such dedication! Sadly anything containing honey would not be permissible as, being a bee extract, it inherantly contains gravity resistant enzymes (everyone knows that it is mathematically impossible for a bee to fly given the weight to lift ratio and the whole, well one can hardly call them dynamics but I suppose one has to, of the creature, and therefore it must achieve flight through other properties of its metabolism). This would confound the result.

Regarding the weight issue, I ask you to recall the works of the sadly passed, Sir Isaac Newton (the mere mention of his name brings a lump to my throat - such a loss, such a loss...) in honour of his name and contribution to the world of physics, please think a while, does a pebble fall any faster than a boulder?

Sorry, but I detect just the teensiest, weensiest morsel of a little fib..... I sincerely hope that the Queen of the Universe (God bless you ma'am, your regal highness whom no-one should offend - I, your humblest of servants, beg your mercy for this poor, misguided individual who clearly neither means nor meant any harm or insolence) doesn't take offence at your inference and that the rest of your life is not adversely affected. I have done what I can to help in this respect.

Clodfobble's thrashing cat and Wolf's toast-licking feline are interesting diversions, but you should neither be swayed nor influenced by such brain-controlling injections. It is just that your mind, sensing the enormity of the task placed before it to concentrate its processes so singulalry, is introducing these diversions, in a rather impish mood, I venture to add and observe.

Fight them soundly let your brain know who is in control, threaten it with the deterent (make sure you read that word properly - it is easy to see it, mistakenly, as detergent, and a sudden on-rush of soap-suds will get us nowhere - certainly not forwards, they will take an age to clear up, the toast will go all soggy and the cat will probably do a runner!) of recalled Osmond songs or, even worse, the Waltons (hope that second one hasn't offended any country folk, but I really can't believe it takes so bloody long just to say goodnight!)

I'm not sure whether you have considered pathos as a variable in your equations?

If you use the last piece of bread in the house for the toast, on the day before payday, where you have already raided the back of the sofa for coins, where you are hungry and craving toast and your kitchen floor is overdue a clean..... I think you'll find the toast will land butter side down 99.9% of the time.

Not sure how you could replicate this in your experiment though, as in order to conduct it you have to choose to waste the toast. Perhaps if you sneak into someone else's house, tie them up & force them to watch their last hot snack being commandeered in the name of Science?

I'm all for introducing varianbles, but as with any experimentation there has to be a control methodolgy as well to ensure a stable point of reference. I do like your propsal though, and, come to think of it, my neighbour HAS just acquired a cat, and it IS getting close to the end of the month. Now, if I can remember where I put that rope....

It doesn't actually matter anymore, does it?

Well then what drugs are we all on this weekend??? :D

Unless I have missed something, which is entirely possible since I am PWD, you guys are allowing for the option that the toast manages to get buttered at all...in my household, the cat will consume the butter before the toast pops out of the toaster. Said cat will fall off the kitchen counter in a fit of cholesterol OD, do the typical mid-air roll-over and land kitty-knees first.

I say let's eat the cat sammich.

Anything but turkey.

Wolf - excellent point.