Sunday, December 18, 2005
Half a Hundred Cats
A cat should be dignified. A cat should be aloof most of the time and personable some of the time. Importantly, these moods should be completely unpredictable. You should need them more than they need you. They should sit on a window sill, paws tucked under chest, looking mysterious and dreaming of sardines. This is the proper cat.
Unlike my neighbor's cats, a cat should not insist on rubbing itself against you after you have tossed it bodily over the fence. A cat (or cats, or many many many cats - about 25 and counting) should not overrun your house and pee and shit amongst bags of clay in your studio. A cat should not give your dogs perpetual fleas. Above all, a cat should not be trashy. A cat should not irritate a human by dint of its mere existence. A cat should not look stupid. A cat should not exist in a small link-house with 25 other cats.
If they do, they should all be shot. Along with the neighbors.
________________________
In a little aside, there is a wonderfully horrible and eerie sequence concerning cats in Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell. It is a very English tale about English magic and English magicians during the war with Napolean, some 800 pages or so of a beautifully observed book.
Anyway, on the premise that the insane have a direct connection to the arcane, Jonathan Strange visits a very mad old woman who lives alone in an attic. Alone that is, except for half a hundred cats. After living so long in such thorough madness with no human contact, she has become a cat herself in all but physical shape. She is about to eat a dead mouse, but Strange takes it from her. In return he gives her her heart's desire and turns her into the cat she has already become in her mind. Later he boils down the bones and sinews of the mouse into a tincture, and upon drinking a few measures is afflicted with an insanity that allows him to perform the magic of summoning a fairy-spirit.
My point is that a house (particularly an attic) with too many cats in it does indeed take on a tinge of craziness. It is their fur and their incessant mating cries and the stale lingering smell of their piss and their strange knowing stares, multiplied so many times as to seep into your life like an unassuming stain.
I once read somewhere about a woman who found it the utmost turn-on to have her cats in the same room while she was having sex. 'They have such bored expressions. What must they be thinking,' she mused. 'It's even better than mirrors', she went on to observe. ¶ 8:50 PM
Unlike my neighbor's cats, a cat should not insist on rubbing itself against you after you have tossed it bodily over the fence. A cat (or cats, or many many many cats - about 25 and counting) should not overrun your house and pee and shit amongst bags of clay in your studio. A cat should not give your dogs perpetual fleas. Above all, a cat should not be trashy. A cat should not irritate a human by dint of its mere existence. A cat should not look stupid. A cat should not exist in a small link-house with 25 other cats.
If they do, they should all be shot. Along with the neighbors.
________________________
In a little aside, there is a wonderfully horrible and eerie sequence concerning cats in Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell. It is a very English tale about English magic and English magicians during the war with Napolean, some 800 pages or so of a beautifully observed book.
Anyway, on the premise that the insane have a direct connection to the arcane, Jonathan Strange visits a very mad old woman who lives alone in an attic. Alone that is, except for half a hundred cats. After living so long in such thorough madness with no human contact, she has become a cat herself in all but physical shape. She is about to eat a dead mouse, but Strange takes it from her. In return he gives her her heart's desire and turns her into the cat she has already become in her mind. Later he boils down the bones and sinews of the mouse into a tincture, and upon drinking a few measures is afflicted with an insanity that allows him to perform the magic of summoning a fairy-spirit.
My point is that a house (particularly an attic) with too many cats in it does indeed take on a tinge of craziness. It is their fur and their incessant mating cries and the stale lingering smell of their piss and their strange knowing stares, multiplied so many times as to seep into your life like an unassuming stain.
I once read somewhere about a woman who found it the utmost turn-on to have her cats in the same room while she was having sex. 'They have such bored expressions. What must they be thinking,' she mused. 'It's even better than mirrors', she went on to observe. ¶ 8:50 PM
