Shakespeare and His Cats

And with regard to that neighbor's cat, I am at a loss. We are having a bit of very heavy rain here, which makes me less than favorably disposed to going out (and although I do have a raincoat, I have no idea what a person is supposed to do with her hair, or her shoes), and as it is Sunday (now Sunday night), any work I had is work to do at home. So I mostly, with a couple exceptions, stayed in. Which is where this cat comes in.

Cats have some crazy hold on the psyches of certain people. There is a whole Cat subculture about which I neither know nor wish to know anything. These people buy cat napkin holders, cat toothbrush holders, cat blankets, cat lamps, cat mousepads, and cat 'art', and some, I can only imagine, have probably even seen Cats, not to mention purchased and no doubt enjoyed copies of the too-ghastly-to-contemplate picture-book Shakespeare Cats, in which memorable scenes or characters are needlessly rendered as though being played by - obviously, at this point, I suppose - cats... it's far too painful to elaborate further...

-- Never mind; I can't help myself: they buy up cups with cats on them, cats to pour cream from, cat-embellished shirts, and cat-embellished tea towels. They have Whimsical Cats, and Naughty Cats, and Sensual Cats (usually, of course, panthers, and generally meant to symbolize alongside this austere and capricious sensuality the nexus of feminine-feline and the Sphinx-like opacity [don't pretend you didn't know it was coming; of course it was; it always does] of both), and cats to burn incense in and cats to hold your toilet roll while you sit and stare in amazement and transfixed disgust at the cat holding your toothbrushes...

I have no better explanation for this than you do, and it appears also to be confined largely to one sex. If you start to say, Yes, but women have always been compared to cats, or even, Yes, but women are so, well, feline, so Sphinx-like, aren't they, in either case, I'm not going to punch you or even wish to, but neither of those excuses such appallingly bad taste. Thou canst compare me to a summer's day, if you feel the need (and I sorely doubt that you do, even though I am more lovely and yes more temperate, too, but never mind), and I will be in no greater danger than before of going out and buying cheap prints of Van Gogh's Sunflowers or decorating in chintz. Maybe I am sunny as the smile of the blue firmament, but that doesn't make me incline toward hanging hummingbird feeders in the latrine!

So for me, the Inscrutable Mysteries of the Inscrutable Cat hold no appeal. I am not curious in the slightest why someone should wish to be so mercurial, so self-centred, so obstinate, and so awake at exactly the wrong times. I don't care. Dogs don't do it. Plants don't do it. Even educated clams don't do it.

Today was an endless loop replayed with, for my part, ever-diminishing enthusiasm. The not wanting to sit on his 'special place' followed by savagely attacking the Jetsons chair followed by whines for eating again followed by whines to go out immediately upon which came the sulking outside the door subsequent to which was the biting of the hand that retrieved him (from the rain outside the door, I might add) short upon the heels of which was ignoring the Things to Scratch I'd bought for him in preference to something I had bought for vastly divergent purposes after which came the return of randomly attacking things and knocking perfume bottles off things not designed to be leapt onto...

I freely admit I know nothing about cats. That is one of the reasons I don't have one. Another one is a preference for species that 'make sense' at some level inside my hominid brain. When a dog, for example, stares at his food bowl, or pushes it toward you, you are right in assuming it means, You are fifteen minutes late on the grub, chump, and I'd say I'm never going to forget it but I'm a dog and this will all be irrelevant and, just between us, irretrievable, in about twenty seconds. It never means, Go to the refrigerator and grab something for me and then walk over here because I really want to leap up and bite you in the face.

Clearly, however, there is Not Having One and 'not having one,' the latter of which I fall into now. His real parents leave him outside, whether it is 85 degrees, or snowing, or hailing, or pouring rain. He hides under cars from the sun, or lies on top trying to get some heat: it's not as though I have a choice in this, wrecked weird chair or no. I made him a bed inside the Chinese wedding cabinet, on the lower tier so it was safer, even though it meant I couldn't use it for what I had intended to, or close it. I put a box in there that I painted that said 'Baby' so he would know where to go. I bought him his own hamper to attack once he made it clear he wanted to kill my cute matching set of two, which matched everything in the house, and then relented and gave him one of those when he didn't want the nearly identical one I'd got for him. And then I bought a wrought-iron one for me, so there would be no question...

Still, though -- and this doesn't mean I want anything, ever, in the shape of him -- he is, when he is not trying to rip open my jugular, or nap on my keyboard while I'm typing, or tip over my wine cabinet, or ruin my stockings when I'm trying to put them on, he is, actually, recklessly, unashamedly, murderously cute...