The Pope is not a big fan of cats (although I understand the play was excellent).
Several of my staff members here at the All John All The Time World Church are cat-lovers, and I know that they speak well of cats. And much like it's position on guns and expensive coffee machines, the Constitution doesn't say that you CAN'T own a cat, so my feeling is, hey, if you want to have one, knock yourself out.
I've actually owned a cat once upon a time, many years ago, during my first tenure as a college student. I called her Jennifer (all the other cool names were already taken). Since college days for me were a LONG time ago, during the Pleistocene Era actually, I don't remember a lot about Jennifer, except that she was...a cat. I do remember something she did one day that I thought was pretty funny, although I suspect she wouldn't have agreed with me at the time.
It was a warm spring afternoon, and I was taking a bath (actually, the proper way to describe that action is "bathing", because you can't really "take" a bath someplace; I mean, where would you take it? How would you get it there? But "taking a bath" implies a tub, whereas "bathing" could mean you were standing knee-deep in a river somewhere, butt-naked, splashing water up under your armpits, so, okay, I get the "taking" thing). Anyway, being a warm day, I had left the door of the bathroom open (other than the aforementioned river, where else would you take a bath but in the...bathroom?); I was lying there in the tub, relaxing mostly, when Ms. Jennifer, being the possessor of typical cat curiosity, which apparently, from what I've heard, can kill them, walked into the "bathing room" to check out what I was doing. She then did something that surprised the hell out of me; she walked to the tub, put her front paws on the edge and proceeded to jump in. To the tub, which was, obviously, full of myself and water at the time. Why? Have to ask her.
I'm pretty sure her paws were the only things that got wet, because she no more than hit the water when she did an abrupt about-face in midair and tore-ass out of the bathing room and disappeared down the hall; I didn't see her for a few hours after that. (I'm happy to say that her claws did not make contact with any part of my extremely naked self, including unmentionable parts that I won't mention.)
I used to verb "owned" to refer to the relationship that many humans have with cats, and I think that's one of the things that I don't like about cats: despite their reputation as being independent, cats can be "owned". I mean, they do less than nothing in most instances; sure, they'll play with a string and you can get them stoned on catnip, but they're about as useful as two-headed five-iron. Or a two-headed ex-wife, for that matter. But most of the time they just lay around, doing zilch, and I have a number of throw-rugs that do exactly the same thing, and I own them.
And forget teaching them "tricks"; as opposed to any cat that I'm aware of, the Harley Dog, the official canine of the Pope Guy, can sit, stay, lay down (his English usage is poor, though, because that properly should be "lie down"), and fetch a ball. He's also a top-notch watchdog; good luck getting within 300 yards of my apartment without him announcing your presence in that big, 100 pound, "go ahead, make my day" bark of his. And I can put one of his "treats" on the floor in front of him and tell him "NO" and he will not touch it until I say "okay"; yeah, you'll get the big, sad-eyed look the whole time he's sitting there, but he won't touch it. Cats...not so much. And you cannot, cannot own a dog; you can be their caretaker, guardian, roommate, buddy, whatever, but you really can't own a dog. And you know what; I wouldn't want to, because anything you can own doesn't have a lot of self-respect. Now I know most people would say the opposite about dog/cat/human relationships: you can't own a cat, they're too independent, a dog will follow you anywhere, yada-yada-yada. Bullshit. Cats are independent because they're too dumb to know any better; if Harley had better language skills, he could run for governor of CA, and probably win. (Hey, the ninnies in this state elected the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenhootsen, and I figure Harley has him by at least 50 IQ points.)
Besides, what kind of an ungrateful wretch would climb in your lap, let you stroke it, pet it, scratch behind it's ears and then, after all that, bite you, leap off your lap and race off across the room, laughing manically the entire time? Cats are schizophrenic, and apparently not taking their meds as prescribed.
My sister's cat has done that to me, although in my defense, I learn quickly; he's only done it once. Now I just lean down and scratch his head for a moment, and then get my hand back out of range, and I never let him jump up into my lap. The one and only time I let him bite me, I was irritated enough to go home afterwards and write a song about it: I only got the first verse written, but I thought you might want to "hear" it (good luck stopping me now even if you don't).
"Let's Do Mean Things To The Cat With A Fork" (lyrics by The Pope)
(I was going through an early '70s retro-rock thing then, so I sang it to the tune of the Iron Butterfly hit "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"):
"If you cross a donkey with a horse, that's a mule,
And if you combine a spoon and a fork, that's a spork
Everyone loves gerbils as a rule,
So let's do mean things to the cat with a fork."
Now don't go calling the ASPCA on me, I'm just kidding; I would never harm an innocent animal (well, there's the gerbil golf thing, but I only did that once), even a cat, although for my money, I don't think they're all that innocent; I think they like being schizo.
And on top of all that, do you really think you can trust an animal that licks it's own butt? (I knew a girl once...well, never mind that now.)
Love and scratching posts,
PJTT
copyright 2011 Krissongs, Inc.
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