Cats - essay

I am sick of politics. Sick of George W. Bush. Sick of Dick Cheney. Sick of the neocons. Sick of lies. How about an essay to temporarily ease the pain?




Cats

I lived for a time in the middle unit of a three story apartment building. Immediately adjacent was an almost identical building so that the deck of my apartment was only six feet away from that of my neighbor's. My neighbor, an obese and unattractive lady had a cat named, for whatever unfathomable reason, Lester. Each morning without fail and precisely at seven she would emerge onto her deck and call: "Here Lester, Lester, Lester, Lester, baby, baby, baby, Lester, Lester, Lester, Lester, baby, baby, baby." At five in the afternoon she would repeat this dreadful performance. Sometimes she would have to keep calling for several minutes before Lester, a truly wretched looking long haired calico creature would deign to obey. As she had an unusually shrill and piercing voice her calls could be heard over a very long distance. Although everyone laughed and shook their heads at this, as far as I know, and to my utter amazement, no one ever complained, not even me.
What is it with cat lovers anyway? Even an otherwise perfectly normal, even dignified person, when it comes to their cat, cannot seem to resist babbling baby talk and even worse: "Ooh, how's my little snookum wookums this morning; is little kitty cat wanting his/her breakfast wekfast; does my little sweetie pie darling warling want some tuna wuna; come and give mama/papa a nice smoochie woochie; here's your breakie wekie in your nice crystal bowlie wowlie," and on and on. Have these people no sense of how utterly absurd this sounds? Are they oblivious to the fact that even their best friends want to vomit when forced to listen to this unspeakable drivel? They would certainly never think of speaking to another person like this - even, I bet, in the privacy of their own homes.
And if this manner of address is not ridiculous enough they treat their cats as if they were even better than royalty, lavishing gifts upon them: little kitty snacks, fake mice filled with catnip, little three and four story apartments, entirely carpeted no less, plastic birds that flutter helplessly, encouraging the little beasts to practice the only thing they know: if it moves, kill it. And of course they don't kill without torturing first. Wonderful pets it would seem, if you happen to be a sadistic voyeur. Why don't the owners think of this when their little darlings proudly drag in songbirds and mice and lizards and moles and anything else they can manage to catch and then playfully torture to death right before their eyes?
Of course these ungrateful animals have to have only the best foods, special foods, gourmet foods. There are endless varieties and combinations. In one small supermarket I counted no less than 20 varieties of dry cat food. There are, for example, Trophy Fish and Liver, Alley Cat, Just Good Cat Food, Blue Mountain Special Menu, Atta Cat Cuisine, 9 Lives Crunchy Meals, Friskies Gourmet, Friskies Ocean Fish Flavor, Whiskas Seafood Recipe, Whiskas Original Recipe, Special Cats, Alpo Gourmet Dinners, Trophy Soft and Moist, and more. Having reviewed the dry cat foods I began to look at the tinned varieties. There are even more! And the variety is virtually endless! Friskies (with gourmet flavor), Chef's Blend (with four, count 'em, flavors), Friskie's Buffet for Cats (Mariner's catch, Salmon Dinner, Turkey and Giblets Banquet, Sliced Chicken in Gravy, Liver and Chicken Dinner, and even something called Elegant Dinner, whatever that is). For the even more discriminating there is Shebas Poulter Liver in Aspic, Turkey in Aspic, and Salmon in Aspic. This is by no means all. Do you eat as well? I thought not. And on a more serious note, what about all those people on earth who don't eat at all?
Not only do these useless pampered housepets have to have special foods, they even have to have special materials for their private bathrooms: There are, for instance, Trophy Scoopable, either scented or unscented, Tidy Scoop, Scoop Away, Johnny Cat, Good Mews (I am not making this up), and something called Natural Select, which is also scoopable. It is even possible to buy special liners for your cat boxes, presumably to make it easier to clean up the end products of all the above including Mousers Tender Treats which I neglected to mention.
Whatever happened to just plain old barn cats who lived out there where the action was and paid their way by keeping the hungry rodents away from the grain? These cats survived without all this ridiculous pampering. Oh, sure, they might have been rewarded once in a while by a little milk fresh from the cow or something like that. It does make you wonder, doesn't it? Brings up that eternal question: What is the world coming to?