Me and Kati (5)

Well, Kati, our house guest from Tucson left on schedule. I think she might have stayed another day or two if you hadn’t  brought in the live bat which frightened her something terrible. True, the bat couldn’t fly, but it was still alive and still pathetically flapping its wings. Why can’t you leave your victims, dead and alive, outside, like Spencer and Midnight?

Our government is still shut down. It looks like it may be shut down for some time to come. The House took Sunday off, poor guys/gals, work so hard doing nothing but fund raising and causing more trouble. Maybe it’s better they took the day off as they don’t do as much damage when they are not in session. There are too many loonies there, Kati, absolutely bonkers representatives that just don’t believe in government.

Speaking of such things Kati, I’ve been thinking a lot about government. These “wackos” seem to believe we don’t need government at all, a belief so fundamentally demented it must have come from Saint Ronnie the Moron himself.  Not only that, insofar as they seem to believe government should do nothing whatsoever to help its citizens, if government does do something, like Social Security, Medicare, or whatever, they believe it is socialism. In their peculiar view of government I guess it is socialism. I wonder why they think governments evolved in the first place?  I’m quite certain that did not come about in order for a very few at the top to grow obscenely wealthy at the expense of the vast majority. It seems obvious to me that governments at all levels supposedly sprang into being in order to serve those they represented, at least they did in the beginning and for quite a long time after that. Somewhere along the line, for one reason or another some few began to get away with most of the wealth, either as Kings or dictators, or supposedly divine beings. Nowadays, Kati, we don’t have Kings, nor do we technically have dictators, and our leaders could not possibly be regarded as divine. But we do have the few greedy ones at the top with most of the wealth which they use to create even more wealth for themselves while demanding to take away even more from those who have far less. This is a result of a strange belief in capitalism, an economic system that allows such greed to flourish if not carefully monitored. The less it is regulated the worse it becomes until you finally reach the point we are at now, with those on top obscenely and disgustingly rich while those on the bottom are increasingly poor. This doesn’t matter to you, I know, Kati, as you are just a cat. However, try to imagine what it would be like if you killed all the birds and bats and squirrels and mice and didn’t allow any other cats to have any of them.  I know you can’t do this (and probably wouldn’t even consider it if you did think about it), cats may be killers but they aren’t greedy, and if you tried to do it the other cats would kill you (and you would deserve it). And I am sure you are completely unaware of the fact there are people who are unable to feed themselves let alone feed you. Of course you could probably survive anyway as cats have for so many thousands of years. Humans are not always so well equipped for survival, which is why they live in societies in the first place, societies that exist to help people help others, primitive socialists I guess, concerned about the well-being of others, a far cry from capitalism, basically the law of the jungle.

Who knows Kati, how and when the current shutdown may end. More importantly, how long will it be before the multitudes, the so-called 99%, will simply refuse to accept their increasingly lowly positions in the scheme of things. There are many signs now we may be approaching this revolution (or whatever you might call it). Unions seem to be more active, and even the non-unionized are striking for better wages. More and more citizens are protesting more “wars” that benefit only the wealthy and corporations who depend on endless wars to fatten their portfolios, protests of various kinds are becoming more and more common as citizens are becoming more and more fed up with government by and for the wealthy. Maybe some significant changes will occur if we don’t first blow ourselves up, die of radiation, or drown in our own filth. So, my darling Kati, keep a stiff upper lip, throw out you chest, be proud to be a cat, and hope you will never become as stupid, short-sighted, and awful as a human.

 As anyone who has ever been around a cat for any length of time well knows, cats have enormous patience with the limitations of the human kind.

Cleveland Amory