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| The Man Who Loved Cats Not so very long ago, but not so recently either, there was a man who loved cats.
He was a lonely man, with no wife or family of any kind, and not many friends either. Though he lived in a big city, he felt very isolated; and he worked at an unimportant job, so he was very poor too. He would wake up early in the morning, and eat a small and lonely breakfast; toast and two fried eggs, and a small glass of orange juice. After this he would pack his lunch for the day, which was always a ham sandwich and a bottle of water. Then he would walk out of his apartment, which was on the fifth floor, and take the elevator down. Very occasionally there were other people in the elevator with him, in which case he would greet them, but usually there weren’t, so he would watch the numbers on the elevator count down; 4... 3... 2... 1. He would step off the elevator and walk to the bus station; pay the fee, sit down (there were always seats on the bus; this was very early in the morning), and look out the window as the bus took him to work. There were four stops on the way before he reached his place of employment, and at each one he would look somewhat eagerly to see if anyone else would get on; but no one ever did. Once he tried talking to the bus driver, but the driver was an unpleasant man, and very grumpy at having to drive a bus this early in the morning, so the conversation went badly. The man didn’t try again. Instead, he looked at all the buildings in the city and wondered what sort of people lived and worked in them; sometimes he wondered if they were like him, and sometimes he just wondered what they were like.
After he got to his job, he would work quietly and alone, doing small unimportant things until it was time for lunch. He always ate at the same table in the lunch room, and always later than everyone else, so he was alone. He didn’t want to eat alone, but he was never hungry until later, and no one else ate at that late hour. After lunch, he continued working until five o’clock, at which time he took his coat (which he wore even in summer), walked to the bus station, and rode home. Though there were other people on the bus with him for the ride home, he did not usually talk to them either; he was tired, and they were grumpy, so he sat or stood, and watched the buildings, with their unknown occupants, slide past beyond the windows. He arrived home, took off his coat and shoes, made dinner (always either macaroni and cheese, or rice and chicken strips, depending on his mood), read a book, and went to bed.
Day in and day out, this was his life. And he began, slowly, to grow old.
One day, there was a break in his routine. When he got off the bus at the end of the day, and walked up the steps to his apartment, he noticed something strange; a cat was crouching in a small dead shrub next to the door. When he looked closer, he saw it was not a cat, but a kitten; a starving, sick-looking kitten. Its eyes were fixed on the man, and filled with a look of unhappy resignation to the ills of life. The man broke from his stride, set down his briefcase, and began walking slowly, in a crouched position, towards the kitten. It didn't move, merely meowed very softly, and continued to gaze at him. He went down on his knees, and reached out, still moving slowly; picked the kitten up, stood up, picked up his briefcase in his free hand (the kitten was so small he had no trouble holding it in one hand), and walked into his apartment. When he reached his flat, he set the kitten down on a towel on the couch, and warmed some milk up in a saucer; when he tried to get the kitten to drink, though, it was too weak, or too young, to be able to help itself. So he put the milk into an eyedropper, and fed the kitten by hand. After the kitten had its fill, it fell asleep; and the man made it a bed from a cardboard box, lined it with the towel, and made his own dinner.
He awoke in the morning feeling more cheerful than he had in years; ate breakfast, fed the kitten (which was already looking much more lively), and went to work. Before he left, he placed a small saucer of milk in the box, in hopes that the kitten (which was a girl; he had already mentally named her Amber) would learn how to feed herself; and he placed a lid on the box, with air holes cut in it, to make sure she couldn't wander around the room and hurt herself. On the bus, he whistled softly to himself.
When he arrived home and stepped off the bus, he was so lost in thought that he almost tripped over the cat pacing distractedly in front of his apartment. He was startled, first at the odd occurrence of meeting two cats in two days by his apartment, when he had never seen one there before; and second at the strong resemblance between this cat and the kitten up in his room. He crouched down and reached slowly towards the cat; it came to him willingly, and he picked it up. If not for its size, it could have been the twin of the kitten upstairs; same light brown head and darker body, same white streaks in the tail. It was a female too. He carried it up into his apartment, and took the lid off the box the kitten was in. When the larger cat saw the kitten it began mewing, and the kitten woke up, saw the older cat, and began to weakly try to climb out of the box towards it. On a hunch, the man picked the kitten out of the box and placed next to the older cat, which immediately began licking and nuzzling its young kin. The man found a larger towel and spread it out on the floor, in a corner near his favorite chair; the mother cat laid down on it, and the kitten began nursing. The man left them there, and went to the little grocery store across the street, where he bought the most expensive cat food he could find. He also bought a little bottle of curry, for he had heard somewhere that curry was excellent on chicken and rice, and for the first time in as long as he could remember, he was in an adventurous mood. He made dinner in his apartment, and watched his cats while he ate. When the kitten fell asleep, the mother jumped into the man's lap, and he sat there stroking her for an hour before bed.
The next day, it happened again. The man got off the bus from work (where he had decided to eat lunch early, and had met a few other men over sandwiches and enjoyed the conversation, though he himself was too shy to participate), and sitting on his doorstep was a black male cat. He was cautious about introducing a male cat into his home, worried about how the mother and kitten would react, but he brought it in anyway. The mother began rubbing against his legs almost as soon as he walked in the door, and the presence of the male cat didn't disturb her in the least. That evening, all three cats slept at the foot of the man's bed; he had never slept better in his life.
And so it went. Almost every day the man came home there was another cat outside his apartment. And every time, each new cat was accepted by the others. And the foot of the man's bed became steadily more crowded; there was Amber and Cheyenne, the mother and kitten, and Jasper, the black cat; Lucy, Pebbles, and Raisa, the three calicos, and Opal, the merl; Ricardo and Rook were evidently brothers, and Teal often tagged along behind them; Louie, Tampa, and Molly spent most of their time play-fighting, while Rasta and Marla between them ate enough for five cats. The man was happy but afraid; what if the superintendent found out? Cats were very expressly Not Allowed in this apartment. And how was he to keep feeding them all, especially if more showed up? He was a poor man, and feeding himself and his cats was becoming more and more difficult. The man began to lose sleep, and fret; he loved his cats, but how was he to care for them? He was not a religious man, but he found himself praying occasionally. Not to any god in particular, just to whoever or whatever might be listening. "Please," he would say; "help me take care of my cats. I can't give them up, they mean too much to me. They're the only friends I really have, and I need them as much as they need me. Please, help me take care of them."
This went on for months. Now, the man was old, and very poor; he had many, many cats living with him, and his hair had turned white as much from age as from worry. He was thin, for he had began eating less so he could afford all the cat food. And even though the cats never ate less, never asked if he was all right, never showed any true gratitude, he loved them nonetheless. And they loved him, as their provider, and the one who had taken them in. But still, they grew more numerous, and he grew older, and poorer, and thinner.
One morning, when the man was shaving (for he was fastidious about his appearance), he nicked himself on the side of his jaw. It didn't hurt, but it did begin bleeding a little bit, as such cuts are wont to do. But something was different about his blood. It ran sluggishly, for sure, but then he was old, and perhaps that was to be expected; everything he did was slower these days. But what he really noticed was the color; at first, it was red, but as more ran down his jawline, it changed color; to a lighter red, to pink, and finally to white; he splashed water on the cut to clean it, and when a little more seeped from the wound, it was still white, and still ran sluggishly. He wasn't alarmed, merely wondering; the blood reminded him of something, but he couldn't place what it was.
Suddenly, it came to him. And he knew how he could take care of his cats. He said another direction-less prayer of thanks, and finished shaving.
On November 18, the police investigated an apparent suicide, unlike any they had seen before. The victim was an older man, who lived alone in an apartment in the East side; he had cut his wrists in the middle of his bedroom, at the base of his bed. What was unusual was the cats. Several dozen of them were in the apartment, clustered around the man's body, drinking from the substance that had spilled from his wrists and pooled around his body. The thick, creamy substance, which the lab had finally, in a report filled with disbelief and confusion, declared to be yogurt. The cats, which were all eventually adopted, had survived off it for days. | | |
| More thoughts...In all my philosophizing, I have always held to the position that God exists. There are two reasons for this. First and foremost, I believe that He does. And secondly, if He doesn't, all of philosophy is reduced to mere humans bickering with each other. And when it gets right down to it, I'd rather bicker with God.
Triteness, like its siblings Insipidness and Cliche, is the unwanted offspring of Laziness and Incompetence. Being asexual, it produces its own children, whom we name Popular Culture and Democracy; together, they found the religion of Diversity.
Without free will, man is an ant, unaware of, and powerless to resist, the Hive Mind. With free will, man is an ant, aware of, and expected to obey of his own volition, the same Hive Mind.
The moment the "have-nots" are given power, they become the "haves," thus defeating the entire purpose; power can only exist when a class over which power may be exercised also exists. | | |
| Some random thoughts...The proliferation of concepts of mental disease and disabilities, the glorification of the so "disabled," and the consequential demeaning of the self-reliant and capable, is a symptom of a society's atomization and desperate desire for an individual identity; to eliminate these concepts would force humanity to realize it is merely a herd of self-pitying cattle, its "individuality" a reaction to recognizing its inferiority to the truly distinct.
A society which cannot admit its weaknesses as such, but hides them under a blanket of pseudo-medical terminology, and discusses them within the constraints of an "I'm ok, you're ok" philosophy, and buries them deep within a maze of conferences, seminars, support groups, and parent-teacher meetings, has already been overtaken by, and hence panders to the interests of, the weakest, most incapable, and least useful members of that society.
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| Is it a sign of arrogance that I've taken to quoting myself as an authority on most subjects?
P.S. Oh, and I'm hoping to start blogging here more regularly, about more subjects; stay tuned for more on this as it develops. | | |
| ...and the next thing I knew I was eating pizza in my room alone. Happy Valentine's Day.
Funny story; an Indian man walked into a whorehouse and found his wife working there as a call girl. They're divorcing. That's a true story. I laughed my ass off when I first read it, but then I started thinking; what if that's wrong with relationships? For so long I had decided that what was wrong with relationships was the fact that men and women are clearly not meant to live together. Yes, the usual suspects hand out all the usual pithy statements; things like, "Men and women compliment each other," and "Working through differences is what life's all about." But I notice these people are almost uniformly unhappy, which I find ironic. And those few that are happy tend to be single. Honestly, and I think most people would agree with me if you forced them to it, women are meant to live with other women, and men are meant to live alone. The only point of a relationship, if it can be called a point, is reproduction; given the great advances in science recently, that may soon become entirely unnecessary as well.
But this humorous little incident made me rethink my entire premise on exactly why men and women aren't meant to live together, and I'm almost to the point of changing it entirely. Men and women have much in difference, it's true, but what really drives them apart, I'm starting to think, is the things they hold in common. Which, practically speaking, is only one thing; their horniness. Men and women aren't meant to be in a relationship, not because they're emotionally and mentally incompatible (at least, not just because of that), but because they're each genetically inclined to sleep with as many people as possible. Yes, I know the many points against that; the family as a social unit proves that wrong, and has been around for thousands of years, and women at least certainly have proven historically to tend more towards loyalty, et-cetera, et-cetera, and so forth. But take a look at humanity now; the divorce rate in this country, which I take to be fairly representative of people of all walks of life and most backgrounds, is fifty percent. The rate gets even higher when you get to second- and third-marriages. And you'll have a hard time convincing me that all those excuses of "incompatibility" don't just mean "doesn't shag well or enough." Freud was right. The primary motivator for everything people do is sex, one way or the other. And because that's still the prime motivator once people get into relationships, the moment the "spark" blinks out, so does the relationship. Culture, religion, they can mitigate this, but at their core people are selfish bastards only interested in their own sexual gratification. Or perhaps that's unselfish, depending on how you think of it; it takes (at least) two to tango, after all.
So I thought that, then I spent the rest of the night (Valentine's Day night, of course; only appropriate) with my girlfriend, a girl I'm pretty sure I really care about, who makes me laugh, and whom I certainly hope I'm never disloyal to.
And you can go back to the start of this little story to see how that last paragraph ended.
Ironic? Perhaps. But not as much as that Indian guy's story. | | |
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