A Cat In The House
If you pay attention to Liz's Instagram account or if we've spoken to you in the last few days, you probably know we got a cat last week. He is seven weeks old, his name is Fuzz Aldrin and he is black and white so he matches the decor.
I have nothing against dogs but I do prefer cats. This may be because I've never had a dog but have had many cats in my life, starting with Winnie and Tigger when I was a child and then with Cat Stevens and Nellie Purrtado, who joined our family in 2005 and 2006, respectively, and were loving additions until they both died last year. I wasn't sure about adding a pet so close to adding a baby but quarantine has made us miss feline company, it's important that our children grow up around animals and this one is cuter than pig nipples so when he came available there was really no other choice. Here we go again or, as is the phrase nowadays, once more into the bleach, dear friends.
Cats are imperious and aloof which makes their love all the more satisfying to earn. Dogs have shame, which I appreciate because not enough humans do, but cats can be embarrassed, if you've ever had the good fortune of observing one lose their dignity. The word cat comes from the Latin word for dog, catulus, which means puppy. Cats have never been used as violin strings, though those instrument's strings are still referred to as catgut. An Italian violin-maker in the middle ages discovered that sheep intestine made for great sounding, warm tones on a violin and told everyone it was made of cats because killing a cat was feared as bad luck and he figured this myth would keep people from stealing his idea. Violin strings are still made with sheep gut but are usually combined with nylon and steel. The most reliable way to predict an earthquake, better than any current scientific solution, is to look in the paper for the number of missing cats. If it spikes, head towards the shelter. If you want an environmental reason to get a cat over a dog, you should know that the ecological footprint of the life of a dog is the equivalent of two Toyota Landcruisers. A cat's life is the same as a single Volkswagon Golf.
Cats, of course, were worshipped by ancient Egyptians and were thought to have divine energy. The one I have poops in a cake pan we set up for him. Lest you think I am downplaying this achievement, the addition fo Fuzz Aldrin to our home has upped the percentage of occupants that can successfully void their own waste from 66% to 75% so I'm grateful.
Fuzz Aldrin is mostly white with a black tail, black ears and black spots on his socks. He looks like a cat, not someone's fevered nightmare version of a cat, and purrs when you scratch his neck. He is currently playing with a ball that belongs to the baby and moments ago he wrote this sentence using my computer: =i\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\. While he may never become a man of letters, within a few months he will be, as most domestic cats can, able to run faster than Usain Bolt.
By the way, I notice now that the issue numbers this week are still off by one compared to the date, only in the opposite direction than last week. Is this not getting to anyone else? It makes me want to hurl a cat out the window. I wouldn't do that but you should know that it would be fairly safe if I did. Cats have what's called a nonfatal terminal velocity which, on top of being a fabulous band name, is common in small mammals like cats and squirrels. Once they reach that velocity (which is 60 miles an hour for cats), their body's weight equalizes against the resistance of the air and stops accelerating, allowing the animal to relax, orienting themselves to parachute to the ground. Because of this, if you're going to throw cats out of windows, the higher the better. A study of 132 case of cats falling out of New York high-rises found that most of the injuries occurred when cats fell from first to sixth story windows, above seven stories, the rate of injury sharply declined. Cats have been known to fall thirty stories without a scratch or bruise and one even walked away from an 800-foot flinging from an airplane. It was Gandhi who said "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." I don't know what it says about ours that we're committing scientific research hours to finding the ideal height from which to hurl our felines.
That's not to say America is not cat crazy. There are 76.5 million American cats and each home that owns a cat usually owns 2.2. More Americans live with cats than with any other animal. One man loves them so much he wrote a musical that exercised his weird sexualized relationship with them that became beloved by millions of moms. When asked if her husband had any hobbies, Mary Todd Lincoln said simply "cats." President Lincoln's love of felines does not make him unusual, many presidents have had them, particularly in recent times. Teddy Roosevelt had two, Rutherford B. Hayes was gifted the first Siamese cat ever in this country. John F. Kennedy's cat, Tom Kitten, was the first to receive an obituary. Even the famously petless President Trump owns a cat. It's orange and mangy and lives on the top of his head.
Pets are nonsensical notions. They give us love but not only have I never heard someone who never had pets regret that fact, all pets leave a hole in their owners when they leave, which they inevitably will. Getting a pet is the first step towards heartbreak. And yet, millions of pets are adopted each year, giving truth to Tennyson's maxim that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Or, as Garrison Keeler put it, "Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function."