We Love Our Animals
The cat has gone again, now it's dark and I'm faced with a grandmother who cannot understand that anything might behave in a way different from how she perceives it should.
Perhaps her worry for the cat is a kind of foil for thinking of herself. She is clinging on to being able to take care of something, the cat reciprocates her attention (up to a point) and she takes a great deal of comfort and self-satisfaction from that. The cat gives her a sense of purpose, even though she doesn't actually do any more for the cat than think about it and stroke it when it allows her to do so.
I like cats but I don't subscribe to the common English view that all creatures are cute furry bundles of flesh that exist for our enjoyment and sentimental satisfaction. Cats like to kill for pleasure. We humans mollycoddle them and keep them in our homes in a state of perpetual kittenhood, never allowing them to grow up, projecting our feelings of sentiment on them and conveniently ignoring that wen we let them out they'll take a piss to mark their territory, have a shit in someone else's garden before further decimating the local bird and small mammal population. I do like cats, honestly, I just don't like all the cutesy-cutesy bullshit that gets put about.
It's tough for Granny. The neighbours were acting for the best, as they thought, in replacing Padgett 2 so quickly, but only acting in the best way for themselves: they were getting a lot of phonecalls from her when she was alone and working herself up into a state and they couldn't handle it. They didn't call me or anyone else responsible for her, just sorted themselves out by relieving the immediacy of Granny's anguish and left it for me to come back and take over.
They didn't get her an older cat. They had to 'pull strings' to get one so quickly (as if to say, 'Patrick you should be grateful for us helping so much'). Now I have a senile grandmother who wants a lap cat but instead has a young cat with a mind for getting out into the world, making it's mark, doing a bit of hunting and exploring and spending as little time as possible being locked into a small suburban house, and she can't understand it, over and over again. Fuckwits.
and the poet said...
Perhaps her worry for the cat is a kind of foil for thinking of herself. She is clinging on to being able to take care of something, the cat reciprocates her attention (up to a point) and she takes a great deal of comfort and self-satisfaction from that. The cat gives her a sense of purpose, even though she doesn't actually do any more for the cat than think about it and stroke it when it allows her to do so.
I like cats but I don't subscribe to the common English view that all creatures are cute furry bundles of flesh that exist for our enjoyment and sentimental satisfaction. Cats like to kill for pleasure. We humans mollycoddle them and keep them in our homes in a state of perpetual kittenhood, never allowing them to grow up, projecting our feelings of sentiment on them and conveniently ignoring that wen we let them out they'll take a piss to mark their territory, have a shit in someone else's garden before further decimating the local bird and small mammal population. I do like cats, honestly, I just don't like all the cutesy-cutesy bullshit that gets put about.
It's tough for Granny. The neighbours were acting for the best, as they thought, in replacing Padgett 2 so quickly, but only acting in the best way for themselves: they were getting a lot of phonecalls from her when she was alone and working herself up into a state and they couldn't handle it. They didn't call me or anyone else responsible for her, just sorted themselves out by relieving the immediacy of Granny's anguish and left it for me to come back and take over.
They didn't get her an older cat. They had to 'pull strings' to get one so quickly (as if to say, 'Patrick you should be grateful for us helping so much'). Now I have a senile grandmother who wants a lap cat but instead has a young cat with a mind for getting out into the world, making it's mark, doing a bit of hunting and exploring and spending as little time as possible being locked into a small suburban house, and she can't understand it, over and over again. Fuckwits.
and the poet said...Stop thinking, and end your problems.
What difference between yes and no?
What difference between success and failure?
Must you value what others value, avoid what others avoid?
How ridiculous!
Other people are excited,
as though they were at a parade.
I alone don't care,
I alone am expressionless,
like an infant before it can smile.
Other people have what they need;
I alone possess nothing.
I alone drift about, like someone without a home.
I am like an idiot, my mind is so empty.
Other people are bright; I alone am dark.
Other people are sharper; I alone am dull.
Other people have a purpose; I alone don't know.
I drift like a wave on the ocean, I blow as aimless as the wind.
I am different from ordinary people.
I drink from the Great Mother's breasts.
