The Cat Outside

Recently I have been acquired by a cat.

I wasn’t looking for feline companionship. In fact, I wanted a dog. But a cat turned up, invited himself for supper, and now protests loudly if I don’t open the door quickly enough to let him in. He sits on the window sill and stares at me, tapping his paws against the glass, demanding entry.

I don’t know what to do with him.

Trouble is I like him. He’s a handsome beast, clever and cocksure, with a definite personality that’s hard to say no to.

And I know he has other options. He lives with the family three doors down, and he’s called “Fudge” – they’ve had him since he was a kitten, along with his twin brother (best not enquire what happened to him) – and it’s obvious he rules the street. Neighbours bend to talk to him, cars slow down when he saunters across the road, and it’s hard to imagine him ever being bothered by anything so beneath his dignity as a dog.

He seems to like me too. I know that I feed him – how could I not? – but he seems happy to spend time just curling up on the office floor, purring and allowing his ears to be tickled.

Last week I found him asleep on the bed. He must have got in through an open window – I’ve been painting the living room, so naturally all the downstairs windows were open – and decided to go upstairs for an afternoon nap. I didn’t wake him. Probably I should have, but he looked so at home and peaceful stretched out on the duvet. Later he pattered downstairs noisily yawning. He wandered into the living room and spent a bit of time with me watching paint dry before politely asking to be let out through the back door.

He could easily have exited through the open kitchen window. I would have been none the wiser.

Five hundred years ago one of my favourite writers wondered, “When I’m playing with my cat, how do I know she’s not playing with me?” Montaigne wasn’t being flippant. His point was that he’d noticed that his cat sometimes engaged in play, sometimes refused, just as he did. It takes two to play. And if the cat’s not in a playful mood, watch out! (Fudge bit me last week. Drawing blood. I guess he wasn’t in a playful mood. Bloody hurt.)

Five hundred years later one of my least favourite writers – Jacques Derrida, ruinously the most influential writer on culture in the last 50 years – wrote his last book about a confrontation with a cat. Derrida had stepped out of the shower. His cat saw him, sans towel. And 330 pages of continental philosophy got churned out. Dreadful.

Derrida does the usual cultural studies routine, dragging out a minor and not very interesting illumination into a major indictment of Western thought, art, philosophy, religion, culture, blah blah, and producing yet another masturbatory masterpiece.

Personally I think his book should have been entitled “When I’m Playing With Myself, How do I Know My Cat Is Not Pissing Herself?” Or, perhaps “When I’m Playing With Myself, How Do I Know My Cat Isn’t Thinking, Jacques, I Can See Your Willy!”

Currently I’m rereading William Burroughs. Yes, I know he shot his wife in the head (criminal imprudence) and was (allegedly) responsible for the death of his own son, plus was a total lunatic who believed in Scientology for a bit and thought UFOs existed, the Mayan calendar was real and Magick worked. But he also wrote a late book about his love for cats. Apparently he subscribed to “Cat Fancy” for years and even tried to submit a piece about his unwavering love for his kitties. They chose not to publish.

I wish he’d asked us.

Here’s William Burroughs reading from The Cat Inside. Listen to the bit about 5 mins in about the difference between “contact” with cats and “communication”. In a passage of about 50 words he completely destroys Derrida.

I wonder what he’d make of Fudge?

I wonder, if I told him the damned cat pisses everywhere whenever he gets the chance, would that affect his opinion?

And what if the fucker has fleas?

I’m not convinced that when I play with this cat he’s also playing with me.

He’s certainly playing me though.