Darling Pussy Cat
Oct 7th, 2007 by Eats Wombats
On Sunday mornings I start the day with a bacon sandwich, the Saturday edition of the Telegraph, and the BBC’s Andrew Marr on the TV interviewing the great and the good (Robert Harris this week on his new book) and the larger political beasts. Being temporarily retired from the fight against hunger and poverty has its compensations. Time for passably intelligent political discourse is still a new luxury, though the mute button on the remote control comes in handy often enough.
According to an article I read recently the profiling of people by post code has now reached incredible levels of sophistication and accuracy. Naturally, I checked this out by entering my post code into a site that promptly reported that my number one characteristic was “concern about and interest in international news.” I was mildly offended that this should be anything unusual. Hmm. I thought. I reflected on how the Princess’s mother persuaded her that horoscopes were nonsense. She read passages at random from a book on astrology, each supposedly for a different star sign, each purportedly describing characteristics of the reader. “It’s all true and very accurate” said the Princess. “That’s interesting” said her mother “because I read a bit from each star sign.” How dare they call me a news junkie! Could this be true?
I was keeping the cat off the Telegraph and protesting to his owner and number one fan about his drooling, his appetite for bacon and his general lack of consideration when I saw a quarter page advertisement for a new book entitled How to Talk to Your Cat. She said that she’s seen it and noted that the cost of shipping was as much as the book. “Beat the postal strike — order by phone now!” said the advert. “I forgot about the post strike” I said, but really I was thinking, not for the first time, that the English are more than a little cat mad. There was no ad for a book on How to Talk to Your Husband.
Of course, it won’t affect us. We have a special delivery service.
said she who speaks to the cat quite a lot.
Who does? (i.e., Who’s “we”? Do we really?)
Someone picks it up for us.
Who’s “us”?
I don’t know. (i.e., What are you talking about?)
At this point I miaowed for help. “What do you mean you don’t know?” I said. It turned out that “us” was “work” and that I was supposed to know this even though it hadn’t been mentioned.
Later I read an article in the Sunday Times in which it was reported that all this stuff about men and women being from Mars and Venus and not communicating is “tosh” — according to language professor Deborah Cameron. “Don’t get her started on Lynn Truss” says the article. “Men are from Earth. Women are from Earth. Deal with it.”
No doubt the cat is from earth too, even though his current circumstances are indistinguishable from having died and gone to heaven. Why anyone would need a book to know what to say to a cat who can say without a word “You know I love bacon” I do not know. And furthermore, my hunch is that women buy more of these books than men.
They can look up and translate, with the help of celebrated therapists, all sorts of useful concepts, such as:
The cat would like a bacon sandwich… in bed.
