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On Cat Ladies: A Plea
Friends, Ricochet, Countrymen! I realize that there are a number of important things happening in America and across the world right now, and that what I’m about to share with you isn’t topical. I further realize that I promised to sort out the nature of the Good and the Beautiful and then to write the definitive guide to our foreign policy and keep you posted. But before I do that — and I will, cross my heart! — one Really Important Thing occurred to me.
Some time ago, a well-reputed literary agent contacted me (yes, every writer’s dream), and asked me if I’d like to write a book. Great, right? Except the book he had in mind was one I just couldn’t figure out how to write. His vision was a book about the history of cat ladies. Why he thought of me in this context is obvious. Why he thought this could be a commercial winner is also obvious. Was I willing? You bet. A job is a job and work is work, and if someone wants to pay me to write, I really don’t need the narcissistic satisfaction of writing about something elevated anywhere near as much as I need the money.
But the problem was this: as far as I could tell — and, believe me, I looked — there’s no history of cat ladies to write about. I mean, I could stretch, a lot, and maybe find some obscure paper in an even more obscure journal indicating that archeologists have discovered the remains of a Cro-Magnon female in close proximity to some remnant that looks digitigrade; and maybe I could dig up a touching anecdote involving a medieval nun, a cat named Aethelburh, and some drama (although when I think “nun, medieval, drama, interesting,” my mind reaches for Abelard, not Aethelburh, and not Abelard the Celtic Shorthair, either, if you get my drift).
Maybe I could say something about the Cat Ladies of the Korean War — and how this is actually way more interesting than, say, the part about blowing up the bridges over the Yalu — except I do not in fact know that cat ladies played any role whatsoever in the Korean War, and just don’t see how they could possibly be more interesting, no matter how much artistry and skill I apply to evoking them, than “blowing things up.”
Cats are great. I love cats. Cats are cute. Cats sell. Cats are one of my favorite things, if not my very favorite; I’ve got one right now sitting on my shoulder as I type this, threatening to hop from there to the floor via my keyboard, making me lose this post in some unrecoverable way; I still won’t even have it in me to be cross with her if she does, she’s that cute.
But one of the best things about cats — they do not have the power of speech — also makes them the worst things possible if you’re trying to write some kind of history involving them. They leave no written records. They don’t even pay taxes, no less write memoirs. No one has any idea what an eighteenth-century cat might have had to say for itself, though I reckon it’s pretty much what a contemporary cat would, which is to say, nothing.
As for the women, I figure that this has probably been pretty constant through history. Women like cats, as a rule, and you could get a little, maybe, out of some obvious observations about cats being about the size of a baby and having certain obvious aspects of facial morphology that maybe make women confuse them with babies, but this is about a sentence’s worth of insight. And you just read it. I just don’t think I can get from that to a book.
This troubles me greatly, though, because when a well-reputed agent calls you out of the blue and says, “I see ‘bestseller’ in your future if you can just do this one thing,” and especially if it happens to be true that no one could be better qualified than you to write a history of cat ladies, should such a thing be possible — I mean, historian, check; writer, check; cat lady, check. What else? Who else? No one, right? — you do rather feel that you’re a damned fool if you don’t find some way to do it. Especially if you need the money, which is probably the most relevant point.
So I keep thinking, “Just solve this and it’s money in the bank and cat food in the bowl.” And yet I keep coming back to the same problem: There’s a reason no one’s written a history of cat ladies before.
Then again, this guy made a bestseller out of salt. Salt doesn’t have much to say for itself, either, though I might have had the sense to think, even before I knew the formula, “salt equals bestseller,” that yes, there’s a lot to say about salt; but maybe I wouldn’t have. And while cat ladies may not lend themselves to the same kinds of discussion (trade, currencies, chemistry, wars, tastes good on lots of stuff) or be appealing to the same set of reviewers (the kind who amuse themselves much more than they should by describing a book about salt as “sprinkled” with anecdotes), that doesn’t mean there’s not something there, does it?
What is it, though? Can you think of it?
Published in General
I’m a cat in a hat with a bat who can chat!
And so this brings up an age old question. One asked by many philosophers, theologians, and more recently borscht belt comedians.
Question: Who sleeps with cats?
Answer: Mrs. Katz
I will speak no more on this topic.
Regards,
Jim
Jim, we’re almost 100 comments in and we haven’t made this about Pittsburgh yet.
Hurry up.
Casey,
Why my good son, I am so very glad you asked.
I don’t have anything that would be about cats. However, I do have a story about the power of one woman who spoke one single sentence and changed Pittsburgh forever.
As we last left Pittsburgh in the hands of the snide H.L. Mencken she was in pretty bad shape. You see Andy Carnegie had given away his fortune and was dead. Meanwhile, the steel production industry had moved west (damn those transportation costs, steel is heavy). First, it moved to Gary Indiana and then on to California. Our poor sweet old girl was left with ancient mills in perennial underproduction. When WWII came she was cranked up to full tilt to produce the steel for guns and armor. This was the third time for dear old Pittsburgh, The Civil War, WWI and now WWII. The smoke produced was unbelievable. Pittsburgh in common parlance was literally the two shirt a day town. This meant that by lunch time your white shirt had so much soot on it that you had to change to a fresh one. With Gd’s mercy WWII ended. Of course, this meant that in addition to the pollution our sweet town now went back into the economic cellar. Not a pretty picture.
Just as things seemed darkest, so a great light appeared by a miracle and a woman. Richard King Mellon, scion of the great Mellon banking family had taken a young wife. He had taken her to Europe for the honeymoon and now as they say “the honeymoon was over”. He brought his young wife back to Pittsburgh and took a Penthouse suite in the Schenley Hotel. The very first night Constance Prosser Mellon looked out over the city. She then uttered the single sentence which would change Pittsburgh forever.
“Richard, I just can’t live here!”
And so Casey, a miracle took place. Urban planners that had been shunned for decades suddenly found an audience. Even democrats were consulted (go figure). Our sweet old girl would get a fantastic face lift.
Some call it planning, I prefer to consider it a miracle.
Regards,
Jim
Hell with the lid off. Now the Belle of the ball. A Cinderella story indeed.
And I’m pretty sure Cinderella had a cat. So there you go.
Batter Up! Casey, have a nice night.
Regards,
Jim
It may just be the moment for this thread to go to the place all threads on Ricochet go, however inherently interesting–into the mists of time, and rather quickly, at that–but I do point out one thing:
People got bored of talking about cat ladies pretty quickly.
And that problem, while soluble–short of death and taxes, I like to think, there is no such thing as an insoluble problem–it yet remains to be solved.
I must work harder. I will work harder. (Someone stop me, though, if I seem to be on the verge of saying, “If Comrade Napoleon says it, it must be right.”)
Just remember, Claire, she was a Cat Lady too, so they can be quite fascinating …
Between Catwoman and Emma Peel… oy, veh. But catsuits are a different (non-CoC compliant) thread.
People got bored of a metaconversation about cat ladies. And that, on Ricochet, doesn’t seem unreasonable. Now, demonstrate that Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin are both cat ladies and you’ll have something for Ricochet.