One of the good things about living in Thailand is that I've never run up against that bane of the renter in Canada, the "no pets" policy. But it's not only Canada that permits this violation of the basic human right to animal companions; the Vatican Apartments also ban them, to the chagrin of their best-known tenant, Pope Benedict. His black-and-white shorthair Chico has to stay at his home back in Bavaria.
Our cat Onet takes full advantage of Thailand's tolerance of tabbies. In fact, she wanders off for days on ends sometimes, apparently taking up temporary residence in other townhouses in our neighbourhood that, we suspect, bribe her with squid, her favourite snack. At our place, if she wants squid and we're not paying due attention to her needs, she'll steal a package from the shop my wife runs in our carport, subsequently enduring the wrath of said shop's proprietress.
My wife isn't keen on cats. When she was a child, one bit her in the head while she was sleeping, and she still has the scar. But she puts up with Onet for my sake.
Onet's latest neighbourhood walkabout started last month, when we were all out of town for a short time. When we returned, the cat was nowhere to be seen for several days. Our eight-year-old daughter decided that when Onet did finally return, she would be thirsty, and so she filled a tub with water and left it in the kitchen for everyone to stumble over.
I had a look around the Internet to see if anyone besides Benedict shares my fondness for cats, and some of the "famous cat-lover" entries are not too surprising: Albert Schweitzer, Mark Twain, Florence Nightingale, Albert Einstein. I didn't know before that the Prophet Muhammad, who thought dogs "unclean", liked cats so much that they now reportedly hang around his gravesite. Sir Winston Churchill was very fond of a cat named Jock, while Adolf Hitler, like Napoleon Bonaparte before him, despised them.
Among my fellow linguists, Noah Webster defined the cat as a "deceitful animal and when enraged, extremely spiteful", while Samuel Johnson's cat Hodge was so "indulged", according to biographer James Boswell, that a statue of Hodge (with oyster) stands outside Johnson's former home in London. But the late Barbara Holland, who wrote the book The Joy of Drinking decrying the rise of "broccoli, exercise and Starbucks", suggested that both lexicographers had missed the point: "There is no cat 'language'. Painful as it is for us to admit, they don't need one."
Onet isn't around as I write this – out hunting birds, maybe, or stealing squid from the neighbours. That's OK; as many have observed, you can never really "own" a cat, and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead noted, "If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer." But at least I get to indulge in the simple pleasure of a purring cat in my lap fairly often, without having to go all the way to Bavaria. Benedict, meanwhile, has to content himself by issuing edicts against condoms.
In the end, it's a mistake to get sentimental about cats – they would consider that a victory, proof of their superiority, if they even cared that much. American humourist Garrison Keillor probably got it right: "Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function."
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