Why I (H)ate The New Yorker

Yes, believe what you see. I might eat the Bible, too, if I ever got around to reading it.

I can't quite explain why I've always felt compelled to do it; just that I have, from kitten-hood, felt an urge, stirring in my even-then large belly, to attack The New Yorker. It might have started shortly after the second time I saw that Nancy Franklin decided to take on popular television, and, surprise, surprise, found it wanting. Or maybe it began when Anthony Lane took Sacha Baron Cohen too seriously. At some point, I just started tearing. Of late, I've been catching up on a bit of reading, mostly because the day I finally make it out of this house and go to a party I don't want to be the rube in the corner nursing my cocktail far too fast to make a decent impression. But I haven't found much worth repeating. Take this article for example, which was far more delicious than it was nourishing, about Sam Shepard.

Everyone knows that Shepard is good - he won a Pulitzer! And it should be about as obvious that he has father issues as it is that I love pork chops. This is not new. It's not like he's dead or anything, and this rapidly disappearing article hardly touches on one of the few timely pieces of information - that A Lie of the Mind is now on Broadway, a production directed by Ethan Hawke, which receives only parenthetical mention in this piece. Maybe, I thought mid-bite, I would be less likely to eat this magazine if I felt I much related to the somewhat random preoccupations of some of its writers. Until such a time, though, I will continue to dig into it every chance I get, and wait for the day that Sacha Baron Cohen contributes a piece about pork chops and how he dreams about them, just as I do, but all the more fervently for perhaps never having had the chance to eat them. Oh, and I will say that I would never ever chomp on an installment of the Cursing Mommy.

In my next post, be assured that I will actually go on an adventure. Today, however, the world looks far too cold and rainy.
Over and mauf.

Where have I been? I'll tell you.

The other day my usually less-than-insightful owner came to me with an idea; she had heard of people tracking the extraordinary adventures of their cats through GPS, perhaps the best use of technology since the Clapper:

http://www.gpscattrackers.com/

To me this seems like pulling the veil from what had once been a tantalizing mystery - where exactly do I go in the 9 hours I am alone? - but, I figured I'm already blogging, so I might as well give everyone the juicy info they've been dying to read. Plus, I can't afford a GPS, because, as you may or may not know, kitties are not very well paid, especially in this economy. So, without further ado, I give you Harold: A Day in the Life, or The Adventures of Harold,

(p.s. Kumar is the skipper)

9 a.m. Wander to food dish; empty. It has been a long and lonely hour since my morning feeding.
9:30 Wander back to food dish; still empty.
9:45: Take a longer walk to litter box, neglect to bury anything because it stinks and I want to get out.
10: Run to kitty castle in unusual display of energy and jump on Kumar, urging him to go clean out litter box because it still stinks in there.
10: 30: lick tail for 10 minutes because the rest is too far away from my mouth.
10:40: Convince Kumar that it is time to take to the high seas and sail far away from this prison with limited cups of kibble.
10:42: Look out window. See snow. Think we might have to revise plan.
6:30 p.m.: Wake up. Appears I slept through another day. Did not take to high seas. Did not bury poop. But did wake up just in time for dinner. A good day.

Do not trust this cat

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am extraordinarily angry. Imagine my shock, and quivering rage, when I checked Amazon the other day (as a kitty is wont to do) and found this:

http://www.amazon.com/Making-Rounds-Oscar-Extraordinary-Ordinary/dp/1401323235/ref=pd_ts_b_27?ie=UTF8&s=books

The thief! Not only is this puffy-tailed loser a stealer of lives, he has also stolen my byline and propelled himself to Amazon fame on the false claim that he is extraordinary. Well, that is if you consider hanging around a nursing home and predicting that people will die - sort of like predicting that there will be drunks about on St. Patrick's Day - extraordinary. If you do, I feel bad for you. If, on the other hand, you are looking for the absolutely true tales of a genuinely better than ordinary cat, then you have come to the right place. Do not be fooled by this Oscar - that's probably not even him on the book cover. And if you are taken in by his lies of extraordinariness, just remember, he only comes around to wait for you to die. That's right. He is a harbinger of death. Is that, my friends, what we want to call extraordinary? I don't think so, but of course, I am biased. I would also like to add here that if I ever catch that cat hanging over my bed I will KILL HIM; that's right, I will turn the tables on you, you furry grim reaper. Watch your back; this is one thing you won't see coming.

Of Cable & Cannibals

I realize that it's been a while since my last post, and I apologize to all of you who have been interested in following my extraordinary adventures. My friends, it brings me no pleasure to report that for the past week I've been stuck in a cable hole, from which I could neither see top nor bottom. Winter could not have gotten any bleaker than last night, when the cable landscape looked as desolate and barren as my backyard (not that I ever go out there). For the first time in my life, I was forced to watch a PBS special - all of it - and, it gets worse, it was about the Donner party.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/donner/

Georgia & Eliza Donner w/Mary Brunner, 1850

Sick, right? Here I was, complaining about how hot it was in the apartment with my aggressive radiator hissing in the corner, and watching people freeze to death and eat each other. But, I couldn't stop watching. And, it got me thinking, which has never happened to me, so it was about as shocking as realizing that I liked the fake accents of the people reading Eliza Donner's letters. So, sitting in my 85 degree apartment I thought about how bad things would have to get for me to eat my fellow kitties. The answer came upon me rather quickly.

Harold, 2009

First, I will say that I would make a rather fetching pioneer, as you can see - and that I would most surely not have listened to Lansford Hastings and taken the "short cut" to California, because I am a kitty, not an idiot. All of that said, I realized this morning, when my owner kept hitting the snooze button and I kept crying and crying for food that my brother looked rather delicious. And as I watched him roll over and expose his tender underbelly I became famished, my mouth watering, and I cursed PBS for not only wasting my time with the preoccupations of a group of stupid people, but also for judging me. Happily, my owner soon woke up and I had a delightful breakfast of kibble. Let's hope the next few days bring with them some riveting episodes of Animal Cops to clear my brain of publicly broadcast nonsense.
Counting the hours until my next feeding, over and mauf.