7/31/24

AS THE NOV. 5 ELECTION APPROACHES, A COMMON SENSE CAT SPEAKS OUT

“HE DIDN’T REALLY WRITE THAT, YOU KNOW.”
     “Who didn’t?” I asked.
     “Bill Clinton. He doesn’t know you from Adam. And he had nothing to do with what you’re reading.”
     I had been going through my email, which I do several times a day, and had stopped to look at a message that was slugged: “Now is the time to....” with the sender identified as “Bill Clinton.”
     “It’s just fund-raising,” the voice said.
     I was about to respond to the comment – which was so incredibly obvious that it hardly deserved a reply - then realized there was nobody to respond to. I was alone at my desk, alone that is, except for Ben.
      Ben is our cat.
      Ben turned 3 on July 12 and my wife and I forgot his birthday, as usual, and I wondered: Did his snide tone mean that he was still carrying a grudge?
     Then I realized that was the wrong question.
     “Are you actually talking?” I asked.
     “Are you actually listening?” Ben said.
     Ben, who joined our household when he was 4 months old, is a handsome Tabby – we like to think of him as Bengal, or Bengal-like. He weighed 3 pounds at the time. Now, like many Americans, he’s struggling with his weight, hitting the scales the last time we were at the vet’s at 15+.
     My wife and I have considered Ben  unusually communicative, and we’ve had a fair share of cats with which to compare. He’s got a hearty “Yee-Oow,” and if you say something to him, he’ll give you a “Yee-Oow” right back.

 BUT IF BEN HAS SEEMED “TALKATIVE,” we've known that we’re stepping into the Forbidden Swamp of Anthropomorphism if we push too far, and we fully understand that Ben isn’t actually conversive, at least in the human sense.
     “I didn’t think cats could talk,” I said, trying to sound calm.
     Ben said crossly, “There’s a lot you don’t know.”
     “Let’s say that I’m not a crazy old man, and that I’m hearing what I think I’m hearing,” I said. “How come you’ve decided to actually speak?”
     “Because all I hear all day and into the night in this house is ‘The Election this; The Election that.’ It’s all you two talk about – especially YOU – and it just pours out of the radios and TVs hour after hour.
     “And then there’s all the doomscrolling that  you, in particular,  do on your computer, checking the same websites over and over and over, and frankly, I’m fed up to here!” he said.
     As he said that, Ben made a cutting motion against his throat with one of his paws – I’m not sure which one, because I’ve never noticed whether Ben is right-pawed or left, much less whether, politically, he leans left or right.
     “So that means that you can read, too?” I said.
     “I try my best not to swear,” Ben said. “But you make it really hard to be civil. Of course, I can read.
      Which is why I know that the email you’re looking at is not from Bill Clinton. It wasn’t written by Bill Clinton;  Bill Clinton doesn’t know your email address; and for sure, Bill Clinton does NOT know your first name, much less  your last.”
     “But the email starts out ‘Brian, it’s Bill Clinton,’ “ I said.
     “#*@!+?$,” the cat said. “Did you even go to college – at least one that’s anyone’s heard of? It’s a computer-generated-money-raising pitch. Clinton has told someone it’s okay to use his name, and the algorithm does the rest.”
     “They start small,” Ben said impatiently. “Scroll down a little and it starts off with a $25 contribution, which won’t buy you much cat food, but it gets their claws into you. You do REALIZE that!”
     “Well,’ I said, “I did wonder where Bill gets the time to write to someone like me. I know that he’s not president anymore, but still, I’m sure he’s got a lot  else going on, wondering what Monica is up to these days and all."
     “Is there anything in there,” Ben asked pointing at my head, “other than a rock?”
     Now, I was getting a little put off: “I get a lot of emails these days from important people.”
     “You’ll notice, Mr. Smarty Cat, that the next email down from Bill’s is from Kamala Harris. And as you may have noticed, she is one busy person these days. She’s the likely Democratic nominee, juggling her vice presidential  duties, picking her own veep, raising missions of dollars.  She’s got Democrats smiling again. And, still,  Kamala’s sending ME emails.”
     “This answers the question about God,” Ben said. “If She did exist, She certainly wouldn’t have sent me to a house with you in it.”
     I was searching for a pithy reply, when Ben continued:
     “What makes living here bearable is that sometimes you leave the house, and I get to spend time exclusively with someone who actually likes and understands cats. You know whom I’m talking about: the Nice One.”
     “She’s that and more,” I said. “At least we agree on something.”

---

 “WHICH BRINGS ME TO WHY I’VE DECIDED TO SPEAK OUT,” Ben said. “I’m realizing that this Election is could be a make-or-break event. I mean, forget the stuff about whether “democracy is on the line” and this climate change business and whether the earth will burst into flames if Trump wins.”
     “Those ARE big issues,” I pointed out.
     “You want to know what’s a BIG issue?” Ben said with his little feline sneer. “It's all this stuff we’re hearing about ‘wilderness cat ladies.’ “
     “I think you mean ‘childless cat ladies,’ “ I said.
     “Whatever,” Ben said. “It’s downright super-wild-scary.”
     Realizing that I now had the upper paw because we were discussing “facts,” I proceeded to lecture Ben on what Sen. J.D. Vance, Trump’s vice presidential pick, had said three years ago to the notorious Tucker Carlson, then on Fox TV.
        Vance had warned about
          "... a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too."
     "It's just a basic fact — you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.... And how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?"
         “Worse than worrisome,” the cat said.  “Very dangerous.”
         “We’re in agreement, again,” I said. “Lots of people don’t have children – although Harris is a stepmom, and Buttigieg and his partner now have twins. But you can’t disenfranchise people who don’t have children.”
     “Not my concern,” Ben said. "Who cares about 'the children?' "
     “What does bother you?”
      “If Trump and Vance win, they’ll go after the cat ladies. They’ll deport the undocumented cat ladies first, and scare the rest into letting their cats loose; ladies simply won’t want the stigma of having us in their homes.”
      “I hadn’t thought of that,” I said.
     “Nobody has,” Ben said.
      Now he was on a roll:
       “Cats of America, rise up. Protect the cat ladies. Vote the cat ladies’ ticket. Who will look after, cherish, talk to and most importantly FEED America’s cats if we become a country without cat ladies? Nine lives will no longer be enough to protect us.
     “SAVE THE CAT LADIES!
     "SAVE THE CATS!”
     “In the end," I said, "politics is always personal.”
      “It’s just common sense,” Ben said.