L.A. WEEKLY
June 26th, 1980

Occasionally an epigram will get so over-quoted that, as Dorothy Parker once remarked in another context, it almost makes you want to "frow up." Foremost among these is Pogo's "We have met the enemy and he us," followed closely by Thoreau's "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." What recalls these to mind is another observation I've noticed popping up unexpectedly these days. I don't suppose it qualifies as an epigram, since it's not well said, but the basic idea is that dictators dislike cats because they can't be commanded, unlike dogs for whom there is no greater pleasure than to grovel at your feet.

As I see it, the main reason you can't command cats is that they don't look you in the face. Dogs you can talk to. A dog will meet your gaze, and even becomes nervous if you hold it too long (some people become nervous if the dog holds it too long), but cats seem to be looking somewhere in the vicinity of your kneecaps, or perhaps your socks. It isn't that cats refuse to take orders from us. They simply aren't aware we're giving them.

Philosophically, your average cat is a utilitarian. It sees a human being as furniture, a kind of portable, heated lap chair. Cats are also one of the few animals proud enough to be embarrassed. I once remember seeing a cat lose his footing on a tile floor while taking a corner too sharply, and slam into the wall, which he then proceeded to examine with the most keen interest, as if hitting it was nothing more than what he'd planned on all along.

Unlike dogs, with which it is clearly possible to reach some sort of reasoned understanding, cats, I think, are driven entirely by their hormones. I used occasionally to take care of a cat which was deathly afraid of the garbage truck; every week, when he heard the whine of the compactor motor, he ran and hid under my bed. For some reason this annoyed me, and one day, when I happened to notice the approach of the garbage truck before he did, I got up and quietly closed the double doors to my bedroom. A minute later when the cat, whose name was Miff, suddenly heard the truck, he ran to the bedroom and began frantically to shake the doors with his paw. Then he fled down the hallway to the kitchen, but before I could go back to see what he was up to, he was back again shaking on the French doors. At this point the garbage man was right outside the house, banging and clanking on the empty cans. Miff gave in to total despair. He collapsed on the floor and made pitiful hopeless howls. Chastened by this display, I opened the doors for him, whereupon he dashed under the bed, back among the dust balls, eyes wide, seeing all the horrors that only cats are privy to.

Miff was never an attractive cat. He was all-black, overweight, and had the flat face of a gorilla, but at least when he was younger he had an affectionate nature. Instead of staying in his night bed by the heater he would sneak down under the covers to wash himself against my stomach. He had an interesting perspective on individuality—he couldn't tell where he stopped and I began. And sooner or later in the wash cycle I'd feel this gritty little tongue lapping away at my stomach hair.

When he was in the bed, I couldn't sleep, both for the frequent washings and the fear that in rolling over in my sleep I'd flatten him like play dough. But if I shut him out of the bedroom, I'd hear these plaintive little cries and see this little black paw groping pitifully under the door.

As he grew older, he became less cute by quantum leaps and bounds. He began coming home with notches out of his ears and, on one occasion, a front toe gnawed off. But worse than any of these was his tendency to panic. If on occasion we unexpectedly met in the hallway going in opposite directions, he would spin and race away, at least until his diminutive cat brain could overtake the flight programming and slow him to a walk.

He was killed one night in the street before my house. Part of the cause, I think, was pique at me, and part was his own irrepressible urge-to-panic. We'd quarreled over a can of cat food. I'd already given him one, but he wanted another. When finally I opened it, he sniffed at it disdainfully and began agitating for another flavor instead. When I indignantly refused, he stood by the door to be let outside. I was glad to be rid of him and when he didn't come back by bedtime, I locked the door and went to sleep, thinking it would serve him right to stay out all night.

The next morning when he still hadn't returned, I looked out the window and saw him lying in the street. I didn't blame whoever hit him, for the fault, I knew, was entirely Miff's. Unlike dogs, many of whom not only understand cars but also the principles of waiting for the green light and staying in the crosswalk, Miff regarded the automobile as just another irrational object in an incomprehensible world. He made no effort to cross streets when the traffic was clear. He paid no attention to traffic at all. Usually he crouched between two parked cars, building up his courage and then suddenly, blindly, without looking either way, he'd streak for the far side, often in the path of on-coming cars.

Not wanting to look at Miff, I picked him up by the tail (which for one horrible moment I thought would come off in my hand) and deposited him in the trash barrel on top of the grass clippings. That afternoon they took him away in the garbage truck—the only time he never panicked.