I’ve considered writing about my cat for some time, but something held me back.
It’s not that I’m embarrassed by Lincoln, my long-haired gray-black tabby of an as-yet-undetermined age.
In fact, Linc, named, alternately, for the 16th president and former Sen. Lincoln Chafee as a nod to the lamentable demise of Rockefeller Republicans, is a perfectly fine, well-fed feline.
He purrs, meows, and jumps around when I feel like playing with him.
Apart from his ascetic distaste for kitty treats, he eats most anything. And a few times a week, I dip into my stash of catnip, get him stoned, and put Europe ’72 by the Grateful Dead on the turntable. Why? Because he digs it.
Last summer a valiant group in my downtown New London neighborhood that captures and spays feral cats persuaded me to adopt Lincoln, who once went by the nom de chat, Mr. Whiskers.
Linc, who for a while was the cock of the walk among the neighborhood strays, is now confined to my apartment because he has feline immunodeficiency virus, or FIV.
He’s going to live a long life, vets assure me, but the fact that Linc has what is sometimes called Cat AIDS, is more of a problem for yours truly.
I have to make sure that in conversations one might have about HIV or AIDS, that I don’t blurt out, “Hey, you know, my cat has AIDS” and offend somebody.
But, here we are, at already 214 words all about my cat, something I once told myself would never happen.
It’s not that I’m out of ideas. I scuttled a column about the Olympics, postponed another one about how stupid it is that there is no county government in Connecticut, and will one day release the results from my study that clearly shows 85 percent of snow-boarders are named Kyle, Jesse, or Zack.
The hesitation about writing about my furry cohabitant is I didn’t want to be the guy who writes about his pets. I did not want to admit that writing about my cat brought me a certain amount of pleasure. Writing about pets was for the “other writers,” not me. You know, the writers who attempt to pick at the lock of the cosmos because their dog is fascinated by what’s on television. Plus, many people like reading about animals and seeing pictures of critters.
When confronted with things lots of people like, it’s always seemed natural to me to not like them. In essence, I didn’t want to get any of society’s gooey, chocolately banana split on me.
This world view is an outgrowth of that tricky bit of advice you get as a kid: “be yourself.” If you take that seriously, like I did, it seems logical to find those things you are not, as opposed to what you are. And what I didn’t want for myself was anything of what I deemed ordinary.
In fact, I’m willing to wager that at least half of teenage rebellion in the American middle class occurs when one finds out what “bourgeois” means.
I suppose it’s not until you get older that ordinary existence reveals its charms in its subtle ways, such as the happiness of being done with dishes and being able to rejoin my girlfriend in the living room, just to see what she’s doing.
It’s certainly not a profound revelation that as you get older your perception of everyday life changes.
The struggle is how to express, in my case, in words, how experiences I once thought were “not me,” are now “me.”
So, it’s without one ounce of defeat, that I’d like to tell you something about my cat.
When I’m in the shower, Lincoln sits on the other side of the bathroom door, and meows, hoping I’ll let him in.
It’s as though he wants to participate in what’s happening, when it’s really nothing out of the ordinary.
This is the opinion of senior staff writer Stephen Chupaska.