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editorunleashed


“Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at


one's luck.” —Dame Iris Murdoch (1919-1999)


Anna with her pack Zoe, Chloe, Dougie and Rita.


Cats have taken over the internet. They’ve taken over our computers, and apparently our minds. Do a search on Yahoo or Google. On the average, there are 1.8 billion cat hits. Do the same for dogs, and there are about one-third as many results. That’s right, for every web- enabled dog being shamed, there are three cats dancing or spinning a record like DJ Kitty on YouTube. We can take heart though, since


dogs still reign supreme in print with a two to one ratio. Who can forget Old Yeller and White Fang? The biography Flush,


by Virginia Woolf, is about a Cocker Spaniel who was loved by the English poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. Much to Woolf ’s embar- rassment, it was her best- selling book, with more than 19,000 copies sold in the first six months. Cats, for their part,


And they talk back to us. Yes, we can have an actual conversation with a dog. A cat? Not so much. You start talking to a cat, and he’ll get up from his comfort- able position, give you a look of total disdain (if you’re lucky enough to get any kind of a rise out of him at all) and walk away; tail in air, buh-bye. He cannot be bothered with the trite dribble that spills out of our mouths (unless it’s tuna). To dogs, the sound of our voice is


golden. No matter what we’re saying, dogs will look up from a sound sleep just to lis- ten. And their exploits are many. They love to run, play, make us laugh and interact with us, which makes them the perfect subject. But what can be


have failed to earn their place in literature. Oh sure, they have their place in art. Before the internet’s meme craze, there was the carte de visite, a type of small photograph, patented by the French photographer Andre Adolphe Eugene Disderi in 1854. Cats posing. Of course they’re posing. It’s what they do. They are loners, who want nothing more from their humans but to be observed. And to be fed. On time.


Dogs, on the other hand, are


companions. It is easy to develop a rela- tionship with dogs; really talk to them.


6 THE NEW BARKER


A carte de visite by British photographer Harry Pointer, circa 1870s.


written about a cat, a beautiful, animate object that just sits around? He gets up to be let outside, glances over his shoulder at you, then disappears.


What kind of story does that make? He prefers his solitude to human compan- ionship. A cat’s indifference and lethargy do not make for good reading. Maybe a short story, or perhaps a limerick, a sin- gle photograph or a sixty-second YouTube video. But, a whole novel? An entire movie? Based on a cat? Not unless there are two dogs alongside her, carrying the weight of the story’s plot. In conclusion (and I know


we’ll hear plenty from cat lovers on this observation) we simply contemplate cats. We dance with dogs. U


www.TheNewBarker.com


Photo by Laura Allen Studios.


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