Dear Team Steven:
Can you believe it’s almost Thanksgiving, and winter will soon be upon us here at Tabby’s Place?
Steven, who loves lolling in the sun, is finding these last days before the cold arrives very precious. This is his special time to privately ponder the meaning of life and his unique place in the Universe—important work indeed.
When the Suite A cats regained their solarium privileges this month, you can only imagine the uproar and hullabaloo Steven raised. He loaded our suggestion box with complaint notices and yowled vociferously to anyone who would listen. He almost drove the med suite staff mad! Sharing sunshine is definitely NOT one of our fabulous orange feline’s strong suits.
Tabby’s Place management’s decision to return solarium access to the Suite A cats was both vexing and irksome to him. Clearly, according to Steven’s way of thinking, human beings can be quite lacking in intelligence and decision-making skills, compared to cats.
With monumental effort, I made it my mission to distract Steven from this pressing dilemma and turn his thoughts to other topics. And that is when I came up with a subject I believed might be a clever diversion for him: all the silly sayings human beings have about cats.
Gingerly, I broached the topic by throwing out a mix of cat-related expressions: cat nap, look what the cat dragged in, cat burglar, fat cat, copycat, curious cat, cool cat, scaredy cat. Ahh, now that last one seemed to do the trick… and we were off to the races!
Steven fairly bristled at the mere idea of a scaredy cat, a ‘fraidy cat!’ “Who comes up with such nonsense?” he snarled at me, “Really!” He was truly miffed.
Having done my homework in case I ever found myself in such a situation, I launched into a serious explanation. The brilliant author (although often also snide and satirical), Dorothy Parker, popularized the terms in her book, The Waltz, published in 1933. I explained to Steven that she was a widely read and highly regarded author, poet, critic, and screenwriter—a member of the infamous Algonquin Round Table, for goodness’ sake!
Our big orange boy was not impressed. “Cats are unquestionably courageous,” he said. “Wisecracker! What human being would even dare to try to live nine lives?”
I feigned deep hurt, but Steven easily dismissed me. “Next,” he smiled broadly. “C’mon, bring ‘em on.”
To be fair, I don’t have the time or space to tell you all the material we covered. Needless to say, I found Steven quite the challenging sparring partner. And my diversion seemed to be working—we’d left the world of the solarium behind. I was nonplussed, baffled, and flummoxed about where to take our conversation next.
With a Cheshire grin, Steven launched a salvo of his own, “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”
It was game, set, match. Outplayed by our big orange, philosophizing fluffball, I decided to stop my little cat-and-mouse game. “Looks like the cat got the cream,” I smiled.
“Indubitably,” he responded. “And we will be discussing the solarium again when it’s warm in the Spring!”
Thank you for all your love and generosity to dear Steven, and may you have a very happy Thanksgiving!
Your correspondent,
Tina