Posted on 10/16/2016 8:59:39 AM PDT by heterosupremacist
“Medieval people may have wanted to restrict cats to the function of animated mousetraps, for the very reason that the cat “stands at the threshold between the familiar and the wild.”
“Cats were intruders into human society. They could not be owned. They entered the house by stealth, like mice, and were suffered because they kept the insufferable mice in check.” This causes a kind of conceptual tension. While the cat possesses the characteristics of a good hunter it is useful, “but as long as it does it remains incompletely domesticated.”
Heretics, too, in a transferred sense, are not completely domesticated, since by challenging orthodox thought and roaming freely hither and thither in their interpretation of religious beliefs they resemble the bestiary definition of wildness. As symbolic animals, them cats may be the heretical animal par excellence”
(Excerpt) Read more at aleteia.org ...
I could have swore that my Grandma said that cats give you warts.
Eh, who knows?
She used to drink a quart of whisky on Saturday night an put on her Viking helmet and grab an axe and go raiding the neighbors.
Lyin Heretic!!!
Cats and Dogs
By H. P. Lovecraft
http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/cd.aspx
The cat is for the aristocrat—whether by birth or inclinations or both—who admires his fellow-aristocrats (even if Little Belknap isn’t especially fond of Felis). He is for the man who appreciates beauty as the one living force in a blind and purposeless universe, and who worships that beauty in all its forms without regard for the sentimental and ethical illusions of the moment. For the man who knows the hollowness of feeling and the emptiness of human objects and aspirations, and who therefore clings solely to what is real—as beauty is real because it pretends to no significance beyond the emotion which it excites and is.
For the man who feels sufficient in the cosmos, and asks no false perspective of exaltation; who is moved by no mawkish scruples of conventional prejudice, but loves repose and strength and freedom and luxury and superiority and sufficiency and contemplation; who as a strong fearless soul wishes something to respect instead of something to lick his face and accept his alternate blows and strokings; who seeks a proud and beautiful equal in the peerage of individualism rather than a cowed and cringing satellite in the hierarchy of fear, subservience, and devotion.
The cat is not for the brisk, selfimportant little worker with a “mission”, but for the enlightened dreaming poet who knows that the world contains nothing really worth doing. The dilettante—the connoisseur—the decadent, if you will, though in a healthier age than this there were things for such men to do, so that they were the planners and leaders of those glorious pagan times. The cat is for him who does things not for empty duty but for power, pleasure, splendour, romance, and glamour—for the harpist who sings alone in the night of old battles, or the warrior who goes out to fight such battles for beauty, glory, fame, and the splendor of a kingly court athwart which no shadow of weakness or democracy falls. For him who will be lulled by no sops of prose and usefulness, but demands for his effort the ease and beauty and ascendancy and cultivation which alone make effort worth while. For the man who knows that play, not work, and leisure, not bustle, are the great things of life; and that the round of striving merely in order to strive some more is a bitter irony of which the civilized soul accepts as little as it can.
Cat Propagandist!
“” The reason people were afraid of cats during the Middle Ages
Felines, despite having a good amount of domestic responsibilities, have not always been well regarded””
And -—— the cats didn’t give a darn.
I discovered Chairman Meow several years ago.
I thought it was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen.
I even bought a Chairman Meow t-shirt.
You had to grow up around communists to appreciate the humor.
“Cats rule.”
Don’t know if you heard this one:
Dogs have owners, Cats have a staff. DM
many poeple are afraid of cats
but with good reason
cats are the Superior Life Force on Rock Three
“kept the insufferable mice in check.”
Plus cats can read our minds.
Mouseaphobes!
Cats rule, dogs drool.
There certainly seems a connection between women and cats. I’ve always been a cat owner. I mostly enjoy them for their beauty and mystery. But generally, they’re pains in the asses!
Little Belknap must refer to Frank Belknap Long, a little appreciated author and one of HP’s circle of correspondents and friends.
Pretty cool piece by HP, thanks for posting
FReegards
We had cats when I was younger. Right now I’m not stable enough to have a pet of any kind.
That’s too bad. They bring comfort when you’re not well. Hope you improve!
bump
Sometimes, through accident, one of the cats will get outside. Only one time has any of them stayed out longer than 10 minutes, and they were anxious to get back in. We live in wooded area with possums and raccoons.
The exception was out about an hour before he came back. He never again, until the day he died, went near the front door.
Go figure.
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