Writers and their cats

Never liked (or thought about) Charles Bukowski and I'm puzzled by how everybody seems to be taken by him lately. But all I know is he understands cats and that's good enough for me. Being a cat person, I immediately like people who love cats. We are a unique lot. We suffer creatures who live with us on their own terms and we are only too happy to care for them in exchange for the privilege of watching them.

exactly right
the strays keep arriving: now we have 5
cats and they are smart, spontaneous, self-
absorbed, naturally poised and awesomely
beautiful.

one of the finest things about cats is
that when you're feeling down, very down,
if you just look at the cat at rest,
at the way they sit or lie and wait,
it's a grand lesson in persevering
and
if you watch 5 cats at once that's 5
times better.

no matter the extra demands they make
no matter the heavy sacks of food
no matter the dozens of cans of tuna
from the supermarket: it's all just fuel for their
amazing dignity and their
affirmation of a vital
life
we humans can
only envy and
admire from
afar.

my cats
I know. I know.
they are limited, have different
needs and
concerns.

but I watch and learn from them.
I like the little they know,
which is so
much.

they complain but never
worry,
they walk with a surprising dignity.
they sleep with a direct simplicity that
humans just can’t
understand.

their eyes are more
beautiful than our eyes.
and they can sleep 20 hours
a day
without
hesitation or
remorse.

when I am feeling
low
all I have to do is
watch my cats
and my
courage
returns.

I study these
creatures.

they are my
teachers.

The History of One Tough Motherfucker
he came to the door one night wet thin beaten and
terrorized
a white cross-eyed tailless cat
I took him in and fed him and he stayed
grew to trust me until a friend drove up the driveway
and ran him over
I took what was left to a vet who said,"not much
chance...give him these pills...his backbone
is crushed, but is was crushed before and somehow
mended, if he lives he'll never walk, look at
these x-rays, he's been shot, look here, the pellets
are still there...also, he once had a tail, somebody
cut it off..."
I took the cat back, it was a hot summer, one of the
hottest in decades, I put him on the bathroom
floor, gave him water and pills, he wouldn't eat, he
wouldn't touch the water, I dipped my finger into it
and wet his mouth and I talked to him, I didn't go any-
where, I put in a lot of bathroom time and talked to
him and gently touched him and he looked back at
me with those pale blue crossed eyes and as the days went
by he made his first move
dragging himself forward by his front legs
(the rear ones wouldn't work)
he made it to the litter box
crawled over and in,
it was like the trumpet of possible victory
blowing in that bathroom and into the city, I
related to that cat-I'd had it bad, not that
bad but bad enough
one morning he got up, stood up, fell back down and
just looked at me.
"you can make it," I said to him.
he kept trying, getting up falling down, finally
he walked a few steps, he was like a drunk, the
rear legs just didn't want to do it and he fell again, rested,
then got up.
you know the rest: now he's better than ever, cross-eyed
almost toothless, but the grace is back, and that look in
his eyes never left...
and now sometimes I'm interviewed, they want to hear about
life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed,
shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say,"look, look
at this!"
but they don't understand, they say something like,"you
say you've been influenced by Celine?"
"no," I hold the cat up,"by what happens, by
things like this, by this, by this!"
I shake the cat, hold him up in
the smoky and drunken light, he's relaxed he knows...
it's then that the interviews end
although I am proud sometimes when I see the pictures
later and there I am and there is the cat and we are photo-
graphed together.
he too knows it's bullshit but that somehow it all helps.

Another tough motherfucker was writer Ernest Hemingway who famously loved felines. When one of his cats, Uncle Willie, was run over in 1953, Hemingway elected to shoot the suffering animal. He writes a distraught letter to his friend to report.

Dear Gianfranco:

Just after I finished writing you and was putting the letter in the envelope Mary came down from the Torre and said, ‘Something terrible has happened to Willie.’ I went out and found Willie with both his right legs broken: one at the hip, the other below the knee. A car must have run over him or somebody hit him with a club. He had come all the way home on the two feet of one side. It was a multiple compound fracture with much dirt in the wound and fragments protruding. But he purred and seemed sure that I could fix it.

I had René get a bowl of milk for him and René held him and caressed him and Willie was drinking the milk while I shot him through the head. I don’t think he could have suffered and the nerves had been crushed so his legs had not begun to really hurt. Monstruo wished to shoot him for me, but I could not delegate the responsibility or leave a chance of Will knowing anybody was killing him…
Have had to shoot people but never anyone I knew and loved for eleven years. Nor anyone that purred with two broken legs.

I can only imagine the heartbreak Hemingway felt shooting his own cat and the vast wellspring of love that he must have drawn strength from to have the courage to pull the trigger.

Below are photos of Hemingway, Bukowski and other famous authors with their cats.

Ernest Hemingway and Nick, one of his many six-toed cats

 

Charles Bukowski and cat

 

Truman Capote

 

W.H. Auden whose "Funeral Blues" I dedicated to Pepe

 

My favorite sci-fi/horror writer Ray Bradbury

 

Philip K. Dick, another favorite sci-fi writer

 

Beat poet Jack Kerouac with his cat Tyke. He describes Tyke's death in his memoir Big Sur: "Ordinarily the death of a cat means little to most men, a lot to fewer men, but to me, and that cat, it was exactly and no lie and sincerely like the death of my little brother -- I loved Tyke with all my heart, he was my baby who as a kitten just slept in the palm of my hand and with his little head hanging down, or just purring for hours, just as long as I held him that way, walking or sitting -- He was like a floppy fur wrap around my wrist, I just twist him around my wrist or drape him and he just purred and purred and even when he got big I still held him that way, I could even hold that big cat in both hands with my arms outstretched right over my head and he'd just purr, he had complete confidence in me -- and when I'd left New York to come to my retreat in the woods I'd carefully kissed him and instructed him to wait for me 'Attends pour mue kitigingoo' -- But my mother said in the letter he had died the NIGHT AFTER I LEFT."

 

George Bernard Shaw and his cat Pygmalion

 

William S. Burroughs, in The Cat Inside, explains why cats are greater than dogs,“Like most qualities, cuteness is delineated by what it isn't. Most people aren't cute at all, or if so they quickly outgrow their cuteness ... Elegance, grace, delicacy, beauty, and a lack of self-consciousness: a creature who knows he is cute soon isn't.”

 Nobel Prize author Hermann Hesse groveling after his cat

 

Notorious French novelist Colette was no match for her cats, "My cat does not talk as respectfully to me as I do to her."

 Stephen King and Clovis

 

Neil Gaiman and his cat Zoe who recently died. Neil on Zoe: "And I'm wondering what it is about this small blind cat that inspires such behavior -- mine, Olga's, Lorraine's.... I've had cats in this house for 18 years, and there are cat-graves down by the gazebo. Two cats died of old age last year. It wasn't like this. I think it may be the love. Hers, once given, was yours, unconditionally and utterly."

Of the human-cat relationship, I like how Truman Capote described it in his novella, Breakfast at Tiffany's: “She was still hugging the cat. “Poor slob,” she said, tickling his head, “poor slob without a name. It’s a little inconvenient, his not having a name. But I haven’t any right to give him one: he’ll have to wait until he belongs to somebody. We just sort of took up by the river one day, we don’t belong to each other: he’s an independent, and so am I. I don’t want to own anything until I know I’ve found the place where me and things belong together. I’m not quite sure where that is just yet. But I know what it’s like.” She smiled, and let the cat drop to the floor. “It’s like Tiffany’s,” she said.” 

 

*Some photos and quotes c/o Buzzfeed and random cat sites

Testing the art of pangungulimbat ng content (sorry I just need this for a deck)

Fatal Attraction

Years ago I wrote about my irresistible attraction to 23 year olds. Since then I’ve moved on. I am now attracted to 29 year olds. I’m kidding. Actually I already swore off 20-somethings a long time ago. Once you get past the thrilling joie de vivre all you end up with is boring self-absorption. Besides, I should be the retard in the relationship. I have no business pretending to be the responsible adult.

But once in a while the attraction comes back. Like eczema, it never really goes away; it just stays dormant until the next trigger comes along. And a movie like Liberal Arts is one of those things that make one feel wistful about old longings. Themes of poignant awkwardness and inexorable doom never grow old, I guess. Unfortunately I’m at that age when it’s already icky to carry on with a 20-something. It would just seem like I was taking advantage in a Woody Allen kind of way. Still…

 

 

Sometimes life does imitate art

Over a month ago I was in Siquijor to take a break and take stock of my life after I had lost my job. Coincidentally, a few weeks before I went there I saw a film called A Good Year, about a driven, ruthless London banker who was suspended from his job while he was in France attending to his late uncle's estate. While in his uncle's vineyard he is reminded of life lessons his uncle taught him growing up and he also meets a girl who teaches him about love and how life is more important than money, etcetera.

In one scene, the protagonist and his love interest have their first date around a pool that's surrounded by trees and lights and candles. Just a few clicks from where I stayed in Siquijor there was also a large natural pool which the locals had set up with tables and food booths for the town fiesta and I was struck by how similar the movie and the Siquijor set-up looked (the banderitas and the terrible picture taken with my phone camera notwithstanding). And there was a band too but instead of French songs, the Siquijor band played, of all things, jazz music. That scene was actually my favorite part of the movie because I was charmed by the set design and so it was a bit uncanny to find something similar in Siquijor.

That night in the pool, engulfed in the heady aroma of beer and roasting meat, surrounded by cheerful locals and listening to good music, was one of the happiest I've ever been in a long time.

Before I went on that trip I resolved that I would open myself to anything and everything. I also added a self-imposed rule: I would talk less and listen more. I would not edit what people said (either in reality or in my head) the way I'd gotten used to--only listening for information that I needed to do my work, not caring to hear the rest of what people had to say.

And so I listened. How was it that only a month ago I wouldn't have cared? I suppose that, like the Russell Crowe character in the movie, I too had lost that part of myself that was good in the course of trying to be the best at what I do.

I can't say I'm out of the woods yet but I do hope that like the character, and in the tradition of feel-good movies, I will also find salvation in the end.

Cat People

I’ve been spending a lot of time at my best friend’s house where they have a dog, a little shih tzu called Maki. Now I have to confess that I used to detest shih tzus largely because they’re the dog of choice of every fucking sicko anthropomorphic dog owner in the country. Shih tzus are the Barbies and Baby Alives of these idiots, cossetted like children and decked out in every ridiculous gewgaw imaginable. I actually pity them slipping and sliding in their shoes and sweltering under their doggie clothes while festooned with ribbons galore. Cats would never allow themselves to be treated with such indignity. Which brings me to the subject of cats and their humans.

Cat lovers get no respect. We’re ridiculed for loving an animal that doesn’t seem to offer any pay-off—no shimmying joyously when we come home, no manic licking of our faces to show love and devotion, no coming when we call. And that’s true too. We don’t get any respect from our cats. But I submit that for cat owners, a cat’s lack of obsequiousness is precisely why we’re so powerfully drawn to it. It’s really a question of space. Cat people like their space. And so do cats. When we come home our cats are there to welcome us too, not with frantic shaking, but with a meow or three, a few dignified swishes and then they’re off doing their thing and we too, are left to do ours. And that’s true for every day of our mutually-agreed co-existence.

But I love how our cats don’t need us.  

Sure they come to us for food and shelter but it’s really because they’re opportunists with a keen sense of survival. But left to their own devices, they can hunt for food and clean themselves, which is all that matters really. If I never existed, I’m sure my cat Pepe would have survived on his own, feeding on rodents and human scraps, occasionally brawling with other feral cats for territory, maybe siring a few hairy kittens of his own. And I suspect he would have been just as happy.

That’s why I believe the time we spend with cats is more magical. When we come together to play or sit companionably near each other, it’s because we both want to. In that brief moment at least, we are connected. Nothing comforts me more profoundly after a late night at the trenches than to have Pepe sit under my chair while we both stare out into the dark, thinking our own thoughts.  No expectations, no drama, just him being him and me being me. After a while I go off to bed and he goes off to wherever he goes to each night. We can, and did, leave each other’s presence anytime with no hard feelings. It’s just what it is. And that’s why it’s a peculiar person who can love a cat. I think that cat people are more welcoming of other people’s oddities. After all, we live with a creature who would stare at dust motes for hours before suddenly tearing around the house as if possessed. We’re also happy observers. Much of the enjoyment we get from our cats is not through active play but through quiet observation. And lastly, we’re emotionally low-maintenance people. Not to say that we love less than the average person. In fact, I believe cat people love more intensely just that it’s not a needy, show-offy, bromidic kind of love.

Denys, Robert Redford’s character in Out of Africa, is perhaps the best example of what a cat person (and a cat) is like. In one scene where he’s arguing about love and freedom with Meryl Streep’s character, he sums it up thusly:

Why is your freedom more important that mine?

It isn't. And I've never interfered with your freedom.
No. I'm not allowed to need you.
Or rely on you, or expect anything from you.
I'm free to leave.
But I do need you.
You don't need me.
If I die, will you die? You don't need me.
You're confused. You've mixed up need with want. You always have.
My God. In the world that you would make, there would be no love at all.
Or the best kind. The kind we wouldn't have to prove.

In the eight years he was with me, Pepe taught me to love without expectation and has made my life all the richer for it.

 

PR Myths: So you never have to wonder again

Many years ago I had a conversation with a reporter and we ended up talking about books. At one point he said, with genuine surprise in his voice, "I didn't think that you read." Being the PR trouper that I was, I managed to offer a gracious smile. But I was stunned. For a voracious reader like me, who's been reading classics before the age of ten, his remark was unexpected and offensive. How dare he?! I probably read more books during the first 15 years of my life than he ever will in his entire lifetime. And I’m not talking about paperback pop trash either.

But I suppose it's the pitfall of my occupation. PR people generally don't appear very bright to newsmen. And why should we? If we’re not pimping our latest press release, we’re bugging them to come to our client’s endless and sometimes, to be honest, mindless events. Our discipline prevents us from saying anything other than what’s acceptable to both clients and our own agency, always careful to appear friendly and neutral lest we betray what we really think. Even Facebook is heavily self-censored. What appears on our pages is generally acceptable pap. Nothing too controversial, language controlled (if we must swear, we use asterisks and only write innocuous cuss words like sh*t or d**n), photos sanitized (no drunk-ass pictures, nothing sleazy, no candid shots where we’re looking decidedly unglamorous), no political opinions, no commentaries on business issues, nothing in fact, that will give people an indication that we’re intelligent people. Of course it’s all standard rules of corporate behavior. Except that as PR practitioners, we set the bar higher for ourselves because we not only represent our agency, more importantly, we represent a multitude of clients, each with their unique standards of acceptable behavior. To be honest, it’s enough to make us a little schizophrenic. “Wooh look at me partying with a glass of whisky,” (because I represent a liquor brand); “Oh but notice that I don’t look at all like I’ve drunk a drop of this amber liquid and I’m still wearing a proper, non-skanky suit,” (because I also represent several corporate clients). “Oh wow, look at me running in Bonifacio High Street for some charity-or-other,” (sports apparel client plus do-gooding CSR points).

It's true that we’re not all that we appear to be despite what people think they know about us. For instance, I’m always irritated when I tell people that I work in PR and they immediately conclude, “Ah so ma-PR ka pala.” What the fuck does that mean anyway? That ALL I do is talk to ALL people ALL the time? That I’m a sleazy operator who’ll use gab or cash to get my way? So just because I have a sudden bug up my ass, here’s a rundown of some PR people myths that I’d like to dispel:

Myth #1  We’re highly sociable people 
Most of us reached the top of our game because we’re brilliant campaign strategists, exceptional writers, excellent managers and hard-working tacticians. Yes, we have enough people skills to get along with clients and the media but it’s not like we’re scintillatingly vivacious 24/7. We can turn it on when the situation requires it but it’s not our default. You’d be surprised how many of us prefer to be alone most of the time.

Myth #2  We love making small talk 
With the exception of a few airheads in our profession (I’ll get to them later), PR people are not natural chatterboxes. In fact, for many of us, the worst part of our job is attending press conferences and events where we’re required to talk to a lot of people. It’s extremely tedious work. If we had lip-readers in our events, we’d often be caught saying things to each other like: “Parang habag, ilayo mo na ko dito, nauubusan na ‘ko ng sasabihin”; or “Leche, di pa ba matatapos ‘tong event na ‘to, nangangawit na iyong mukha ko sa kakangiti.” All said through clenched smiles of course.

Myth #3  Our job consists mostly of going to parties 
Just because you always see us in clubs or events doesn’t mean that that’s all we do. We’re not in these events because we’re unrepentant party animals, we’re there to work. When you see us going around talking to people, know that we are actually working, not partying. Oh and before that bangin’ whisky party in that stinky, pretentious club? Yes that’s right, we were working all day, answering emails, thinking up new campaigns, writing press releases, attending endless meetings, making phone calls, printing press kits, packing press give-ways and yes, making sure that the venue is ready and beautiful for your arrival. If we had our way, we’d rather just crawl into bed because after everything’s been said and done, after all that “partying” ‘til 4am, we still have to get up for a 7am presentation.

Myth #4 We’ll give in to (almost) anything
I can see how some media people could be tempted to see us as nothing more than well-dressed peddlers of press releases or glorified event hostesses who'll offer the sun, moon, every known star just to get a pick-up. After all. it’s the bulk of our interaction with them. And even on those rare occasions when we go out just to go out, we remain circumspect with our words and our actions, sharing only what we think they want to hear, not challenging offensive behavior because we believe, rightly or wrongly, that appearing friendly and indulgent is somehow a “goodwill investment” in the relationship. Well guess what, it can’t be a relationship worth “investing” in if the other party is a mean, self-aggrandizing, or sexist scum. It’s really ironic considering that PR practitioners are arguably the smartest, most opinionated, and most eloquent people in the communications industry. Although it certainly doesn’t help that we also have bimbo airheads within our ranks, girls who have nothing going for them except vacuous conversation, doltish giggles, cloying flattery, manic perkiness, a desperate need to be desired, and acres of make-up. But I suppose that even for the best of us, this desire to please, to be ever-conciliatory makes us forget when to draw the line between being gracious, offering an honest opinion, or just plainly declaring, “Shove your cheap innuendos up your ass, you fucking slimeball!”

Myth #5  We’re nothing but dumb corporate mouthpieces 
Okay, before we were sucked into this soulless business we were actually writers, journalists, teachers, financial gurus, marketing practitioners. That press release that you’re basing your story on? We wrote that. That CEO speech you found so inspiring? We wrote that too. And that APAC business report on which you’re basing three of your top stories on? Yup, we did the data analysis and wrote the recommendations. That awesome viral campaign you’re sharing with all your friends? Uh-huh, we thought that up. Get the picture?

Myth #6  We’re liars 
No we’re not. Truth has several dimensions and what we offer is truth that’s based on hard, established facts, along with conclusive studies and recommendations made by reputable, independent and globally-recognized organizations, as well as unbiased stakeholder experiences. Iyon na!