On cats and doors
I have two cats and four doors in my home. One door open to the back yard and the woods, the other two doors to the front, one from our residence and one from the motel lobby. The fourth and last one leads to the laundry room and from there to the outside. That in itself is not very exciting until I realized how much time I spend during the day helping one cat to make decisions about which door to use to go out and preventing the other one from going out through any of them.
It reminds me every time of my fascination with the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland; the one so smugly explaining how it really does not make any difference which direction you choose if you don't have any idea where you are going to in the first place.
My cats don't seem to know that. The older of the two, Necko Chan, is a tri color short hair that came with us from Israel and was originally a street cat. Tri color cats are considered good luck in Japan; I read somewhere and her name means just that “cat” in Japanese. She grew up having a free range of our yard and over the years developed a keen sense for danger (or so I hope). She also seems to have a hard time making decisions regarding doors.
In the summer she likes the back door. She walks through it with confidence just to stop two feet outside the door sniff the air and seek for possible danger. She than makes a mad dash to the wood pile in the back, never in a straight line though. Once there she will spend endless hours sitting at the top and watching over her kingdom. I can see her from my kitchen window looking extremely content. But now it is winter and things get complicated by the high snow piles at the back. She needs to decide between the two front doors. So we spend considerable amount of time going from one door to the other. At each one she stands for awhile scratches her back against the door frame and my legs looking deep in thought, evaluating the possibilities. I fail to understand the thought process that eventually brings her to make a decision and walk out with great determination only to sit on the front step and look entirely lost.
My other female cat, Sheleg (Hebrew for snow) is a big white ragdoll and an indoor cat who aspires to become an outdoor one. She is trailing behind me and Necko as the latter is trying to decide which door to use. Once a decision was reached and a door was opened she will sprint forward trying to get out and often succeeds. She will then continue to run witlessly without looking back. She is the one the saying “curiosity killed the cat” was crafted after. She just bolts through the open door without casting a look back and never actually being outside for any length of time has no clue how to return. I of course run after her in the snow, with my house slippers, there is no time to spare here. When I catch up with her I pick her up and hold her tight. I can feel her heart beats frantically and see the gratitude in her eyes. I know if she could speak she would thank me for saving her from herself.
Few hours later we repeat the routine, walking from door to door, finding the chosen one, bolting out, chase and rescue and so on. In the meantime, Necko who finally figured out why she walked outside in the first place will walk away from the front door only to show up behind the back door and sit there miserably cold and half frozen while I am calling for her in the front.
Some days I swear I can see that damn Cheshire cat with his wide teeth full grin hanging in mid air following me and the cats from door to door. In moments of hesitation daring me to walk through the open door myself without even one look backwards after all what difference does it make?
I'm remembering our emails about passive voice! Here we go!
ReplyDeleteAs I read, I kept wondering whether you were letting the cat out yourself or whether the cat was trying to decide between cat doors cut into the human doors. I had pretty much realized that you were waiting for the cat to choose a door (like some insane game show: "Behind one door is a scratching post made of catnip! Behind the other door is a crazed, cat hating bulldog!") instead of doing what I would do if I had an inside cat, which I don't and never would--namely, scooping the creature up and underhanding him into the World Beyond The Door.
And then I arrived here: "Once a decision was reached and a door was opened she will sprint forward trying to get out and often succeeds."
Bingo! Passive voice problems. I'd write it this way: "Once Necko Chan has decided and I've opened the door for her, she will sprint...."
Here's what's gained: a clear sense of who's doing what: cat decides, woman opens. Not clear in the original without the reader doing a little logic puzzle.
Here's what's lost: the passive voice can be somewhat droll and when you say, "Once a decision was reached..." as if the cat were chairwoman of the board of a multinational corporation making a decision worth billions, that is amusing.
Do you hear that difference and see the balance of gain and loss--or is that difference too subtle and evanescent for someone whose English is a second language? It's too subtle, certainly, for many native English speakers!
On to other things. I will again use an adjective to describe this: droll. This is a piece of drollery. You have a fine habit of choosing topics whose impact is very minimal, which allows the writer to bring the maximum amount of mind to the page.
Think of it: if the topic is: coping with the death of a spouse, or the historical background to Sarah Palin's use of the term 'blood libel,' or the future of the Atlantic fisheries, those topics tend to squeeze the writer into a small box. The writer HAS to say certain things, go certain directions.
Whereas two cats and four doors..., well, that's a topic where the writer has to bring every single thing to the table. As the Cheshire Cat might say: there is no intrinsic direction to be followed.
And that's what makes an essay an essay--the writer's willingness to follow an idea around her mind and to allow the reader to follow a step behind.