The Ultimate in Anti Intellectuals – Cats

I just got a new cat. A pretty black cat that goes by the name of Bast. She is roughly a year and a half old and I welcome her into my life. There’s just one thing. I forgot how anti intellectual cats are.

If you don’t believe me try reading a book in the presence of a cat. Whatever the cat is doing it will stop that and come over to you. You think the cat just wants to be petted. Since you have two hands you think you can pet with one and hold the book with the other.

But the cat is insistent and constantly gets between you and the book or even e reader. You push the cat out of the way many times. Finally you give up for a moment and set the reading material down. What does the cat do immediately? It lies on the book or e reader. With no hope left of reading, you pet the cat – just as that feline wanted you to.

I don’t know how cats figured out literacy is tied tightly to reading and writing. But figure it out they did. And they’ve been sabotaging increased literacy ever since.

Still don’t believe me? Just try to read or write on a computer as I’m doing right now. It won’t be long now. Bast will spy me at work, concentrating not on her but a screen. She will climb on my lap. Stupidly I will pat her there not thinking of past experience. It will happen that she will get between me and the screen. I will push her out of the way but she knows the game is to go back. And if I am writing she will step on a few random keys to make things even harder for me.

I think cats are anti intellectual because all they need from us is food and someone to change the kitty litter. And given enough mice in the area, cats will end up feeding themselves. So us human owners of cats are just litter changers.

You don’t have to be literate to change kitty litter and cats know this. In fact the more literate you are, cats know that you are even more likely not to want to change litter. So there you have it.

But a lucky 1/1000th of a percent will be so literate that they will know how to train the cat from going in the litter and get it instead to go in the toilet. In my time between cats, I did not bother to learn and memorize those strategies that get a cat to use the toilet.

My time frittered away, I know I have a life stuck with cleaning the kitty litter forever more. And I know if I call up the web pages in the presence of my cat, she will instantly get in my way.

But wait. What will happen if my cat discovers I wrote this? The only good thing about the anti intellectualism is that they are anti intellectual in regards to themselves, too. So she may ignore this warning to the outside world. Uh oh, I hear tiny footste