Honestly, Beautifully : honey blade
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2002-08-23 - 5:32 a.m.
Damn. I'm hungry.
For the sake of writing an entry (I need to try doing this entry every day thing, really) I'm going to share a bit of my personal philosophy. No, don't worry, it's nothing too heavy. I think I came up with it while I was drunk or something. I don't remember exactly.
Anyway, it basically went like this.
According to T.S. Eliot, all cats have three different names.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey
All of them are sensible, everyday names
But I tell you a cat needs a name that's particular
A name that's peculiar and more dignified
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular?
Or spread out his whiskers or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo or Coricopat
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
The third name is, apparently, a name known only to the cat himself. Now, I always understood this as being that while we may give our cats names, they don't use these names when communicating with other cats. So while I may call my cat "Carmen" and she will recognise it as my name for her, who's to say that she doesn't have an entirely different name when she's hanging around with Mittens?
Add to this the dimension that cats have two main methods of communication - eye contact, and smell. Cats identify each other by their respective smells. So the cat's third name isn't really a "name" as we know it, it's more of a scent-based identifier.
Following me? Good.
The poem ends by saying that when you see a cat sitting, deeply contemplating something, then what he's actually thinking about is his own name. So, with all of the above in mind, when you see a cat in deep thought, what he's actually thinking is this:
"Wow. I smell good."
.
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